A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy

Lorenz-Spreen, Philipp; Oswald, Lisa; Lewandowsky, Stephan; Hertwig, Ralph

doi:10.1038/s41562-022-01460-1

Cited by 110 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 526 publications

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“…intervention may have only limited effects, the toolbox helps policy makers, educators, and the public to combine interventions in order to address different aspects of the misinformation problem at hand(Bak-Coleman et al, 2022;Bode & Vraga, 2021). much more thoroughly in the future (see alsoLorenz-Spreen et al, 2022). Taking stock, as we did here, is a first step in noticing and highlighting these evidential gaps.…”

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confidence: 85%

“…Online misinformation is also a policy problem, because its consequences can include detrimental effects on public health and on the health of democracies (European Parliament, 2020;Lorenz-Spreen et al, 2022). Online platforms have approached this policy problem by attempting to curtail the reach of misinformation (e.g., by algorithmically downgrading false content in newsfeeds), by highlighting certain features of the content to users (e.g., fact-checking and labelling), and by removing fact-checked false content and suspending accounts that spread falsehoods (Rosen, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Toolbox of Interventions Against Online Misinformation

Kozyreva¹,

Lorenz-Spreen²,

Herzog³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The spread of misinformation through media and social networks threatens many aspects of society, including public health and the state of democracies. A wide range of individual-focused interventions aimed at reducing harm from online misinformation have been developed in the behavioral and cognitive sciences. We, an international group of 26 experts, introduce and analyze our toolbox of interventions against misinformation, which includes an up-to-date account of the interventions featured in 42 scientific papers. A resource for scientists, policy makers, and the public, the toolbox delivers both a conceptual overview of the breadth of interventions, including their target and scope, and a summary of the empirical evidence supporting the interventions, including the methods and experimental paradigms used to test them. The toolbox covers 10 types of interventions: accuracy prompts, debunking, friction, inoculation, lateral reading, media-literacy tips, rebuttals of science denialism, self-reflection tools, social norms, and warning and fact-checking labels.

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confidence: 85%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toolbox of Interventions Against Online Misinformation

Kozyreva¹,

Lorenz-Spreen²,

Herzog³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…However, identifying the social costs of social media requires more credible research, measuring social cohesion in alternative ways and identifying its effects. Very few studies credibly identify social media effects (Lorenz‐Spreen et al., 2022), primarily because doing so entails high costs and requires data access and platform transparency—all of which can benefit from regulation and federal funding.…”

Section: Policy Implications and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do social media undermine social cohesion? A critical review

González‐Bailón

Lelkes

2022

Social Issues Policy Review

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We evaluate the empirical evidence interrogating the question of whether social media erodes social cohesion. We look at how networks, information exchange, and norms operate on these platforms. We also evaluate the conditions under which social media can be conducive to forming social capital and encouraging prosocial behavior. We discuss the psychological mechanisms that operate at the individual level and assess whether social media can create the environment and incentives to sustain cooperation and constructive exchange. Our discussion of the literature centers on how attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs are formed during the type of online interactions encouraged by platforms, their design, and affordances. We consider the policy implications of existing research, focusing on how empirical studies may inform regulatory efforts and platform interventions.Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit have changed how we consume and use information. These platforms decentralize content curation, allow selective exposure to like-minded sources, and offer loose moderation policies to govern interactions. Users can circumvent traditional gatekeepers of information and forge new forms of collective action. Social media platforms have also created an environment prone to conflict, polarization, incivility, and information disorders. In the past few years, social media platforms have been pushed to the spotlight of high-profile discussions that aim to identify (and, ideally, remedy) the threats these platforms currently pose to democracy (Haidt, 2022;Vaidhyanathan, 2018).But how much do we know about social media's role in weakening democracies and undermining social cohesion? Most popular treatments of social media and social cohesion are based on anecdotes and, at best, correlational data. Do social media merely reflect larger societal trends, or is there something specific to these platforms that creates or aggravates conflict? Do the effects of social media vary by platform or the affordances within platforms? The goals of this review are (1) to evaluate existingThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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“…These incentives reward engagement-bait-content and ideas intended to generate engagement, which are often misleadingly sensational and hyperbolic. In practice, engagement-bait can crowd out good faith efforts to communicate across divides, decrease understanding and trust among people of diverse viewpoints, and thus increase division [43,15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging Systems: Open Problems for Countering Destructive Divisiveness across Ranking, Recommenders, and Governance

Ovadya¹,

Thorburn²

2023

Preprint

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Divisiveness appears to be increasing in much of the world, leading to concern about political violence and a decreasing capacity to collaboratively address large-scale societal challenges. In this working paper we aim to articulate an interdisciplinary research and practice area focused around what we call bridging systems: systems which increase mutual understanding and trust across divides, creating space for productive conflict, deliberation, or cooperation. We give examples of bridging systems across three domains: recommender systems on social media, software for conducting civic forums, and human-facilitated group deliberation. We argue that these examples can be more meaningfully understood as processes for attention-allocation (as opposed to "content distribution" or "amplification"), and develop a corresponding framework to explore similarities-and opportunities for bridging-across these seemingly disparate domains. We focus particularly on the potential of bridging-based ranking to bring the benefits of offline bridging into spaces which are already governed by algorithms. Throughout, we suggest research directions that could improve our capacity to incorporate bridging into a world increasingly mediated by algorithms and artificial intelligence.

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A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy

Cited by 110 publications

References 526 publications

Toolbox of Interventions Against Online Misinformation

Toolbox of Interventions Against Online Misinformation

Do social media undermine social cohesion? A critical review

Bridging Systems: Open Problems for Countering Destructive Divisiveness across Ranking, Recommenders, and Governance

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