SignificanceSocial media sites are often blamed for exacerbating political polarization by creating “echo chambers” that prevent people from being exposed to information that contradicts their preexisting beliefs. We conducted a field experiment that offered a large group of Democrats and Republicans financial compensation to follow bots that retweeted messages by elected officials and opinion leaders with opposing political views. Republican participants expressed substantially more conservative views after following a liberal Twitter bot, whereas Democrats’ attitudes became slightly more liberal after following a conservative Twitter bot—although this effect was not statistically significant. Despite several limitations, this study has important implications for the emerging field of computational social science and ongoing efforts to reduce political polarization online.

There is mounting concern that social media sites contribute to political polarization by creating "echo chambers" that insulate people from opposing views about current events. We surveyed a large sample of Democrats and Republicans who visit Twitter at least three times each week about a range of social policy issues. One week later, we randomly assigned respondents to a treatment condition in which they were offered financial incentives to follow a 1 Twitter bot for one month that exposed them to messages produced by elected officials, organizations, and other opinion leaders with opposing political ideologies. Respondents were re-surveyed at the end of the month to measure the effect of this treatment, and at regular intervals throughout the study period to monitor treatment compliance. We find that Republicans who followed a liberal Twitter bot became substantially more conservative post-treatment, and Democrats who followed a conservative Twitter bot became slightly more liberal post-treatment. These findings have important implications for the interdisciplinary literature on political polarization as well as the emerging field of computational social science.Political polarization in the United States has become a central focus of social scientists in recent decades (1-7). Americans remain deeply divided on controversial issues such as inequality, race, and immigration. According to the 2016 National Election Study, 59.3% of Clinton voters believe federal aid to the poor should be increased compared to only 20.2% of Trump voters. 77.7% of Clinton voters express favorable attitudes towards the Black Lives Matter movement, whereas 31.2% of Trump voters do the same. 68.9% of Trump voters believe immigration to the United States should be decreased, compared to 21.9% of Clinton voters.Longstanding divides about these and many other issues have far-reaching consequences for the design and implementation of social policies as well as the effective function of democracy more broadly (8-12).America's deep partisan divides are often attributed to "echo chambers," or patterns of information sharing that reinforce pre-existing political beliefs by limiting exposure to heterogeneous ideas and perspectives (13)(14)(15)(16)(17). Concern about selective exposure to information and political polarization has increased in the age of social media (13,(18)(19)(20). The vast majority of Americans now visit a social media site at least once each day, and a rapidly growing number 2 of them list social media as their primary source of news (21). Despite initial optimism that social media might enable people to consume more heterogeneous sources of information about current events, there is growing concern that such forums exacerbate political polarization because of social network homophily, or the well-documented tendency of people to form social network ties to those who are similar to themselves (22, 23). The endogenous relationship between social network formation and political attitudes also creates formidable challenges f...

Classic and contemporary studies show that greater social class status is associated with higher levels of education for youth. However, racialized processes might constrain the benefits blacks receive from increases in parents’ social class. In this study the authors use the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to estimate whether race moderates the relationship among three common measures of youths’ social class during high school (parents’ occupations, family income, and parents’ level of education) and their college enrollment two years after high school and educational attainment eight years after high school. The results suggest that black youth receive lower benefits from social class than whites for both outcomes, and parents’ gender plays a role in the racial differences in the link between social class and both outcomes. The authors also find a three-way interaction with family structure for mothers (among race, social class, and family structure); among youth not in two-parent households, blacks benefit less than whites from mothers’ occupational prestige on enrollment. This study extends the literature on social class and racial inequality in education by explicitly testing whether black youth receive lower benefits from social class in their attainment. Doing so separately for mothers’ and fathers’ social class characteristics uncovers a nuanced pattern useful for understanding race as a moderator to social class.

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