Title: Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization | PNAS
Headings: Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization
Research Article
Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization
Significance
Abstract
Research Design
Results
Discussion and Conclusion
Materials and Methods
Acknowledgments
Footnotes
References

Content: Democrats exhibited slight increases in liberal attitudes after following a conservative Twitter bot, although these effects are not statistically significant. Notwithstanding important limitations of our study, these findings have significant implications for the interdisciplinary literature on political polarization and the emerging field of computational social science. political polarization
computational social science
social networks
social media
sociology
Political polarization in the United States has become a central focus of social scientists in recent decades ( 1 ⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓ – 7 ). Americans are deeply divided on controversial issues such as inequality, gun control, and immigration—and divisions about such issues have become increasingly aligned with partisan identities in recent years ( 8, 9 ). Partisan identification now predicts preferences about a range of social policy issues nearly three times as well as any other demographic factor—such as education or age ( 10 ). These partisan divisions not only impede compromise in the design and implementation of social policies but also have far-reaching consequences for the effective function of democracy more broadly ( 11 ⇓⇓⇓ – 15 ). America’s cavernous partisan divides are often attributed to “echo chambers,” or patterns of information sharing that reinforce preexisting political beliefs by limiting exposure to opposing political views ( 16 ⇓⇓⇓ – 20 ). Concern about selective exposure to information and political polarization has increased in the age of social media ( 16, 21 ⇓ – 23 ). The vast majority of Americans now visit a social media site at least once each day, and a rapidly growing number of them list social media as their primary source of news ( 24 ). 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 ( 25, 26 ).