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    • University of Michigan study reveals political bias among Reddit moderators
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    University of Michigan study reveals political bias among Reddit moderators

    Pabio Posted on

    If you were hoping to escape a deluge of partisan political promotion in the final days of this election season, your social media feeds probably won’t provide you much comfort.

    A Wall Street Journal Report last week, “new X users interested in topics like crafts, sports, and cooking are plastered with political content and fed a steady diet of messages that lean toward Donald Trump and sow doubt on the integrity of the November 5 elections.

    While the main political accounts on Washington Post analysis found that some of their tweets are still “mega-viral – virtually all from Republicans.” The Post also found that “Republicans also saw huge increases in followers compared to Democrats, and their tweets collectively received billions more views.”

    These discoveries come as The University of Michigan released a new study Last month, he examined how political bias in content moderation on social media feeds results in so-called echo chambers.

    Justin Huang, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and his collaborators, Ross School Ph.D. UM graduate Jangwon Choi and UM graduate Yuqin Wan, have examined the social media site Reddit to explore how their discussion forums, known as subreddits, are overseen by moderators – and the impact of decisions made by those moderators to remove certain content based on their own biases. .

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    “The type of user-driven content moderation we are studying is present on all major social media platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and the university. “These platforms give users ownership and moderation control over online spaces such as groups or comment sections of the content they create, and there is virtually no guidance or oversight over the platform on how a user moderates.”

    Huang said his research documented political bias in the moderation of user-driven content. In other words, Reddit moderators who delete comments that go against their own political views.

    “This bias creates echo chambers, online spaces characterized by homogeneity of opinions and isolation of opposing viewpoints,” he said.

    Researchers said the negative impact of this phenomenon can lead to a distorted view of what is normal.

    In some cases, it could subvert democratic norms, they said, by radicalizing individuals, enabling misinformation and reducing confidence in election results if they run counter to the biased world created in election forums. online discussion.

    The researchers, however, said there are potential solutions, including:

    • Provide guidelines on what constitutes appropriate or inappropriate reasons for removing content.
    • Increase transparency of content removals by notifying users when their content is removed.
    • Implement monitoring to help platforms monitor the extent to which moderators demonstrate political bias in moderating their content.

    Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @matthewsdolan

    Pabio
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