Nice coverage from the Washington Post on our research using bots to disrupt echo chambers on Twitter: washingtonpost.com/science/2018/0…

1/8 Did you know that Twitter is experimenting with new features that would expose its users to opposing political views? In this The New York Times piece, I describe why this idea could backfire based upon a large online experiment recently conducted by my lab: nyti.ms/2Nu45gL

Twitter’s Flawed Solution to Political Polarization nyti.ms/2MWnQhn

1/4 Had fun talking to NPR about some new research on incivility and politics in our polarizationlab, as well as my recent article in @asr_journal with @TayWhittenBrown and Marcus Mann: npr.org/2019/04/11/712…

1/ Do you feel hopeless about political polarization on social media? Introducing a new suite of apps, bots, and other tools that you can use to make this place less polarizing from our Duke Polarization Lab: polarizationlab.com/our-tools

An interview about the latest research in the Polarization Lab: today.duke.edu/2021/03/fighti…

After studying social media users and polarization for more than a decade, I think I finally found the biggest troll on the internet. tldr: he's a middle aged man that lives with his mom. Meet the trolls who walk among us, and learn what their behavior means for everyone else:

For your #FridayReads on #polarization, Scott McLemee reviews Chris Bail (chris_bail_duke 🧵)’s BREAKING THE SOCIAL MEDIA PRISM for Inside Higher Ed: insidehighered.com/views/2021/04/… Princeton University Press

Existing social media platforms are politically dysfunctional because they were never supposed to be otherwise... No one's really tried to build a platform that would actively and intentionally promote the practice of democracy. Me on new Chris Bail (chris_bail_duke 🧵) book: salon.com/2021/04/10/why…

Fresh Off the Pod Press- my fascinating conversation w Chris Bail (chris_bail_duke 🧵) about his new book, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing thecycle.substack.com/p/through-the-…

How can we stop Facebook’s decision about Trump from launching a new round of partisan warfare on social media? In this piece for CNN, I introduce new apps, bots, and tools that social media users can use to fight political tribalism from the bottom up. cnn.com/2021/05/04/opi…

Where have all the moderates gone? They’re still out there, but seldom heard on social media. On our latest episode, Sanford School of Public Policy prof and polarization expert Chris Bail (chris_bail_duke 🧵) shares insight into the nature of this endangered species online: bit.ly/3qTc08x

What is my biggest concern about the new U.S. census results? We continue to under-produce Jedi knights compared to the United Kingdom.

1/n People often ask me how to regulate social media…the answer is actually pretty simple:

1/ How do fringe ideas become mainstream? In 2015, I wrote a book about this subject. A lot has changed, but I still think what I learned can help us answer this question today-TLDR, we need to map the information ecosystem, & both the right *and* the left help fringe ideas grow.

Is Elon Musk a bot? One of *the* most advanced algorithms for bot detection thinks so, which illustrates just how difficult it might be to clean up this bird place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ try the tool: botometer.osome.iu.edu and technical references here: botometer.osome.iu.edu/publications

1/ Before you share this, please learn about how the bot detection used works: it counts people as bots if they don’t post messages regularly to Twitter BUT most Twitter users are lurkers who do not post… nypost.com/2022/05/17/hal…

This is some of the best public writing I've seen on the impact of social media on politics; it captures both the complexity of the problem *as well as* the reality that crises can't wait for randomized controlled trials-- one of many things the great Jonathan Haidt has taught me.

Showing off my #freshink for #SICSS2022 …. God I love this conference/community. Learn more at sicss.io

I’ll be sharing my favorite shots of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science from around the world each day on Insta #sicss2022 #datascience #computationalsocialscience instagram.com/p/CftrD0Hu5af/…