#political-polarization — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #political-polarization, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: May 22, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: TikTok disproportionately served anti-Democratic videos during the 2024 election, study finds
A recent study provides evidence that TikTok’s recommendation system tends to expose users to more conservative and anti-Democrat political content than liberal material. This ideological imbalance occurs regardless of a user’s initial political interests, suggesting that automation plays a significant role in modern information access. The research was published in the scientific journal Nature.
Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi’s AI and Society Lab conducted the new research to explore how automated internet systems shape what political news the public sees. Experts debate whether internet polarization is driven by people seeking out their own preferred viewpoints or by computer algorithms pushing extreme content to keep users engaged.
Corresponding author Talal Rahwan noted the difficulty of answering this question on older platforms. “Our previous work studied recommendation algorithms on YouTube, and a persistent challenge was disentangling algorithmic influence from user self-selection,” he told PsyPost.
TikTok offers a helpful environment for testing algorithmic influence because its primary interface relies heavily on automation. “TikTok’s For You page, where the algorithm drives nearly everything users see, offered a uniquely clean setting to study that question, especially with the 2024 election making political content on the platform increasingly consequential,” Rahwan added.
To gather data, the researchers created 323 automated bot accounts to act as artificial users, a method sometimes called a sock puppet audit. Between April 30 and November 11, 2024, the scientists launched 21 new accounts each week. Each bot was assigned an age between 22 and 24 to mimic the habits of young adult voters.
The research team used location-masking software to virtually place these phones in specific parts of the country. They assigned the bots to New York to represent a reliably Democratic area, Texas to represent a reliably Republican area, and Georgia to act as a competitive swing state. The scientists used physical smartphones running Android software and reset the phones to factory settings after each weekly test. This process ensured the app could not track the devices across different weeks.
The accounts first went through a training phase to teach the app their supposed political tastes. Some bots watched up to 400 videos from known Republican creators, and others watched up to 400 videos from Democratic creators. The bots viewed each of these training videos for exactly one minute. In Georgia, the authors also included a set of neutral bots that skipped this political training phase entirely, acting as a control group of users with no political interest.
After the training phase, the accounts switched to the main feed to see what the algorithm would recommend. The bots watched the first ten seconds of each recommended video before moving to the next one. Across the entire 27 weeks, the researchers collected more than 280,000 recommended videos. They successfully downloaded the text transcripts for 40,264 of those videos, giving them a massive dataset of spoken content to analyze.
The authors used an ensemble of artificial intelligence language models to classify the political nature of the transcripts. They combined the outputs of three different models to prevent any single program from skewing the results. Human political science students validated the accuracy of these automated programs. The tools determined if a video was political, if it related to the upcoming election, and if it supported or opposed a specific party.
The findings suggest a distinct asymmetry in how political content is delivered on the platform. Accounts trained on Republican videos received about 11.5 percent more content aligned with their own party compared to the Democratic accounts. At the same time, the Democratic accounts were exposed to roughly 7.5 percent more cross-party content.
Co-author Yasir Zaki explained the broader implications of these numbers. “TikTok’s feed isn’t a neutral window into politics,” he said. “The platform’s recommendations treat Democrats and Republicans differently, consistently, across states, and in ways that can’t be explained by differences in how people engage with the content.”
Hazem Ibrahim, also a researcher at New York University Abu Dhabi, noted the specific nature of these results. “The skew was specifically concentrated in anti-Democratic content being pushed to Democratic-leaning accounts, rather than a generic ‘more Republican content’ effect,” Ibrahim said.
The topics of these recommended videos were also highly separated. “We were also struck by how the asymmetries clustered in particular policy domains, specifically, immigration, crime, and foreign policy for Democrats and abortion for Republicans, rather than being spread evenly across political content,” Ibrahim added.
To see if real people noticed these trends, the researchers surveyed 1,008 active United States TikTok users online. The survey asked participants if they perceived any changes in the political tone of their feeds over the past year. The online sample skewed slightly Republican and consisted mostly of adults between the ages of 25 and 34.
The survey responses provided evidence that lived experiences matched the automated bot experiment. Republican respondents were significantly more likely than Democratic respondents to report seeing positive political content that agreed with their views. When asked open-ended questions, conservative users frequently mentioned an increase in optimistic, pro-Trump posts on their daily feeds.
Rahwan highlighted the rigorous statistical testing behind the findings. “The gaps are averages across hundreds of experiments over six months that held up across three states and survived 48 robustness checks, on a platform serving political content to tens of millions of young voters daily, that consistency matters,” Rahwan said.
Robustness checks are mathematical tests used to ensure findings hold true under various conditions. Still, Rahwan noted that exposure does not equal influence. “That said, we measure exposure, not persuasion, so we can’t say this changed anyone’s vote,” he added.
