Social Media Interaction Does Not Improve Political Knowledge, but It Does Polarize Us

“Two new political science studies investigate how all of this time spent on social media affects our politics. The first asks what, if anything, digital denizens learn about politics, while the second develops a model to explain how social media interactions spark culture wars by sorting people into antagonistic political tribes.
Published in the Journal of Communication, the first study finds that whatever else millions of social media devotees learn from their online activity—catching up with friends and finding new ones, checking out product reviews, and watching cat videos—one thing they do not do is learn about is politics.

There are “no observable political knowledge gains from using Facebook, Twitter,
or SNS [social network sites] in general; when measuring policy-specific, campaign-related, or general political knowledge; in election and routine periods; and when individuals use social media specifically for news or for more general purposes,” find Israeli communications researchers Eran Amsalem and Alon Zoizner. They reached this conclusion after parsing data involving more than 440,000 subjects in a pre-registered meta-analysis of 76 different studies on the effect of social media on political knowledge.

One minor exception to this sweeping conclusion is that research using experimental setups finds small but statistically significant knowledge gains from using social media. However, in such experiments, Amsalem and Zoizner note that subjects are given no choice over what political information they see, so they may be artificially induced to pay greater attention to it than they ordinarily would scrolling out in the wild. The experiments also fail to account for information decay, since they test their subjects’ political knowledge gains immediately after exposure to it. “Considering these caveats, our conclusion remains that social media contribute little, if at all, to political knowledge,” write the authors.”

“Törnberg observes that accumulating data indicate that political polarization in the U.S. and other countries is not growing because people are increasingly isolating themselves with like-minded folks in social media echo chambers that confirm the righteousness of their views. Instead, Törnberg notes that the “empirical literature suggests that digitalization does not appear to lead to a reduction of interaction across political divide, but quite the opposite: it confronts us with diverse individuals, perspectives, and viewpoints, often in contentious ways.” So how might social media contribute to the apparent increase in partisan rancor? Törnberg develops a model showing how political disputes, controversies, and debates on nonlocal social media can drive people to adopt increasingly extreme positions.

Back in the good old days, political and other differences of opinion were largely local and neighbors had many cross-cutting issues and commonalities that moderated their views of those who disagreed with them. “Social conflict is sustainable as long as there are multiple and non-overlapping lines of disagreement: we may differ on our views on one issue but agree on another; we may vote differently, but if we support the same football team or go to the same church, there remains space for interpersonal respect,” writes Törnberg. “The recent rise in polarization is thus expressive of a gradual breakdown of this cohesive glue, driven by a gradual alignment of social, economic, geographic, and ideological differences and conflicts.””

“Based on the results of his model, Törnberg argues that we need to rethink “digital media as not merely arenas for rational deliberation and political debate but as spaces for social identity formation and for symbolic displays of solidarity with allies and difference from outgroups. Digital media do not isolate us from opposing ideas; au contraire, they throw us into a national political war, in which we are forced to take sides.””

Both Left and Right Are Converging on Authoritarianism

“partisan animosity suits the authoritarian elements on the left and right just fine. Their goal is power, and they have little patience for procedural niceties that interfere with its exercise. As history teaches, a base whipped up into fear and fury is ready to accept almost anything to ensure its own survival. Perhaps even the destruction of the institutions and ideals that make America distinctively itself.”

“At a time of polarization, you might expect the right to react by doubling down on support for free markets and private property. Instead, concurrent with democratic socialism’s ascendance, many prominent conservatives have taken a leftward turn of their own.
In June 2019, Tucker Carlson spent five full minutes during his prime-time Fox News show praising a plan from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) to promote “economic patriotism.” The proposal, which called for “aggressive” government action to bolster domestic manufacturing and keep American companies from creating jobs abroad, “sounds like Donald Trump at his best,” Carlson enthused.

