Breaking the Social Media Prism

How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing

Chris Bail

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780691241401
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691246499
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Social Sciences

A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions online—and how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social media

In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves.

Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off—detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit "reset" and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research.

Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• More praise for Breaking the Social Media Prism
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the 2022 Paperback Edition
• 1. The Legend of the Echo Chamber
• 2. Why Not Break Our Echo Chambers?
• 3. What Happens When We Break Them?
• 4. The Social Media Prism
• 5. How the Prism Drives Extremism
• 6. How the Prism Mutes Moderates
• 7. Should I Delete My Account?
• 8. Hacking the Prism
• 9. A Better Social Media
• Appendix: Research Methods
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index