The social media “prism” and how to build things differently
I chatted with Prof. Chris Bail about his new book “Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing.”
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Social media is made up of a lot of different parts, some readily seen on the facade, and others deeper in the architecture.
With billions of users, the data they generate, the algorithms that use that data and the ads that pay for it all, the platforms are mammoth constructions. But on closer inspection they are more commotion than exquisitely crafted cathedrals, with designs that aren’t exactly aiming all our eyes up towards beautiful rose windows.
Prof. Chris Bail, of Duke University’s Polarization Lab, is one of the people looking at the way that social media is constructed and who it can be better. He joined me and other guests on the Clubhouse show that Deepnews sometimes puts onto discuss his new book, “Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing.”
The book itself is a good (and quick) read, where Bail moves from his previous research on polarization to how it plays out online, including experiments, such as one that looked at social media users who were shown posts from popular accounts on the opposite end of the political spectrum. While the popular imagination might believe that this would cause the users to moderate their views, the reverse happened and they became more polarized, some repulsed by the perceived extremity of what they were seeing.
“We risk confusing extremists on the other side, with moderates on the other side. And that makes us all feel more polarized. And so this is why I introduced this idea of the social media prism to try to capture the way that social media distorts our offline lives in this in this online manner,” he said.
Part of this has to do with social media algorithms that prioritize engagement to sell more ads that can be shown to users, but Bail’s book also does a good job at exploring other aspects such as the way that users are driven to accrue “status,” which may be easiest with polarizing content.
These complexities are important to consider when looking at how to re-build social media, another subject of the book, either with some renovations at the giants or from the ground up in new ventures.
To revamp the idea of status, for example, the Polarization Lab worked on a “bipartisanship leaderboard” that measures social media success across the political aisle. They also put forward the benefits of anonymity, which Bail says “allows us to focus on the content of each other’s ideas instead of that ‘us vs them’ focus that we all have when we log on to talk about politics.”
He also mentions that, because of the business models of the biggest social media companies, that real change may come from smaller efforts aimed at changing the metrics for specific areas of the internet. It reminds me a lot of what Deepnews is doing with its quality scores, essentially adding new data that can isolate a different dimension of online discourse, the depth and quality of an article.
“Pinterest for hobbies. Instagram for photos. So why not another platform for politics?” Bail said.
“You wouldn’t get broad scale uptake. It wouldn’t be a competitor to Facebook. Instead, it would be for those people, probably about 5% to 6% of the population, who want to engage in productive debate and need to solve problems. Can you create a kind of status for them, where you’re rewarded for problem solving in the political space?
Getting more granular on specific social networks for specific uses also raises bigger questions about what the goal of a social network is, with the likes of Twitter and Facebook possibly being viewed as not having a very clear purpose. Even if you say that the purpose is “connectivity,” we have the technical capabilities to aim at a certain type of connectivity that doesn’t have some of the negative social and psychological effects of current social networks.
“Why not platforms with a purpose? Why not try to bake it into the design of our platforms, some principles that will guide behavior? Not just content, moderation, trying to plug the dam after its bust open in a million different ways. Asking those questions of what’s driving the water, where is the energy coming from? Those are the questions that I think we’re not thinking enough about,” Bail said.
