Designing for Democracy: Social Media Feeds in a Hyper-Polarized World

Social media feeds are often described as being highly partisan, hostile, and sometimes even antidemocratic. Many critics attribute this to the design of algorithmic feeds, which are tuned to maximize user engagement and often accused of creating rabbit holes and echo chambers, despite little empirical support. 

In spite of these concerns, researchers have struggled to untangle the complex relationship between what people see on their social media feeds and broader patterns of political and social polarization. One strand of research suggests that engagement-optimized feeds can amplify misinformation and partisan hostility, and even reduce the subjective well-being of users. Other research, however, points to potential benefits, such as exposure to diverse social networks, and finds that explicitly cross-partisan and chronological feeds fail to deliver better outcomes.

So what does the evidence actually tell us about the link between social media feeds and polarization? And if changes are needed, how might algorithmic design be reshaped to better support democratic values?

This panel brings together two leading scholars of social media and polarization, Tiziano Piccardi (Johns Hopkins University) and Nejla Asimovic (Georgetown University), to explore how algorithms and broader social forces interact in today’s deeply polarized environment.

Key questions

1. To what extent does algorithmic design contribute to political polarization?
2. Are observed effects mainly due to content, the composition of offline social networks, activities displaced by social media use, algorithmic design, or something else? 
3. What changes, if any, could be made to social media feed algorithms to reduce polarization? 
4. How can researchers study the effects of social media use and algorithmic design in an era of declining platform transparency?

Moderator: Zander Arnao, Knight-Georgetown Institute 

Speakers:

• Nejla Asimovic, Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy
• Tiziano Piccardi, Johns Hopkins University