Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing

Abstract Many critics raise concerns about the prevalence of ‘echo chambers’ on social media and their potential role in increasing political polarization. However, the lack of available data and the challenges of conducting large-scale field experiments have made it difficult to assess the scope of the problem 1,2 . Here we present data from 2020 for the entire population of active adult Facebook users in the USA showing that content from ‘like-minded’ sources constitutes the majority of what people see on the platform, although political information and news represent only a small fraction of these exposures. To evaluate a potential response to concerns about the effects of echo chambers, we conducted a…

• AP
  Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• JS
  John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• JS
  John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• UO
  University of Wisconsin-Madison
• CK
  Charles Koch Foundation
• YU
  York University
• NO
  Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of North Carolina
• SI
  Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research