President Donald Trump exhibited a high degree of comfort wielding state power for mercantilist ends, from his imposition of tariffs to his use of subsidies and bailouts to support American companies facing competition. Now a rising cadre of nationalist conservatives (a.k.a. “natcons”) are happy to provide the intellectual ammunition for this America First agenda.

In 2019, Republican policy wonk Oren Cass appeared at the inaugural National Conservatism Conference to argue for industrial policy—a robust program of federal interventions meant to resuscitate American manufacturing. He went on to found a think tank, American Compass, that promotes such familiar policies as making corporations give board seats to labor representatives.”

“Economics is the arena in which the left-right convergence is most obviously apparent. But there are other places in which the two movements, though superficially worlds apart, are tracking in the same disturbing direction at a deeper level.”

“This is what feels most broken in our politics. It’s not the ways left and right are further apart than ever; it’s the ways they’re closer together, with powerful elements on each side having jettisoned the longstanding liberal ideal of respecting the rights of even those with whom you strongly disagree.

The two camps, of course, have different substantive moral visions for the society they wish to construct. But each views a broad conception of individual liberty as a barrier to achieving that vision.

Economic liberty, including international trade and private property rights, stands in the way of progressives’ desire for an egalitarian and democratic order in which no one is ever again expected to work for someone else—and in the way of natcons’ desire for a revivified American manufacturing sector in which male breadwinners can support a large family on a single income. Speech protections prevent both sides from controlling the conversation as they wish. Religious freedom is seen as either a cover for rank bigotry or a rationalization for excluding God from the public square. And liberal toleration, with its norms of fair play and civility, is at odds with the reigning conception of politics as total war.”

“Individual liberty, equality under the law, protections against the arbitrary exercise of governmental power—these are unmistakably American values. While influential elements on both the left and the right have turned against them in recent years, most Americans are not on board with total-war politics.

Much has been made of rising affective polarization, and there is some evidence to support the concern. People have become more likely over time to say they would be displeased if they had a son or daughter who married someone from the opposite political party, for example. Yet Americans from both parties are still significantly more likely to say they would not be bothered at all. In fact, a 2020 survey commissioned by The Economist found just 16 percent of Democrats and just 13 percent of Republicans saying they would be “very upset” in that situation. Severe affective polarization remains mostly an elite phenomenon.

In a poll commissioned last year by the group More in Common, three in four respondents agreed that “the differences between Americans are not so big that we cannot come together.” Demonization of the other is a powerful political weapon, and those inclined toward authoritarianism are particularly comfortable using it. But what is sometimes called the “grand liberal bargain”—a social truce in which each side broadly agrees to respect the other’s freedom, even if it doesn’t like what the other side will do with it—is a powerful defense, and one in keeping with the natural ethos of America. It’s not too late to choose it.”

How political polarization broke America’s vaccine campaign

“That polarization has now opened political rifts in vaccination rates, with people’s decision to get a shot or not today a better predictor of states’ electoral outcomes than their votes in prior elections. It’s led the US’s vaccination campaign to hit a wall, missing President Joe Biden’s July 4 goal. Meanwhile, the more infectious delta variant is spreading, raising the risk of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in unvaccinated — and often heavily Republican — areas.

To put it bluntly: Polarization is killing people.”

How Much Do Americans Really Care About Bipartisanship?

“voters like bipartisanship more in theory than in practice. But that doesn’t mean bipartisan support isn’t still important politically. Voters may prefer more partisan policy results, but their stated desire for bipartisanship means that politicians can still benefit by at least trying to work together.”

Republicans Really, Really Dislike Biden. But It’s Not Just About Him.

“Members from the other party were once more willing to give a new president some benefit of the doubt early on — or at least, their opposition was not quite so baked in, as the figures for both Bush and Barack Obama suggest. What’s more, there hasn’t been a corresponding change in how strongly the president’s own party feels about him. Members of the president’s party overwhelmingly support him, but there hasn’t been an uptick in those who say they strongly approve of him.

