"A new study found that Facebook’s Pages and Groups shape its ideological echo chambers", 28 July 2023

New research published Thursday offers an unprecedented dive into political behavior across Facebook and Instagram — two major online hubs where people express and engage with their political beliefs. The studies, published by an interdisciplinary set of researchers working in tandem with internal groups at Meta, encompasses four papers published in Science and Nature examining behavior on both platforms around the time of the 2020 U.S. election.

The papers — only the first wave of many to be published in the coming months — grew out of what’s known as the 2020 Facebook and Instagram Election Study (FIES), an unusual collaboration between Meta and the scientific research community...

...The findings are myriad and complex...

...the researchers found that content posted in Facebook Groups and Pages displayed much more “ideological segregation” compared to content posted by users’ friends. “Pages and Groups contribute much more to segregation and audience polarization than users,” the researchers wrote...Misinformation and extremism experts have long raised concerns about the role of the two Facebook products in political polarization and sowing conspiracies...

...Meta has been spinning the results across the new studies as a win — a view that flattens complex findings into what is essentially a publicity stunt. Regardless of Meta’s interpretation of the results and the admittedly odd arrangement between the researchers and the company, this data forms an essential foundation for future social media research...