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.
Duke Professor directing https://t.co/oLxcnFtUMi & https://t.co/1DxdkCuAwQ, more active at https://t.co/n7whE1pATn & https://t.co/LXtQS4OWOn
If I could read French beyond a twelfth grade level I might be able to better appreciate this new review of Breaking the Social Media Prism*e* in Le Monde today :) Thank you for your generous words Marc-Oliver Bherer! https://t.co/JEAJ2Cf8CI
University of Illinois Press / Publisher of scholarly and regional trade books and journals since 1918 #ReadUP #LookitUP
In the American Journal of Psychology Vol. 135, Iss. 4, @GruningJ @FolcoPanizza and @lorenz_spreen review "Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing" by @chris_bail (@PrincetonUPress). https://t.co/mDdvRNXkRk
Princeton University Press is a leading independent publisher of trade and scholarly books, inspiring brilliant conversations with bold ideas.
.@willystaley cites @chris_bail and his book, Breaking the Social Media Prism, in his @NYTmag article on the strange legacy of Twitter. Read more: https://t.co/9e5U01g7v3 https://t.co/Xu1YZVNeJx
Every once in a while, something comes along and causes a paradigm shift in its respective field or medium, a breakthrough that challenges prevailing narratives for explaining the world. Sometimes those breakthroughs are few and far between. For fields marked by rapid change and development, those breakthroughs can occur more frequently. In the rapidly changing field of social media and its impact on society, Chris Bail's Breaking the Social Media Prism stands to become one of those paradigm shifts.
"---Austin Gravley, FaithTechA very thought-provoking book, full of rich empirical evidence, a well-articulated narrative on the social media prism and it introduces potential solutions for the problems it discusses.
"---Xiuhua Wang, SociologyTerrific book.
"-- "Democracy Works podcast"