MC Weekly Update 7/31: It's Complicated

NYU’s Joshua Tucker and Stanford’s Jennifer Pan discuss four studies released in Nature and Science from a research partnership with Meta on the 2020 U.S. election. Tucker is a lead investigator on the project and Pan is lead author on two of the articles published in Science.

A group of leading academics were granted access to work with Meta researchers to study data from consenting Facebook and Instagram users during the 2020 presidential election.
Their findings are complicated and disputed, but indicate that changes to limit algorithmic recommendations did not make a significant difference in partisanship or political knowledge.
A key finding shows that conservatives were more likely to engage with election misinformation, and Tucker points out that it is impossible to understand the overall effect social media has on election information and political beliefs.

The Research

Select Headlines

Bloomberg: Facebook False News in US Election Reached More Conservatives, Study Says
Meta: Groundbreaking Studies Could Help Answer the Thorniest Questions About Social Media and Democracy
Nature: Tweaking Facebook feeds is no easy fix for polarization, studies find
NBC News: Facebook opened its doors to researchers. What they found paints a complicated picture of social media and echo chambers.
Platformer: How Facebook does (and doesn’t) shape our political views
The Atlantic: So Maybe Facebook Didn't Ruin Politics
The New York Times: Facebook’s Algorithm Is ‘Influential’ but Doesn’t Necessarily Change Beliefs, Researchers Say
The Wall Street Journal: Does Facebook Polarize Users? Meta Disagrees With Partners Over Research Conclusions
The Washington Post: Changing Facebook's algorithm won't fix polarization, new study finds