Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions

Journal Article
Publication date: 
07/2023
Authors: 
Andrew Guess
Neil Malhotra
Jennifer Pan
Pablo Barberá
Hunt Allcott
Taylor Brown
Adriana Crespo-Tenorio
Drew Dimmery
Deen Freelon
Matthew Gentzkow
Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon
Edward Kennedy
Young Mie Kim
David Lazer
Devra Moehler
Brendan Nyhan
Carlos Velasco Rivera
Jaime Settle
Daniel Robert Thomas
Emily Thorson
Rebekah Tromble
Arjun Wilkins
Magdalena Wojcieszak
Beixian Xiong
Chad Kiewiet De Jonge
Annie Franco
Winter Mason
Natalie Jomini Stroud
Joshua Tucker
Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions

We studied the effects of exposure to reshared content on Facebook during the 2020 US election by assigning a random set of consenting, US-based users to feeds that did not contain any reshares over a 3-month period. We find that removing reshared content substantially decreases the amount of political news, including content from untrustworthy sources, to which users are exposed; decreases overall clicks and reactions; and reduces partisan news clicks. Further, we observe that removing reshared content produces clear decreases in news knowledge within the sample, although there is some uncertainty about how this would generalize to all users. Contrary to expectations, the treatment does not significantly affect political polarization or any measure of individual-level political attitudes.

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