Befriended to polarise? The impact of friend identity on review polarisation—A quasi‐experiment

Abstract

Opinion polarisation in social media has recently become a significant issue. The existing literature mainly attributes polarisation to online friends' informational social influence, that is, users are more likely to interact with others with similar opinions, which leads to the echo chamber effect. However, the impact of social interaction on individual polarisation may also result from normative social influence, which varies with social settings on the platform. In this paper, we leverage a quasi‐experiment to investigate the normative social influence of online friends on focal users' review polarity. We use fixed effects and difference‐in‐differences approaches, along with propensity score matching, to address the potential endogeneity in users' friend function adoption decisions. Our results indicate that adopting the friend function leads users to post less extreme ratings. We further separate the reviews into positive and negative, finding that the reduction in the review polarity for positive reviews is more prominent than for negative ones. Regarding user heterogeneity, our causal forest analysis uncovers that users with a higher engagement level on the platform are less affected by adopting the friend function than those with less engagement. Our study has clear implications for managers and platform designers, highlighting the importance of social function design in reducing social media induced polarisation.

Information sharing and political polarisation on social media: The role of falsehood and partisanship

“…We, thus, go some way towards providing a more complete picture of the complex mechanism in which misinformation and extreme partisan information can contribute to an oftenvicious cycle of political polarisation (and potentially even social unrest). In so doing, we also extend the nascent literature on social media's dark side, including misinformation sharing and political polarisation (e.g., Sharma & Vasuja, 2022;Turel & Qahri-Saremi, 2016;Wang et al, 2023).…”

Visual audience gatekeeping on social media platforms: A critical investigation on visual information diffusion before and during the Russo–Ukrainian War

“…The prevalence of slanted visual information has implications for research on polarisation (e.g., Kitchens et al, 2020; Lu et al, 2022; Wakefield & Wakefield, 2023; Wang et al, 2023; Weismueller et al, 2023). We identify two processes by which biased visual information is diffused: reproduction and defence.…”

“…The forces outlined in the theoretical model have important implications for research on social media platforms, with a specific emphasis on their unintended side effects. In particular, it enhances our understanding of the nexus between visual content and social media phenomena such as misinformation and disinformation (e.g., Gimpel et al, 2021), polarisation (e.g., Miller et al, 2022; Wang et al, 2023), radicalization (e.g., Mikhaeil & Baskerville, 2023), and online extremism (e.g., Risius et al, 2023). In addition, our theoretical model clarifies the distinctions between legacy gatekeeping enacted by influential elites and institutions (e.g., Thorén et al, 2014) and audience gatekeeping performed by users on social media platforms (e.g., Kwon et al, 2012).…”

Diving into the divide: a systematic review of cognitive bias-based polarization on social media

“…The term “echo chamber” refers to an environment where individuals are only exposed to views and opinions that align with their own, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that leads individuals to accept information that can reinforce their existing beliefs (Lee et al ., 2018; Messing and Westwood, 2012). This behavior can result in polarization on social media as individuals become increasingly resistant to alternative viewpoints and more entrenched in their own opinions (Wang et al ., 2023a, b).…”