The Polarization Lab at Duke University has been investigating how social media exposure increases or decreases existing political extremism. I review some of the tools they make available and some of the research they have conducted in an earlier post.
One of their more interesting experiments involves the use of bots they have created to forward the input from moderate liberals and conservatives. They propose that exposure to extremists of either orientation leads to greater polarization, but exposure to moderate positions taken by those with a different position than your own may lead to a lessening of polarization.
I have been following both Twitter bots for several months now. You can participate as well. If you don’t want to participate, you call always search for one of the bots just to see how the feeds from moderates of both perspectives differ.
@Polly4Conserv – for liberals to learn about moderate conservatives
@Polly4Liberals – for conservatives to learn about moderate conservatives
Educators looking for an interesting project might ask students to come up with a system for studying political orientation and apply this system to the two different sets of tweets.
Both Sides Now (with apologies to Joni Mitchell). I guess Phil Collins Both Sides of the Story also works.
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