Zaki also emphasized that the research does not prove the company intentionally programmed its software to favor conservatives. “We are not saying TikTok deliberately chose to favor Republicans, our study documents a pattern in outcomes, not intent,” Zaki said.
The automated accounts were specifically designed to represent new users interacting with the platform for the first time. “We also study content exposure, not attitude change, and our bots simulate new users with short engagement histories, so long-tenured users may have different experiences,” Zaki said.
The gap could also result from basic supply differences in the types of videos that political creators chose to upload during the election cycle. In addition, the study only looked at English language videos. This leaves out the experiences of Spanish speakers and other minority language communities in the United States.
The researchers plan to expand this work through their research group, which can be found online at ai-and-society.com. “We’d like to combine bot audits with real user data, develop methods to capture visual and audio political messaging beyond transcripts, and run cross-platform comparisons,” Ibrahim said. “The big open question is connecting these exposure patterns to downstream effects on attitudes and behavior.”
The study, “Systematic partisan content skews in TikTok during the 2024 US elections,” was authored by Hazem Ibrahim, HyunSeok Daniel Jang, Nouar Aldahoul, Aaron R. Kaufman, Talal Rahwan, and Yasir Zaki.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #TikTokStudy #PoliticalContent #2024Election #ForYouAlgorithm #PartisanExposure #MediaBias #DigitalDisinformation #AlgorithmicInfluence #PoliticalPolarization #NatureJournal
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NOTUS: Army Shuts Down Social Media Accounts After They Praised Tammy Duckworth’s Service. “Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the Army, ordered the deletion of several U.S.-military-associated social media accounts this week after a post celebrating Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth drew negative reactions online.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/16/notus-army-shuts-down-social-media-accounts-after-they-praised-tammy-duckworths-service/ -
PsyPost: Social media analysis links polarized political language to distorted thought patterns. “A recent analysis of millions of social media posts reveals that markers of mental distortions rose alongside political extremism between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The research, published in Communications Psychology, highlights a growing overlap between extreme ideological views […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/13/psypost-social-media-analysis-links-polarized-political-language-to-distorted-thought-patterns/ -
University of Rochester: Your social media feed is built to agree with you. What if it didn’t?. “…new research from the University of Rochester has found that echo chambers might not be a fact of online life. Published in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, the study argues that they are partly a design choice—one that could be softened with a surprisingly modest change: introducing […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/12/university-of-rochester-your-social-media-feed-is-built-to-agree-with-you-what-if-it-didnt/ -
Lifehacker: That Political ‘Call to Action’ Might Actually Be a Scam. “Recently, investor Fred Benenson blogged about a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting SendGrid users. Phishers sent emails claiming the company was going to add a large ‘Support ICE’ button at the bottom of every outgoing email unless users opted out. The emails also featured a large blue button promising to help you […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/08/lifehacker-that-political-call-to-action-might-actually-be-a-scam/ -
University of Washington: Social media research tool can reduce polarization — it could also lead to more user control over algorithms. “The researchers created a seamless, web-based tool that reorders content to move posts lower in a user’s feed when they contain antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity, such as advocating for violence or jailing supporters of the opposing party.”
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Harvard Gazette: Think the viral meme of that legislator is funny?. “In this edited conversation, Susanna Siegel, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, who has written about this dark side of American politics, explains how reveling in someone else’s setbacks — or accusing others of doing so — is poisonous to democracy.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/03/harvard-gazette-think-the-viral-meme-of-that-legislator-is-funny/
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Northeastern University: New research reveals algorithms’ hidden political power. “New research shows the impact that social media algorithms can have on partisan political feelings, using a new tool that hijacks the way platforms rank content.”
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Bipartisan Senators Want To Honor Charlie Kirk By Making It Easier To Censor The Internet
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🕸glané sur le net🕸 United States : Kirk Assassination Puts the Left in Danger: The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old leader of the far-right youth organization Turning Point USA has intensified the political… #CharlieKirk #TurningPointUSA #PoliticalPolarization #MAGA #FarRight
United States : Kirk Assassina... -
Gizmodo: Researchers Made a Social Media Platform Where Every User Was AI. The Bots Ended Up at War. “A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands put AI chatbots in a simple social media structure to see how they interacted with each other and found that, even without the invisible hand of the algorithm, they tend to organize themselves based on […]
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The Conversation: Using TikTok could be making you more politically polarized, new study finds. “Some people are more outspoken about politics than others. We found that users with stronger political leanings and those who get more likes and comments on their videos are more motivated to keep posting. This shows the power of partisanship, but also the power of TikTok’s social rewards […]
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Smithsonian: Smithsonian Statement. “Since its inception, the Smithsonian has set out to be a nonpartisan institution. As the nation’s museum, the Smithsonian must be a welcoming place of knowledge and discovery for all Americans. The Board of Regents is committed to ensuring that the Smithsonian is a beacon of scholarship free from political or partisan influence, and we recognize that our […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/10/smithsonian-smithsonian-statement/
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Harvard Gazette: Social media fueled divisions. Teaming up may help heal.. “Algorithm-driven digital feeds have deepened the split between red and blue America. But a new online tool may help bring the country back together. The virtual quiz game Tango, developed at Harvard, pairs Democrats and Republicans on common teams, where bipartisanship quickly emerges as a competitive advantage.”
