Researchers found that simply reordering the posts that appear on users’ X feeds had a noticeable impact on their ‘out-party partisan animosity’ in the midst of the 2024 Presidential election.
Researchers at Stanford have demonstrated a new tool that enables users to reduce the amount of aggressive politically partisan content they see on social media, without involvement from the platform they’re scrolling. The researchers found that simply reducing exposure to these types of posts was enough to shift out-party partisan animosity by over 2 points on a standard 0–100 feeling thermometer by the end of the study.
According to a new paper first published in Science, the scientists created a web-based tool that automatically reorders the content you see—for example, pushing down posts that contain “partisan animosity,” such as calling for jail time for political opponents or advocating for violent protest.
