Does the information that people see on social media influence their political views? Is it making people politically more divided? In July 2023, Science published three papers on an unprecedented study of the effects of social media and social media algorithms on political polarization during the United States 2020 presidential election. The authors, who included independent academics and Facebook employees, analyzed a massive dataset on the users of Facebook and Instagram whose news feed was filtered either by the site’s default algorithm, which presents posts in a manner most likely to keep users on the site, or delivered chronologically in the order that they came in. The chronological feed led to users’ spending less time on the site but did not substantially change their attitudes about politics. The finding has surprised many observers who thought that Facebook contributed to political division. Moreover, the studies signal that research on social media is complicated and requires even more attention.

中文翻译：

---

背景在社交媒体中很重要


人们在社交媒体上看到的信息会影响他们的政治观点吗？它是否使人们在政治上更加分裂？2023 年 7 月，《科学》杂志发表了三篇论文，内容是关于社交媒体和社交媒体算法对 2020 年美国总统大选期间政治两极分化影响的史无前例的研究。作者包括独立学者和 Facebook 员工，他们分析了 Facebook 和 Instagram 用户的大量数据集，这些用户的新闻源要么被网站的默认算法过滤，要么以最有可能将用户留在网站上的方式呈现帖子，要么按照他们进入的顺序按时间顺序发送。按时间顺序排列的信息流导致用户在网站上花费的时间减少，但并没有实质性地改变他们对政治的态度。这一发现让许多观察家感到惊讶，他们认为 Facebook 助长了政治分裂。此外，这些研究表明，社交媒体的研究很复杂，需要更多的关注。