A Mixed Method Field Experiment Using Social Media

美国公众在从不平等到移民等一系列社会问题上仍然存在严重分歧。人们经常指责社交媒体网站制造了“回音室”，或者阻止人们接触到与自己观点不同的人的观点，从而加深了这种分歧。这项研究考察了通过实验破坏这种回音室——将两个敌对群体的大量样本暴露在对方群体的社交媒体信息中——是否可以增加温和和妥协。因此，这项研究的结果将有助于政策制定者和行业领导者设计是否以及如何监管社交媒体网站，并确保包容性审议，这对我们的公共机构的功能至关重要，从而促进合作。社会科学家越来越担心，在社交媒体的回音室中选择性地接触信息，可能会导致政治两极分化，以及公众对不平等和移民等有争议问题的不同态度。这项研究借鉴了社会网络分析和社会心理学，以发展一套关于社交媒体回音室和政治态度之间关系的假设，并通过Twitter上的混合方法现场实验来评估它们，该实验结合了定量调查、自动文本分析和对大量美国人的采访。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The American public remains deeply divided about a range of social issues from inequality to immigration. Social media sites are often blamed for deepening such divisions by creating "echo chambers," or preventing people from being exposed to opinions from those who do not share their views. This research examines whether experimentally disrupting such echo chambers--by exposing a large sample of two antagonistic groups to social media messages from the opposing group--can increase moderation and compromise. The results of this research will thereby promote cooperation by helping policy makers and industry leaders design whether and how to regulate social media sites and ensure the inclusive deliberation that is essential for the function of our public institutions. Social scientists have become increasingly concerned that selective exposure to information within social media echo chambers may contribute to political polarization and divergent public attitudes about controversial issues such as inequality and immigration. This research draws upon social network analysis and social psychology in order to develop a set of hypotheses about the relationship between social media echo chambers and political attitudes and evaluates them via a mixed-method field experiment on Twitter that combines quantitative surveys, automated text analysis, and interviews with a large sample of Americans.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.