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Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy unveils the radical shift in Donald Trump's presidency, transforming into an authoritarian regime that embraces chaos and centralizes power. The rhetoric has evolved to a neo-imperial economic view, driving a wedge in democratic norms while invoking martyrdom among supporters. This exploration reveals the historical context shaping Trumpism and its impact on American politics. Dive deeper into this insightful analysis: https://www.alternet.org/the-republican-party-s-50-year/ #DonaldTrump #Authoritarianism #Populism #PoliticalPolarization #History #CulturalWar #MediaInfluence #Trumpism #AmericanPolitics
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Concordia University: New Concordia research shows social networks are vulnerable to relatively simple AI manipulation and polarization. “It seems that no matter the topic of conversation, online opinion around it will be split into two seemingly irreconcilable camps. That’s largely a result of these platforms’ design, as the algorithms driving them direct users to like-minded peers. This […]
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Americans think political parties prefer extremists to moderates https://www.psypost.org/americans-think-political-parties-prefer-extremists-to-moderates/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #PoliticalParties #Extremism #Moderates #PoliticalPolarization #Democrats
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More biased = more trustworthy? New research uncovers a troubling trend among Democrats and Republicans https://www.psypost.org/more-biased-more-trustworthy-new-research-uncovers-a-troubling-trend-among-democrats-and-republicans/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #PoliticalBias #PartisanLanguage #TrustInPolitics #PoliticalPolarization #DivisivePolitics
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We know.
Study: Republicans Respond to Political Polarization by Spreading Misinformation, Democrats Don't
https://www.ama.org/2024/12/09/study-republicans-respond-to-political-polarization-by-spreading-misinformation-democrats-dont/
#politics #uspolitics #polarization #politicalpolarization -
Forbidden knowledge claims polarize beliefs and critical thinking across political lines https://www.psypost.org/forbidden-knowledge-claims-polarize-beliefs-and-critical-thinking-across-political-lines/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #ForbiddenKnowledge #CriticalThinking #Censorship #PoliticalPolarization #Misinformation
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“Political contamination” can affect everyday choices in surprising ways https://www.psypost.org/political-contamination-can-affect-everyday-choices-in-surprising-ways/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #PoliticalContamination #EverydayChoices #PoliticalPolarization #SocialIdentity #ReputationalMotivations
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Scientists ran a simulation on political polarization—here’s the key insight that emerged https://www.psypost.org/scientists-ran-a-simulation-on-political-polarization-heres-the-key-insight-that-emerged/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #PoliticalPolarization #SimulationInsights #SocialRelationships #ResearchFindings #OpinionAlignment
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More evidence that #socialMedia #polarization may not be amplified by #algorithms?
"Exposure to like-minded #arguments [increased] #politicalPolarization [more] than exposure to opposing arguments. Algorithmic curation did not amplify these effects...." (N > 800 Germans across three waves)
Would you expect *more* or *less* polarization if — as in real reality — *people* controlled their argument exposure?
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A Very Strong Case Why MAGA Voters Are Stupid #USPolitics #DonaldTrump #RepublicanParty #PoliticalCommentary #VoterBehavior #PoliticalPolarization #LeeAtwater #RacismInPolitics #AmericanElections #YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrU6F-S8VMo
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#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalSucks
Hunt the Dinosaur Sort of Apologize for Posting Picture of Kyle Rittenhouse
The vocalist says he doesn't support Rittenhouse, which is hard to believe.#HuntTheDinosaur #KyleRittenhouse #HunterMadison #TexasDeathcore #InstagramControversy #MusicianDeathThreats #MetalCommunity #PoliticalPolarization #NonApology #DeathcoreBand
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Using generic #language to express #politicalopinions can significantly amplify perceived differences between political parties in the United States. By examining how statements about party beliefs are presented and perceived, studies provide evidence that broad, sweeping statements contribute to a heightened sense of #polarization among the public.
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Does #ClimateChange lead to #SocietalCollapse ?
Not necessarily."Researchers [who] use mathematical models to understand the dynamics of complex systems found plenty of examples of societies that made it through famines, cold snaps, and other forms of environmental stress.
What matters most, the Complexity Science Hub’s study posits, is #inequality and #PoliticalPolarization."
https://grist.org/culture/climate-change-societal-collapse-explained/
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Republicans Started a Civil War They Don’t Know How to End
#RepublicansCivilWar #PoliticalConflict #GOPStruggles #PoliticalPolarization #PartisanDivide #UncertainFuture #Politics #News