Does Social Media Exacerbate Political Polarization? Experimental Evidence from Varying Access to Twitter/X during a Presidential Debate
61 Pages Posted: 19 Feb 2024 Last revised: 1 Jan 2025
There are 2 versions of this paper
Does Social Media Exacerbate Political Polarization? Experimental Evidence from Varying Access to Twitter/X during a Presidential Debate
Does Social Media Cause Polarization? Evidence from Access to Twitter Echo Chambers During the 2019 Argentine Presidential Debate
Date Written: January 01, 2025
Abstract
We study how individuals inside and outside echo chambers react to variations in social media access (Twitter/X) during a political event. Our experimental treatments mimic two strategies often proposed to limit political polarization on social media: getting people to switch off social media, and exposing people to counter-attitudinal data. Our results show that these treatments have no impact on polarization for individuals initially outside echo chamber. However, online segregated individuals experience increased polarization levels (backfire effects) under both treatments.
Keywords: political polarization, social media, echo chambers, mitigation strategies, backfire effects
JEL Classification: D72, D83, L82, L86, O33, P16
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