It has become a familiar pattern this primary season. The day after a surprising victory by a progressive underdog — say Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Andrew Gillum of Florida, Jahana Hayes in Connecticut, Wesley Bell in Missouri or Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts — national audiences rush to meet the […] Read more »
Twitter’s Flawed Solution to Political Polarization
… Scholars were once optimistic that social media could increase bipartisan dialogue by allowing virtually anyone to engage in public debate about politics. Yet mounting evidence suggests that Facebook and Twitter have allowed Republicans and Democrats to further segregate themselves. A recent study indicates that 85 percent of retweets are […] Read more »
Many Facebook users don’t understand how the site’s news feed works
A sizable majority of U.S. adults use Facebook and most of its users get news on the site. But a new Pew Research Center survey finds that notable shares of Facebook users ages 18 and older lack a clear understanding of how the site’s news feed operates, feel ordinary users […] Read more »
Loneliness and Social Isolation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan
In recent years, the issue of social isolation and loneliness has garnered increased attention from researchers, policymakers, and the public as societies age, the use of technology increases, and concerns about the impact of loneliness on health grow. To understand more about how people view the issue of loneliness and […] Read more »
Information overload: When everything is everywhere, how do we understand what’s important?
Critics of democracy have long lamented that people know too little about politics, but today we have more news and information available to us than at any moment in history. I, for instance, start and end my days with Twitter: The ongoing stream of information it provides about the world […] Read more »
How Online Trolls Divide Americans IRL
We know that trolls on social media are trying to sow discord on contentious subjects like race, guns and abortion, but how do they do it? Here is a visual guide to their strategy. New York Times Read more »