University of Wisconsin-Madison: Study finds current social media formats are not conducive to factual dissemination and rational discussion

A special group of editorials published in the journal Science on Thursday said that the current form of social media may fundamentally undermine the dissemination and presentation of factual reasons. The researchers pointed out that social media is being dominated by algorithms, and the system's priorities are unfortunately backwards.

Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele from the University of Wisconsin-Madison write in this short and sweet article:

The rules of scientific discourse, with its systematic, objective and transparent assessment of evidence, run counter to the status quo of debate in most online spaces.

Social media platforms that try to capitalize on anger and division among netizens in exchange for traffic are not an effective way to discuss scientific topics such as climate change and vaccines with skeptics.

Obviously, this is a matter of great concern to researchers who uphold scientific methodology. Among the many factors that have a negative impact on scientific discussions on social media, ranking and recommendation engines are at the forefront.

This results in what Brossard and Schefele call “homogeneous self-categorization,” meaning that platforms will focus on user preferences to recommend relevant content, leading to an increasingly pronounced clustering effect.

The same profit-driven algorithmic tools can be seen on Twitter and YouTube channels.

Embarrassingly, social media companies have little incentive to help scientists build a bridge to the audiences they most need to connect with.

The reason is that there has been a structural shift in the balance of power in the scientific information ecosystem. Social media platforms and their underlying algorithms are only concerned with attracting traffic and driving rapid growth in platform size.

To this end, companies will allow users’ emotional and cognitive weaknesses to be exploited. So we are not surprised that this happens.

H. Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science journal series, put it succinctly - after all, this is a great way for companies like Facebook to make huge profits.