Publishers Weekly
02/15/2021
Sociologist Bail (Terrified), the director of Duke University’s Polarization Lab, examines how social media fuels political extremism by “distort people’s understanding of themselves and others” in this brisk, data-driven account. Bail contends that Facebook and Twitter, among other platforms, empower extremists on the right and the left by improving their social status, which leads to the silencing of moderate voices who fear retribution for posting anything political, and gives people a warped sense of those who disagree with them on such issues as gun control and immigration. Fears of social media echo chambers are overblown, Bail argues, citing evidence that polarization actually increases when people are exposed to other viewpoints. He also contends that Russian internet trolls had less impact on public opinion during the 2016 presidential election than is commonly believed, draws on extensive interviews with social media users to explore the profound differences between people’s online and real-life personas, and lucidly details his own efforts to develop a new social media platform that cultivates more civil discourse. This is a persuasive and well-informed look at one of today’s most pressing social issues. (Apr.)
Democracy Works podcast
"Terrific book.
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Purple Principle podcast
"Innovative. . . .this book will challenge many of your beliefs about the online world including that the solution is to completely disengage. . . . We suggest you read Breaking the Social Media Prism and evaluate your own online behavior and those you bump into."
From the Publisher
Winner of the Science Breakthrough of the Year in Social Science, Falling Walls Foundation
A Behavioral Scientist's Notable Book
"A FiveBooks Best Nonfiction Books of the Year"
"A Next Big Idea Club Selection"
Blogternator
"Shattering popular myths and in the process, uncovering some extraordinary revelations, Chris Bail’s enormously influential book, Breaking the Social Media Prism is a much needed antidote in, and, for bewildering times where fake news proliferates and political polarization runs amok on various social media platforms."
Kirkus Reviews
2021-01-16
Social media imprisons us inside echo chambers—or does it?
After conducting a more or less standard sociological survey whose methodology is laid out in an appendix, Bail, who directs the Polarization Lab at Duke, offers a fruitful suggestion: The echo chamber effect, by which social media users surround themselves with those who agree with them politically—social media arguments are almost always about politics—may in fact represent a chicken-and-egg conundrum. “How,” asks the author, “could we be sure that people’s echo chambers shape their political beliefs, and not the other way around?” His findings suggest that both may be at play, to varying degrees. Some users become radicalized over the course of weeks and months of internet arguing while others are firebrands online but apparently moderate in real life. As Bail writes, “the rapidly growing gap between social media and real life is one of the most powerful sources of political polarization in our era.” Interestingly, he notes, people who were experimentally exposed to contending points of view tended to become more hardened in their beliefs. The explanatory power of the echo chamber—a term, Bail notes, that predates the internet by decades—goes only so far; the real source of polarization lies within ourselves. Even more interestingly, he observes, most Americans, left to their own devices, avoid the subject of politics and tend toward a moderate view. What pushes people to extremes is the narcissistic thrill of spouting off and gathering likes as a reward. Meanwhile, the moderate majority, shouted down, stays quiet. “Status seeking on social media creates a vicious cycle of political extremism,” writes Bail, and that extremism correlates closely with a lack of social status offline, which makes online ugliness all the more attractive.
A study that raises as many questions as it answers but provides useful pointers for understanding online (mis)behavior.
