New study out in Nature Human Behaviour: 37 million US users were exposed to deceptive networks on Facebook & 3 million on Instagram during the 2020 elections—roughly 15% and 2% of active users. 🧵

👋 Introducing Roundabout: built for neighbors, with neighbors New_ Public’s app for local communities enters closed beta in five pilot communities

In communities across the country, we’re hearing from everyday people that they are hungry for a new way to connect with neighbors online.

Our team at New_ Public, a nonprofit focused on building digital public spaces, is creating Roundabout, a new social app and website, now in closed beta.

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The Local Connection Crisis: New Data on What Communities Need · Zoom · Luma Now we know what we've long suspected: People really use and rely on their local Facebook groups, Nextdoor neighborhoods, and WhatsApp group chats, but they…

We’ve got one of the most in-depth surveys on how Americans connect with neighbors online — what works, what doesn't, what they want instead.

These are essential insights for anyone thinking about local communities.

Join us 11/20 when @taliastroud.bsky.social & @eli.bsky.social share the data

The Trust Project’s trust indicators positively affect how people perceive the news. Delighted to have worked with Alex Curry and Sally Lehrman on this project.

Yes — the amount of learning varies depending on how we embed news for those preferring entertainment (& also likely on the substance of the news content) …

Comparing a BERT Classifier and a GPT classifier for Detecting Connective Language Across Multiple Social Media

Figure 1

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A BERT classifier outperformed a GPT classifier in detecting connective language on social media, finds @jolukito.bsky.social, Chen, @ginammasullo.bsky.social, @taliastroud.bsky.social, with an analysis on how connective language relates to other types of language aclanthology.org/2024.emnlp-m...

Partnering ~~with~~ audiences to figure out how to be **listen-worthy** is critical. Thanks @niemanlab.org for the opportunity to share some thoughts!

New publication (4+ years in the making): “The Diffusion and Reach of (Mis)Information on Facebook”. shorturl.at/VE2fU
We analyze the propagation of 1B+ posts across content moderation regimes, with @davidlazer.bsky.social @jatucker.bsky.social @taliastroud.bsky.social @annenbergpenn.bsky.social

Political Psychology books published in the last year? Send them my way!

The Juliette & Alexander George Book Award is given for the best book published in the field of political psychology during the previous calendar year (see www.ispp.org/awards/george).

Partisan Differences in the Sharing of Low-Quality News Sources by U.S Political Elites How often do political elites in the U.S. share low-quality news sources? Are there differences between the parties? While past work has investigated individuals sharing low-quality news sources, t...

members of Congress share more links to low-quality news sites than the public on Facebook; Republican members share considerably more than Democrats & this gap is increasing. only Republican members get increased engagement when sharing low-quality sites
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Who Killed Trust? And What Can We Do About It? - In Reality podcast Eric Schurenberg discusses Trust in Media with Talia Stroud, Director of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, Austin

📣NEW from In Reality!
@taliastroud.bsky.social & Eric Schurenberg discuss: medical misinfo, how newsrooms inadvertently feed polarization, why a popular silver bullet solution to algorithmic polarization won’t work, & bringing audiences & newsrooms closer together.
www.in-reality.fm/who-killed-t...

So proud of you!! You are amazing! Many congratulations!!!

Figure 1. Average daily new subscriptions by control and intervention news sites.

Figure 2. Audience attitudes before and after six months after each intervention.

Local news is on the decline 📰 📉 But what could save it?

New field experiment with news sites by @taliastroud.bsky.social & @emilyvanduyn.bsky.social finds that engaged journalism initiatives can increase subscriptions and audience engagement.

doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad018

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Full tweet thread summarizing our findings here twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1684...

The Great Facebook De-Siloing Study Listen to this episode from The Gist on Spotify. The 2016 election posed questions we still haven't fully answered about our elections, but today's guest, Dartmouth professor and elections researcher ...

Fun to talk with Mike Pesca on The Gist about our new study of like-minded sources on Facebook (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06297-w & our new Bright Line Watch report on the cases against Trump (https://tinyurl.com/trump-cases

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7paD9951E3iFhQUBgSNTFd

Facebook opened its doors to researchers. What they found paints a complicated picture of social med... The project included 17 academic researchers from 12 universities who were granted deep access by Facebook to aggregated data.

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So Maybe Facebook Didn’t Ruin Politics Large-scale experiments on social media, run behind the scenes during the 2020 election, suggest there is no simple fix for American democracy.

Four landmark studies from a collaboration between Meta and researchers. A summary of the results: www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/...