Facebook's political influence under a microscope as elections rage
When people tagged their friends on Facebook in voting reminders, turnout increased by 15 to 24 per cent: research
PHOTO: FACEBOOK
As the US presidential campaign heats up, Facebook Inc is going out of its way to show its neutrality - an increasingly urgent matter for the social network as evidence of its power continues to emerge. Recent studies have shown the site has extraordinary influence.
According to research scheduled to be published in August in the Journal of Communication, when people tagged their friends on Facebook in voting reminders, turnout increased by 15 to 24 per cent.
During US presidential primary elections this year, a Facebook reminder that informed people when their state's voter registration deadline was approaching and provided a link helped produce a surge of nearly 650,000 new voter registrations in California alone, according to Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
In the United Kingdom, a Facebook reminder days before the deadline to register to vote on whether the country should exit the European Union led to 186,000 people registering online to vote, according to the government.
Facebook has restyled the like button
Facebook is eager to show that its political involvement is limited to seemingly neutral activities such as encouraging voting.
The company this week released some of the guidelines that govern its all-important News Feed - the place most people see postings on Facebook - and has pushed back hard against recent allegations of political bias in its "Trending Topics" module.
Echo Chamber
Still, concerns about Facebook's role in shaping political attitudes are unlikely to abate anytime soon. Some people object even to voter-registration drives.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for example, alleged this week that Google and Facebook were trying to encourage a "remain" vote in Britain's referendum on European Union membership by encouraging voting, asserting that media users are disproportionately youthful and pro-Europe.
A more common complaint is that Facebook and other social networks serve as an echo chamber of ideas and beliefs, as users decide which people and pages they will follow and customise their News Feed.
A 2015 study in Science showed that Facebook users tended to interact and click on content that was more in line with their ideological views.
Google, Facebook quietly move toward automatic blocking of extremist videos
Steinberg, who said he was in favour of remaining in the European Union, urged tech leaders to do more to address the echo chamber on social media.
"To not act on this problem now is tantamount to actively supporting and funding the tearing apart of the fabric of our societies," Steinberg wrote. "We're getting countries where one half just doesn't know anything at all about the other."
According to research scheduled to be published in August in the Journal of Communication, when people tagged their friends on Facebook in voting reminders, turnout increased by 15 to 24 per cent.
During US presidential primary elections this year, a Facebook reminder that informed people when their state's voter registration deadline was approaching and provided a link helped produce a surge of nearly 650,000 new voter registrations in California alone, according to Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
In the United Kingdom, a Facebook reminder days before the deadline to register to vote on whether the country should exit the European Union led to 186,000 people registering online to vote, according to the government.
Facebook has restyled the like button
Facebook is eager to show that its political involvement is limited to seemingly neutral activities such as encouraging voting.
The company this week released some of the guidelines that govern its all-important News Feed - the place most people see postings on Facebook - and has pushed back hard against recent allegations of political bias in its "Trending Topics" module.
Echo Chamber
Still, concerns about Facebook's role in shaping political attitudes are unlikely to abate anytime soon. Some people object even to voter-registration drives.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for example, alleged this week that Google and Facebook were trying to encourage a "remain" vote in Britain's referendum on European Union membership by encouraging voting, asserting that media users are disproportionately youthful and pro-Europe.
A more common complaint is that Facebook and other social networks serve as an echo chamber of ideas and beliefs, as users decide which people and pages they will follow and customise their News Feed.
A 2015 study in Science showed that Facebook users tended to interact and click on content that was more in line with their ideological views.
Google, Facebook quietly move toward automatic blocking of extremist videos
Steinberg, who said he was in favour of remaining in the European Union, urged tech leaders to do more to address the echo chamber on social media.
"To not act on this problem now is tantamount to actively supporting and funding the tearing apart of the fabric of our societies," Steinberg wrote. "We're getting countries where one half just doesn't know anything at all about the other."