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Breaking the Social Media Prism
Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing | Christopher A. Bail
2 posts | 2 read
A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions onlineand how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social media In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves. Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and offdetailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit "reset" and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research. Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts.
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Christine
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This is super accessible and will affect the way I discuss social media, echo chambers, polarization, and more with my Intro to Sociology students. The “let‘s all act more moderate online!” vibe is hard for me, but there‘s lots of good research-based stuff about how we can communicate better across difference. The author‘s Polarization Lab at Duke has some cool tools to play around with - www.polarizationlab.com/our-tools

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TimSpalding
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Author lays out the data that liberals and conservatives “exposed” to “voices” from the other side don‘t get more moderate, but the opposite. I‘m not sure this is news. Social media Is not designed to persuade. I doubt that, before social media, conservatives would have become more moderate being exposed to Cuban communist signs either! But social media is explicitly tribal. Pissing off the other side is a feature, not a bug. So, not surprising.

sprainedbrain So very accurate. 3y
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