This story originally appeared on LX.com
It’s easy to point across the political aisle and find examples of how social media has pushed your opponents into hyper-partisan corners, living in what seems to be an alternative reality.
But it’s likely your reality is skewed by those same social media algorithms every day – subtly nudging you closer and closer toward political extremism – without you even realizing it. Download our mobile app for iOS or Android to get alerts for local breaking news and weather.
“One of the main effects of social media is polarizing the people whose opinions are not as likely to be strong and extreme themselves,” said Dr. Jaime Settle, director of the Social Networks & Political Psychology Research Lab at William & Mary. “It forces people in the middle to pick a side… where you see people who are like you. And that really does push people to affiliate with one of the two (political) camps.”
This story originally appeared on LX.com
It’s easy to point across the political aisle and find examples of how social media has pushed your opponents into hyper-partisan corners, living in what seems to be an alternative reality.
But it’s likely your reality is skewed by those same social media algorithms every day – subtly nudging you closer and closer toward political extremism – without you even realizing it. Download our NBC Washington app for iOS or Android to get alerts for local breaking news and weather.
“One of the main effects of social media is polarizing the people whose opinions are not as likely to be strong and extreme themselves,” said Dr. Jaime Settle, director of the Social Networks & Political Psychology Research Lab at William & Mary. “It forces people in the middle to pick a side… where you see people who are like you. And that really does push people to affiliate with one of the two (political) camps.”
, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.
Thanks for taking the time to chat. For those who are unfamiliar with your work, can you briefly describe your research background?
Sure. My expertise really has to do with interpersonal interactions in terms of how people communicate about politics, whether that s in face-to-face interactions or interactions on social media. I m most interested in the social dynamics of those interactions, thinking about how the psychological and physiological experience of those sorts of conversations affect what people say and how they behave in interactions. Then, in the social media space, I am interested in how they interpret other people s political identities and choose to express their own.