Social Media, News Consumption, and Polarization: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By Ro’ee Levy. The American Economic Review, 2020
503 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Does the consumption of ideologically congruent news on social media exacerbate polarization? I estimate the effects of social media news exposure by conducting a large field experiment randomly offering participants subscriptions to conservative or liberal news outlets on Facebook. I collect data on the causal chain of media effects: subscriptions to outlets, exposure to news on Facebook, visits to online news sites, and sharing of posts, as well as changes in political opinions and attitudes. Four main findings emerge. First, random variation in exposure to news on social media substantially affects the slant of news sites that individuals visit. Second, exposure to counter-attitudinal news decreases negative attitudes toward the opposing political party. Third, in contrast to the effect on attitudes, I find no evidence that the political leanings of news outlets affect political opinions. Fourth, Facebook’s algorithm is less likely to supply individuals with posts from counter-attitudinal outlets, conditional on individuals subscribing to them. Together, the results suggest that social media algorithms may limit exposure to counter-attitudinal news and thus increase polarization. (JEL C93, D72, L82)
Subfields: Communication, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/38e922d61aac6de18e8cedeeca50ee389a8527b1
How researchers see this paper
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In Communication
- David Y. Yang
- Hunt Allcott
- Leonardo Bursztyn
- Sarah Eichmeyer
- Luca Braghieri
- Matthew Gentzkow
- Ro’ee Levy
In Sociology and Political Science
- Leonardo Bursztyn
- David Y. Yang
- Hunt Allcott
- Sarah Eichmeyer
- Luca Braghieri
- Matthew Gentzkow
- Ro’ee Levy
- Stefano DellaVigna
Citations in the corpus
- Misperceptions About Others (2021, background): “A particularly salient environment where demand-side and supply-side forces intersect is social media, where studies have shown that content exposures could substantially affect individuals’ views toward others (Allcott et al. 2020, Bursztyn et al. 2020b, Levy 2021).”
- The Welfare Effects of Social Media (2019, background): “3 Correlation studies on active versus passive Facebook use include Burke, Marlow, and Lento (2010); Burke, Kraut, and Marlow (2011); Burke and Kraut (2014); and Krasnova et al. (2013), and randomized experiments include Deters and Mehl (2013) and Verduyn et al.”