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Basically, they paid people on twitter a small sum to follow a bot that spouted political views that were opposed to their own. They asked them the same 10 questions about their political beliefs before and after the study to see if anything shifted. Things got "worse".
Per the Los Angeles Times
I work with a lot of people that have vastly different political views than myself. I do think that it helps humanize your ideas of what people are like. If you ignore the political beliefs, they are not that much different than you. But at the same time, it is very difficult to have actual political discussions in that environment. The flip side is a place like this, which I think has way more potential than twitter (whose character limit is very counterproductive,IMO), but it doesn't seem like people take the opportunity to humanize themselves or accept the humanity of others.
Not trying to be preachy here. Can't say that when I see some avatar or sig designed to troll a person like me, that I can just ignore it and see that poster as someone with a family and friends other interests that I might share with them. Who knows, if we met in some neutral environment in person, they might actually *gasp* be polite and friendly to me instead of insulting me right off the bat.
What do you folks think? Are you getting more and more "liberal" or "conservative" by spending time on here? Is this study inherently limited by the cesspool of twitter?
Per the Los Angeles Times
In a world where people interact more and more online, we may be inclined to become more and more isolated and we can't just blame it on the tendency to create our own echo chambers. IMHO, it's a product of the dehumanization of online interaction. So, the more you see depersonalized viewpoints online, the easier it is to demonize the opposition.Dwelling in a political echo chamber — where you only encounter people who agree with you — is hardly conducive to a healthy democracy.
But it turns out that broadening your horizons by perusing opposing points of view on social media may just make the partisan divide worse.
That’s the depressing result of an unusual experiment involving 909 Democrats and 751 Republicans who spend a lot of time on Twitter.
“Attempts to introduce people to a broad range of opposing political views on a social media site such as Twitter might be not only ineffective but counterproductive,” researchers reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...
They already knew people become more inclined to compromise on political issues when they spend time with people who hold opposing views. Face-to-face meetings can override negative stereotypes about our adversaries, paving the way for negotiation.
But whether these dynamics would extend to virtual interactions through social media was unknown.
....
Compared to the Democrats who did not follow the conservative bot, those who did “exhibited slightly more liberal attitudes.” The more they had paid attention to the bot’s retweets (as measured by additional surveys), the more liberal their attitudes became. However, none of these changes were large enough to be statistically significant.
It was a different story for Republicans. Compared to those who did not follow the liberal bot, those who did “exhibited substantially more conservative views” after just one month. The greater the number of liberal tweets the Republicans absorbed, the more conservative they became. These results were statistically significant.
In other words, the experiment backfired.
I work with a lot of people that have vastly different political views than myself. I do think that it helps humanize your ideas of what people are like. If you ignore the political beliefs, they are not that much different than you. But at the same time, it is very difficult to have actual political discussions in that environment. The flip side is a place like this, which I think has way more potential than twitter (whose character limit is very counterproductive,IMO), but it doesn't seem like people take the opportunity to humanize themselves or accept the humanity of others.
Not trying to be preachy here. Can't say that when I see some avatar or sig designed to troll a person like me, that I can just ignore it and see that poster as someone with a family and friends other interests that I might share with them. Who knows, if we met in some neutral environment in person, they might actually *gasp* be polite and friendly to me instead of insulting me right off the bat.
What do you folks think? Are you getting more and more "liberal" or "conservative" by spending time on here? Is this study inherently limited by the cesspool of twitter?