Fake News, Polarization, and Echo Chambers: What Science Says

Does fake news spread better than true news? Do bots spread fake news? What can we do against fake news? Does social media increase political polarization? Is it true that we all live in political echo chambers? In this video, we look at what scientific studies have found and what we can learn from that.

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00:00 Intro
01:30 Fake News
09:38 Information Literature
10:16 Echo Chambers
13:15 Polarization
16:38 Summary
17:19 MEL Science: Experiments By Subscription

#science

[kurtmueller]

"It used to be that there were only a few neighbors down the street that I could not stand,
Now, thanks to the internet, I hate people all over the world"

[urmwhynot]

I'm old enough to remember MySpace and Tom. Social media use to be more organic. It is now very toxic. 6 months ago I deleted all of my social media and now I just watch space and physics videos 👁️

[G_Demolished]

Social media lets you connect with people all over the globe and find out how awful they are. 😕

[robingoergner]

"Challenge your preconceptions or they will challenge you." Live long and prosper, Sabine.

[ourson]

"Plausible ideas are the ones you should be most skeptical about." Truer words have never been spoken. Excellent work Sabine! I appreciate the dread you talked about when delving into sociological topics, "one big shrug" sounds about right. But thanks for sticking to it and coming up with a detailed but understandable look at how social media changes both us and the society we live in.

[dianetheone]

I love your dry sense of humor. You're like a stealth comedian inside a scientist. Thank you for putting yourself out there.

[adammichael]

You crack me up, Sabine!
It is not easy to combine such complex and interesting information with humor in order to explain what is going on. Your team is brilliant

[tonyhull]

I think the best solution for reducing polarization among humans is to put the phone down more often and do more of what we evolved to do: talk face to face with each other.

[charles.e.g.]

I feel terribly old fashioned! I don’t have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any others that I have never heard of. I don’t know if YouTube is considered social media. But I feel very confident in the accuracy of your information Sabine! I just can’t picture you spreading fake news on fake news on fake news on…Thank you as always Sabine!!🙏

[maxm]

This taught me a huge amount, and reminded me how simply looking at the existing literature can show you where the complexities are likely to lie, some common misconceptions, and where the evidence currently seems most in agreement.

[timetravellingblockhead]

"Plausible ideas are the ones we should be most skeptical about." Well *that* was a gem of knowledge

[WesSouza]

I'm always amazed on how accurate, entertaining, informative and precise your videos are, on so many different topics.

[Weissenschenkel]

So, in a nutshell: the problem is related to the algorithms themselves and not to the content posted in
social media sites, when the algorithms are tailored to make people stay online longer, because they're gonna watch more advertisement.

The second factor is related to headlines with things that upset people in general, whether they're true or not.

I had tis suspicion since the Cambridge Analytica scandal was revealed.

[robertthiesen]

Thanks for the excellent breakdown. There are other reasons to avoid social media other than polarization. I believe the biggest changes are in the way we relate and communicate with others. As essentially social beings, we must be very careful about our habits in this area.

[BilltheBrewer]

I think the best thing to do to combat the problem is to share this video via social media, which is exactly what I'm going to do.

[carrdoug]

My first line of defense. The closer any given information is to what I believe is true, the more important it is to fact check that information.

[binbadende]

This year I deleted my last social media account. Lucky enough I didn't need objective measures for that decision, but repeatedly feeling angry and/or drained after 10 minutes on a platform is my personal indictor to quit. This year Twitter finally reached the bar despite carefully selected follows and ruthless blocklists. I loved the idea of social media initally but since social media became a major outlet for news media and a "must be" location for people with ego >> education (rangeing from artists to world leaders), I became more and more frustated. And last but not least: thank you and Merry Chrismas!

[ponyote]

This was very well presented, with your characteristic humor and gravity. Thank you again, Sabine.

[patrickegan]

There's an important flip side to this as well in that social media is very good and useful at providing specific groups of people (e.g., young mothers, highly socially anxious people, and more) an opportunity to connect with others. I'm not at all into social media but it's always important to consider how it affects the lives of others.

Great video as always, thanks for helping to bring psych and sociological science to the masses

[jceepf]

All of this reminds me of Mark Twain's explanation of the sentence "reality often surpasses fiction". He explained it as follows: when you create a story, you purposely make it sound plausible otherwise no one reads your book. Reality has no such constraint.

When a guy in "tornado alley" threw is sofa in the city dump, a tornado brought it back to his back yard a few miles away. True story. You make that part of the plot of a book, and people will say: "Get out of here!"