This lack of crossover support for presidents in their first term in office points toward one of the most animating forces in American politics today: Increased disdain and hatred of one’s political opponents, known as “negative partisanship.” As the chart below shows, opinions about the other party have become far more unfavorable since the late 1970s.”

“Such hostile sentiments reflect a world in which each major party increasingly believes the other poses a threat to the country’s well-being.”

“such deep dislike will likely keep Republicans opposed to Biden regardless of his administration’s actions. It also means that like Trump, Biden will likely have to rely on his own party’s support to buoy his overall numbers.”

What Democrats Can Learn From Nebraska’s Shift To The Right

“in 1989, I entered a world where Nebraska straddled the middle of the political spectrum. But since then, the state has drifted so far from the center it’s hard to remember it was ever there. Using DW-NOMINATE data from the congressional vote tallying website Voteview, we can see just how far Nebraska’s political representatives have drifted rightward in the last thirty years. As you can see in the chart below, the average ideology score of Nebraska’s U.S. representatives and senators, as measured by DW-NOMINATE’s first dimension, shifted more than half a point between 1990 and 2020.1 Put in today’s terms, in 1990, the average Nebraskan in Congress was similar in ideology to outgoing Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, a moderate; whereas today she would more closely resemble Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who isn’t the most conservative Republican in Congress (that’s Sen. Mike Lee), but still drifts pretty far to the right on the ideological spectrum.”

“the Electoral College has always favored smaller states like Nebraska. But it is only somewhat recently that these states have heavily favored Republicans.”

“So what’s driving Nebraska’s (and other states’) rightward shift? In part, it has to do with the nationalization of American politics. Since the 1990s, Democratic voters have moved to the left on issues such as health care and immigration, while Republicans have become more likely to identify as conservative as their moderate candidates have dwindled. And in turn, this nationalization and polarization has made it more difficult for local candidates to successfully create their own platforms. For example, as governor and senator, Nelson often broke from his own party in an attempt to attract conservative voters, taking stances like advocating for a “hard barrier” to prevent illegal immigration or supporting various anti-abortion measures. But the days of candidates creating their own platforms are largely over, and the share of registered Democratic voters in Nebraska has also dropped.”

“This trend extends to lower levels of government, too, like the state legislature and city councils. Republican state lawmakers have also tried to eliminate prenatal care and repeal in-state tuition for immigrants, while giving local police the power to question the immigration status of anyone they suspect of living in the country illegally. A few towns have even passed ordinances that formally ban undocumented immigrants from renting property. All this is happening in a state that, until recently, settled a high number of refugees.

Meanwhile, on the education front, Republican lawmakers have leaned into national Republicans’ growing aversion toward public education, trying to eliminate Nebraska’s democratically elected board of education, while perpetual tax cuts and exemptions have led to two-thirds of Nebraska’s school districts receiving no general financial assistance from the state, which has contributed to public schools in rural Nebraska having “the most inequitable [state aid] distribution in the nation,” according to a nationwide study by the think tank, The Rural School and Community Trust. This is all in a state where Republicans once implemented income and sales taxes to increase K-12 schools’ funding, among a host of other progressive legislation.

But lest one think the effects of nationalization have completely remade states like Nebraska, many Nebraskans disagree with the GOP’s positions. Through ballot initiatives, for instance, Nebraska voters have approved a higher minimum wage, Medicaid expansion and casino gambling, even though Republicans officials, who continue to cruise to statewide victories, have opposed these measures.”

““If you ask people to vote for things that might be in their own interest, and you explain the issue to them in one paragraph on the ballot, they will vote for the thing that is good for them,” said Ari Kohen, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “But you can’t ask them to give up their party affiliation.”

