Cameron Martel

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨 Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement? Twitter field exp & survey followups find -Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user -Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement shorturl.at/0Ycdp

Caveats: -Engagement ≠ belief updating (tho it’s an important first step) -Social corrections can have other negative effects (eg downstream lower quality reposting) dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1... -Hard to measure (presumably positive) third-party effects of social corrections on observers in field

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨 Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement? Twitter field exp & survey followups find -Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user -Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement shorturl.at/0Ycdp

A second survey exp found that minimal social connections foster a general norm of responding, such that ppl feel more obligated to respond - and think others expect them to respond more - to ppl who follow them, even outside the context of misinfo correction

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨 Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement? Twitter field exp & survey followups find -Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user -Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement shorturl.at/0Ycdp

We next conducted a follow-up survey on MTurk to replicate effects in a more controlled setting (eg eliminate blocking of counter-partisan bots) & obtained similar results

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨 Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement? Twitter field exp & survey followups find -Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user -Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement shorturl.at/0Ycdp

Users were also more likely to block our bots in the social counter-partisan condition (consistent w our @pnasnexus.org paper on greater blocking of counter-partisans). But this resulted in differential treatment delivery- we could not send corrections to users who blocked our bots shorturl.at/eG5bs

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨 Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement? Twitter field exp & survey followups find -Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user -Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement shorturl.at/0Ycdp

We sent corrections to 1,586 users & measured p(engage w correction): (i) Among users in the co-partisan condition, social connection had a sig positive effect on engagement (ii) Among users in the baseline (non-social) condition, no evidence of effect of shared partisanship on engagement

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨 Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement? Twitter field exp & survey followups find -Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user -Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement shorturl.at/0Ycdp

We created human-looking bots & corrected users who shared debunked URLs We randomized whether our bots (i) were co-partisan or counter-partisan for the to-be-corrected user (ii) followed the user & liked some of their tweets before correcting them (creating a minimal social connection)

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨 Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement? Twitter field exp & survey followups find -Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user -Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement shorturl.at/0Ycdp

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

Overall our results demonstrate the complex underpinnings of online partisan assortment Partisans pref connect w like-minded others not only bc of recommendation algos - but bc of distinct info & social prefs Party assortment is an enduring & important feature of social networks

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

We found: -50% of ppl in co-partisan condition who followed-back account mentioned same partisanship as motivation -58% of ppl in counter-partisan condition who ignored account mentioned diff partisanship as motivation

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

These results suggest: -More issue extreme & out-party disliking ppl are *less likely* to follow-back anyone who isn’t a co-partisan -More in-party affinitive ppl are *more likely* to follow-back anyone who isn’t a counter-partisan

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

We recruited n=990 Twitter-using participants on Lucid & asked them to complete these 4 political variable measures We then randomly assigned participants to suppose they’d been followed on Twitter by either a Dem, Rep, or politically neutral human-looking account (similar to our field design)

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

Altogether, our Twitter field exp shows: -Users pref co-partisan tie formation not solely to see congenial political content, but also bc of a social pref for connecting w co-partisan humans -This social pref is equal parts in-party pref & out-party dispref

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

We find: -Pref follow-back of co-partisan vs counter-partisan explicit bot accounts (ev of simple content prefs) -Even *greater* pref follow-back in human-looking vs bot accounts (ev of additional social motivation)

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

We pretested our profiles to confirm that: -Human-looking profiles were perceived more human than bot profiles -Human & bot profiles perceived as similarly informative Thus can attribute diffs in follow-back rates btw bot & human accounts to social factors beyond informativeness

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

There is also much work on affective partisan attitudes & polarization - ppl like & trust co-partisans > counter-partisans. Pref follow-back may therefore also be driven by affective social prefs for connecting with *actual* fellow partisans (beyond simple content prefs)

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

But the mechanisms underlying this partisan pref in tie formation remain unclear Do ppl like seeing politically agreeable *content* or do they also prefer actually *socially* connecting w co-partisans? And if so, is this social pref more about in-party pref or out-party distaste?

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

In prior work, we’ve found that shared partisanship causally affects Twitter followership. Users are ~3X more likely to follow-back co-partisans (vs counter-partisans) bsky.app/profile/came...