[NEW] Video Essay: Outrage & Polarization
With the U.S. election coming up, we’re thrilled to announce the release of our latest video essay on Outrage & Polarization. The video describes how social media deranges our politics and what we can do to fix it.
It features insights from three amazing scholars: Molly Crockett, PTI Advisor Jonathan Haidt, and PTI Policy Director Kamy Akhavan.
We break the story down into five parts:
I. ⌛ History
II. 😠 The Outrage Machine
III. 🍎 Supernormal Stimuli
IV. 🙉 Echo Chambers
V. ✅ Solutions
We describe how better research can empower individuals to use these platforms more wisely, as well as inform designers and policymakers how to improve them.
CITATIONS
Bail, C. A., Argyle, L. P., Brown, T. W., Bumpus, J. P., Chen, H., Hunzaker, M. B. F., Lee, J., Mann, M., Merhout, F., & Volfovsky, A. (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(37), 9216–9221.
Brady, W. J., & Crockett, M. J. (2019). How Effective Is Online Outrage? [Review of How Effective Is Online Outrage?]. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(2), 79–80.
Brady, W. J., Crockett, M. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020). The MAD Model of Moral Contagion: The Role of Motivation, Attention, and Design in the Spread of Moralized Content Online. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 15(4), 978–1010.
Brady, W. J., Gantman, A. P., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020). Attentional capture helps explain why moral and emotional content go viral. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 149(4), 746–756.
Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(28), 7313–7318.
Crockett, M. J. (2017). Moral outrage in the digital age. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(11), 769–771.
Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 298–320.
Haidt, J., & Rose-Stockwell, T. (2019, November 12). The Dark Psychology of Social Networks. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/
Kalmoe, N. P., & Mason, L. (2019). Lethal mass partisanship: Prevalence, correlates, and electoral contingencies. NCAPSA American Politics Meeting. https://www.dannyhayes.org/uploads/6/9/8/5/69858539/kalmoe___mason_ncapsa_2019_-_lethal_partisanship_-_final_lmedit.pdf
Simchon, A., Brady, W. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020). Troll and Divide: The Language of Online Polarization. https://psyarxiv.com/xjd64/download?format=pdf
The shift in the American public’s political values. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/
Thi Nguyen, C. (2020). ECHO CHAMBERS AND EPISTEMIC BUBBLES. Episteme; Rivista Critica Di Storia Delle Scienze Mediche E Biologiche, 17(2), 141–161.