Post

andyguess
@andyguess.com

Glad to finally be able to post about this long-in-the-works paper, led by the amazing @crobertson500.bsky.social and @small-schulz.bsky.social! "Everyone knows" that social media gives a distorted view of public opinion (...right?). 1/8

Claire E. Robertson, PhD@crobertson500.bsky.social

Is social media truly making us more politically polarized, or does it simply over-represent our most extreme opinions? In our new preprint, @small-schulz.bsky.social and I present *punishing evidence* that social media systematically overrepresents users’ most extreme political opinions. 1/n

9 reposts23 likes

andyguess
@andyguess.com

We trace the process of self-selection in *who* posts to social media and *which* of their opinions users choose to post about. 2/8

andyguess
@andyguess.com

When we look at years of social media data linked to surveys, we find a consistent pattern across the most salient issues: users selectively post most frequently about issues on which they hold the most left- and right-aligned positions. 3/8

andyguess
@andyguess.com

Consistent with this, in experiments, we find that when we ask one set of people to write hypothetical opinions on random issues, they are more likely to say they'd post the more extreme position. 4/8

andyguess
@andyguess.com

Then when we ask a different sample of people about these previously written opinions, they perceive the ones that were more likely to be "posted" to be more off-putting and hostile. 5/8