Can social media help build communities?

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In a new paper, we explore the extent to which community-building is possible on social media platforms, particularly on issues where partisanship has forced many Americans to choose sides on politically charged issues. The paper, presented at the 2018 TPRC conference, focuses on the demonstrated trends of partisanship in the network neutrality debate, a regulatory framework that prohibits blocking and unreasonable discrimination by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and promotes greater consumer transparency. Our specific inquiry is about the ability of these platforms to present brokers who can help online users work through their differences and possibly toward a compromise on certain issues. The evidence of our data analysis concluded that social media platforms, in their current state, may find it difficult to create more productive diverse communities because their algorithms reinforce the formation of existing social structures, resulting in online “echo chambers.” We further found that this will not change unless the technical architecture driving these platforms makes room for less concentrated online communities that maintain the dominance of like-minded associations. In our opinion, technical strategies that introduce more online brokers, such as prioritizing their posts in newsfeeds or in friendship and follower suggestions, may lead to more productive debates.

[Nicol Turner Lee is a Brookings Fellow. Eric Forbush is a PhD Student at Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania]


Can social media help build communities? Read the Paper