Twitter bots can make opinions more extreme

• Autores: Marie Le Conte
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3172, 2018, pág. 8
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Over the course of a month, Republican Twitter users followed a bot that automatically retweeted posts from Democrat politicians, pundits and journalists, and vice versa for Democrat Twitter users. The experiment was organized by a team from Duke University, New York University and Princeton University, and more than 1000 people took part. Before and after the trial, the team measured the political leanings of participants by asking them to rate how much they agreed with statements such as "government is almost always wasteful and inefficient" and "homosexuality should be accepted by society." Rather than becoming sympathetic to ideas retweeted by the bots, participants' views became more entrenched. Overall, after leaving their echo chambers, Republicans became substantially more conservative and Democrats slightly more liberal. The results offer lessons for those who want to reduce polarized views. "Well-intentioned attempts to introduce people to opposing political views on social media might not only be ineffective, but counter-productive," wrote the team.