Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms

Robertson, Claire E.; del Rosario, Kareena S.; Van Bavel, Jay J.

doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918

Current Opinion in Psychology

2024

DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918

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Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms

Claire E. Robertson,

Kareena S. del Rosario,

Jay J. Van Bavel

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2024

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Cited by 3 publications

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News Sharing on Social Media: Mapping the Ideology of News Media, Politicians, and the Mass Public

Eady,

Bonneau,

Tucker

et al. 2024

Polit. Anal.

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This article examines the information sharing behavior of U.S. politicians and the mass public by mapping the ideological sharing space of political news on social media. As data, we use the near-universal currency of online information exchange: web links. We introduce a methodological approach and software to unify the measurement of ideology across social media platforms by using sharing data to jointly estimate the ideology of news media organizations, politicians, and the mass public. Empirically, we show that (1) politicians who share ideologically polarized content share, by far, the most political news and commentary and (2) that the less competitive elections are, the more likely politicians are to share polarized information. These results demonstrate that news and commentary shared by politicians come from a highly unrepresentative set of ideologically extreme legislators and that decreases in election pressures (e.g., by gerrymandering) may encourage polarized sharing behavior.

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News Sharing on Social Media: Mapping the Ideology of News Media, Politicians, and the Mass Public

Eady,

Bonneau,

Tucker

et al. 2024

Polit. Anal.

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The offline roots of online hostility: Adult and childhood administrative records correlate with individual-level hostility on Twitter

Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen,

Bor,

Petersen

2024

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Reducing hostility in social media interactions is a key public concern. Most extant research emphasizes how online contextual factors breed hostility. Here, we take a different perspective and focus on the offline roots of hostility, that is, offline experiences and stable individual-level dispositions. Using a unique dataset of Danish Twitter users (N = 4,931), we merge data from administrative government registries with a behavioral measure of online hostility. We demonstrate that individuals with more aggressive dispositions (as proxied by having many more criminal verdicts) are more hostile in social media conversations. We also find evidence that features of childhood environments predict online hostility. Time spent in foster care is a strong correlate, while other indicators of childhood instability (e.g., the number of moves and divorced parents) are not. Furthermore, people from more resourceful childhood environments—those with better grades in primary school and higher parental socioeconomic status—are more hostile on average, as such people are more politically engaged. These results offer an important reminder that much online hostility is rooted in offline experiences and stable dispositions. They also provide anuanced view of the core group of online aggressors. While these individuals display general antisocial personality tendencies by having many more criminal verdicts, they also come from resourceful backgrounds more often than not.

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Sanctioning political speech on social media is driven by partisan norms and identity signaling

Ahn,

Lelkes,

Levendusky

2024

PNAS Nexus

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Social media is marked by online firestorms where people pile-on and shame those who say things perceived to be offensive, especially about politically relevant topics. What explains why individuals engage in this sort of sanctioning behavior? We show that two key factors help to explain this pattern. First, on these topics, both offensive speech and subsequent sanctioning are seen as informative about partisanship: people assume that those who say offensive things are out-partisans, and those who criticize them are co-partisans. Second, individuals perceive that such sanctioning is an injunctive norm, and believe that their fellow co-partisans approve of it—sanctioning someone allows them to signal their partisanship by adhering to that norm. Using three original experiments, we show strong support for this argument. Sanctioning this type of offensive speech is as informative about perceived partisanship as explicit partisan electioneering. Further, people perceive that a wide variety of sanctioning behaviors are (partisan) group norms. We also show that while people are reluctant to be the first to criticize someone online, they are quite willing to pile-on to others’ criticisms, which helps to explain why this behavior spreads so rapidly in online firestorms. Our results have implications for online social dynamics, as well as partisanship and partisan animosity more broadly.

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Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms

Cited by 3 publications

References 50 publications

News Sharing on Social Media: Mapping the Ideology of News Media, Politicians, and the Mass Public

News Sharing on Social Media: Mapping the Ideology of News Media, Politicians, and the Mass Public

The offline roots of online hostility: Adult and childhood administrative records correlate with individual-level hostility on Twitter

Sanctioning political speech on social media is driven by partisan norms and identity signaling

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