What do We Know about Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation?

The Hewlett Foundation has just published a report that provides an overview of the current state of the literature on the relationship between social media, political polarization, and political disinformation. The report was coordinated by Josh Tucker and features contributions from Andrew Guess, Pablo Barberá, Alexandra Siegel, Sergey Sanovich, Denis Stukal, Brendan Nyhan, and myself. Importantly, the report also identifies key gaps in our knowledge of these phenomena and the kinds of data we need to overcome them.

I wrote the section on “Online Content and Political Polarization“, where I focus on the kinds of contents, spread across traditional and digital media, that have been shown to contribute to, as well as mitigating, different forms of political polarization. Here is the executive summary:

The full report can be downloaded for free at the Hewlett Foundation website and on the Social Science Research Network. Thanks to the Hewlett Foundation for funding this project and to Josh Tucker for bringing me on board.