New Delhi, Jul 28 (PTI) Algorithms controlling a social media user’s feed, while largely opaque, may not be polarising the society in the same ways as the public tends to think, social scientists say.
They have published studies examining social media’s impact on individuals’ political attitudes and behaviours during the US presidential election in 2020 in the journals Nature and Science.
“The notion that such algorithms create political ‘filter bubbles’, foster polarisation, exacerbate existing social inequalities, and enable the spread of disinformation has become rooted in the public consciousness,” write Andrew M. Guess, lead author of one of these newly published studies, and colleagues about the opaque-to-users algorithms used by social media companies.