People are reluctant to switch parties, but they can be swayed to change their mind about a specific cause, particularly when an issue is presented outside of a partisan context. State Sen. Tony Vargas, a Democrat in Omaha, told me that he thought Medicaid expansion passed — even though Nelson encountered a brouhaha over a similar issue just eight years prior— because it wasn’t tied to a particular politician or party. “If our ballot said ‘expanding Obamacare,’ I feel like people would have voted against it,” Vargas said. “Instead, we said ‘expanding Medicaid and addressing the gap.’ … It’s a lot harder to attack the issue. It’s much easier to attack the person.””

Social media is making a bad political situation worse

“it’s often difficult to understand which comes first: a polarized situation or the social media that aggravates that situation. Rather, it’s become a self-reinforcing system.”

“Animosity toward members of opposing parties is very high even though our divisions over policy preferences don’t appear to have grown, according to new research published in Science magazine. The paper brings together a number of different studies on the topic and is written by scholars from six disciplines who found that, these days, we’re more likely to hate the opposing side and consider them to be “different,” “dislikable,” and “immoral.” The result is a “political sectarianism” in which one’s party identity seems to come first, before policy, religion, or common ground. Political identity, in turn, shapes our other views instead of the other way around. For example, after seeing a clip of Donald Trump espousing a liberal policy, followers exhibited a more liberal attitude, according to the paper, which presumes Democrats would do the same for their political leaders.”

“The results of this kind of alignment are disastrous for a functioning democracy. As the researchers argue, “holding opposing partisans in contempt on the basis of their identity alone precludes innovative cross-party solutions and mutually beneficial compromises.””

“Then there’s distrust — encouraged by the president — of facts and journalism organizations, which are necessary to protect democracy. A series of Pew Research Center polls shows that Republicans rely on and trust fewer news sites for politics than they used to, with Fox News, Trump’s mouthpiece and a fount of disinformation, being one of few sources they regularly read and believe. However, research by Andy Guess, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, looks at web traffic rather than people’s survey responses to reveal that there’s considerable and consistent overlap in media consumption between the parties, except among a smaller set of extremists. This suggests many people might be reading the same sources but coming to totally different conclusions. Wildly divergent interpretations of the same news is a more difficult problem to fix.”

“Hyperpartisanship, tense societal factors, and divergent news diets — or at least divergent interpretations of the news — are then fed back through social media, which is likely amplifying our divisions. We don’t know exactly how the social media algorithms work that select what information we see because the technology is a black box controlled by the respective social media company that built it.
What we do know is that Facebook has put less of an emphasis on news and more on engagement, and that posts with strong, emotional language have more engagement. We also know Facebook has continually promoted Groups since 2016, which can function as their own echo chambers, even without algorithmic help. YouTube, whose algorithms like other platforms were designed to make people spend more time on the site, has been shown to radicalize people through inflammatory messaging. Most recently, it has been awash in election misinformation.”

“The share of Americans who often get their news from social media grew 10 percentage points to 28 percent last year, according to Pew. Those who mainly get their news that way were also less informed about current events and more likely to have been exposed to conspiracy theories.”

“A new study from the University of Virginia found increased Facebook usage among conservatives is associated with reading more conservative sites than they normally do. The effect was less dramatic among liberals.

The study’s authors conjectured that the way Facebook works might have something to do with this outcome. In addition to algorithms favoring engagement, the very structure of Facebook limits who we talk to: You have to “friend” others to see their posts, meaning you’re less likely to see people outside of your real-life friends and family, who are more likely to have similar lives and viewpoints. Facebook also tweaked its algorithms after the 2016 election to promote posts from friends and family and show far fewer posts from news outlets, which likely further contributed to filter bubbles and division.”

“Research highlighted in the Wall Street Journal suggests that people on social media do see opposing viewpoints. But since sites like Facebook are calibrated to highlight posts that elicit reactions, we’re seeing the most acerbic of opposing views, which can lead people to be even more repelled by them. The result is even more entrenched viewpoints and more polarization.”

““It’s not just a matter of coming into contact with the other side,” Pariser told Recode about how his conception of filter bubbles has changed since he first coined the term. “It’s doing so in a way that leads us to greater understanding.””