The Polarization Lab at Duke brings together the tools of social science and data science to counter political tribalism on social media.

Joined September 2018
Photos and videos
polarizationlab retweeted
7 Jul 2022
I’ll be sharing my favorite shots of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science from around the world each day on Insta #sicss2022 #datascience #computationalsocialscience instagram.com/p/CftrD0Hu5af/…
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polarizationlab retweeted
29 Jun 2022
Showing off my #freshink for #SICSS2022 …. God I love this conference/community. Learn more at sicss.io/
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polarizationlab retweeted
3 Jun 2022
This is some of the best public writing I've seen on the impact of social media on politics; it captures both the complexity of the problem *as well as* the reality that crises can't wait for randomized controlled trials-- one of many things the great @JonHaidt has taught me.
What do we really know about social media? @chris_bail, author of Breaking the Social Media Prism, speaks with Gideon Lewis-Kraus for @NewYorker about the impacts of social media platforms, echo chambers, foreign misinformation & algorithms: hubs.ly/Q01cNwcB0
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polarizationlab retweeted
18 May 2022
1/ Before you share this, please learn about how the bot detection used works: it counts people as bots if they don’t post messages regularly to Twitter BUT most Twitter users are lurkers who do not post… nypost.com/2022/05/17/half-o…
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polarizationlab retweeted
17 May 2022
1/ How do fringe ideas become mainstream? In 2015, I wrote a book about this subject. A lot has changed, but I still think what I learned can help us answer this question today-TLDR, we need to map the information ecosystem, & both the right *and* the left help fringe ideas grow.
Replying to @BarackObama
We need to repudiate in the strongest terms the politicians and media figures who — whether for political gain or to boost ratings — have used their platforms to promote and normalize “replacement theory” and other starkly racist, anti-Semitic, and nativist conspiracy theories.
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polarizationlab retweeted
17 May 2022
Is @elonmusk a bot? One of *the* most advanced algorithms for bot detection thinks so, which illustrates just how difficult it might be to clean up this bird place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ try the tool: botometer.osome.iu.edu/ and technical references here: botometer.osome.iu.edu/publi…
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polarizationlab retweeted
17 Apr 2022
1/n People often ask me how to regulate social media…the answer is actually pretty simple:
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polarizationlab retweeted
14 Aug 2021
What is my biggest concern about the new U.S. census results? We continue to under-produce Jedi knights compared to the United Kingdom.
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polarizationlab retweeted
Where have all the moderates gone? They’re still out there, but seldom heard on social media. On our latest episode, @DukeSanford prof and polarization expert @chris_bail shares insight into the nature of this endangered species online: bit.ly/3qTc08x
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polarizationlab retweeted
4 May 2021
How can we stop Facebook’s decision about Trump from launching a new round of partisan warfare on social media? In this piece for CNN, I introduce new apps, bots, and tools that social media users can use to fight political tribalism from the bottom up. cnn.com/2021/05/04/opinions/…

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polarizationlab retweeted
Fresh Off the Pod Press- my fascinating conversation w @chris_bail about his new book, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing thecycle.substack.com/p/thro…
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polarizationlab retweeted
Existing social media platforms are politically dysfunctional because they were never supposed to be otherwise... No one's really tried to build a platform that would actively and intentionally promote the practice of democracy. Me on new @chris_bail book: salon.com/2021/04/10/why-is-…

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polarizationlab retweeted
5 Apr 2021
After studying social media users and polarization for more than a decade, I think I finally found the biggest troll on the internet. tldr: he's a middle aged man that lives with his mom. Meet the trolls who walk among us, and learn what their behavior means for everyone else:
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An interview about the latest research in the Polarization Lab: today.duke.edu/2021/03/fight…
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polarizationlab retweeted
23 Mar 2021
1/ Do you feel hopeless about political polarization on social media? Introducing a new suite of apps, bots, and other tools that you can use to make this place less polarizing from our Duke Polarization Lab: polarizationlab.com/our-tool…
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polarizationlab retweeted
8 Sep 2018
1/8 Did you know that Twitter is experimenting with new features that would expose its users to opposing political views? In this @nytimes piece, I describe why this idea could backfire based upon a large online experiment recently conducted by my lab: nyti.ms/2Nu45gL
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