New study shows just how Facebook's algorithm shapes conservative and liberal bubbles
Facebook, two political worlds
In one
study looking at 208 million adults on Facebook in the U.S., researchers tried to answer a long-standing question: do liberals and conservatives consume different political news?
The answer seems to be yes. After analyzing popular political news links posted on the platform between September 2020 and February 2021, the researchers found that there's not much overlap between political news consumption within the two camps. Segregation also increases as a news link moves from being selected by the algorithm, to being seen by a user, to being interacted with.
That ideological gap was larger than what other research has shown for overall news consumption online and in traditional media.
"This borders on an indictment of Facebook's algorithm," said Laura Edelson, a computer scientist and postdoctoral researcher at NYU.