"Researchers Talal Rahwan and Yasir Zaki at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus created over 300 “dummy” bot mimic real-life users during the 2024 race. The bots “lived” in Democratic-leaning New York, Republican-leaning Texas, and the “purple” state of Georgia. After creating the accounts, the researchers trained some to follow and react positively to Democratic messaging, while others were trained to support Republican content. Afterward, the researchers monitored the accounts' “For You” pages for 27 weeks during the campaign, analyzing over 280,000 videos that were suggested by TikTok."
"For the Republican bots, the outcome was predictable: the algorithm resulted in an 11.5 percent higher chance that they'd see more Republican-leaning content than Democratic-leaning posts. But for the Democratic bots, it was different. Those accounts were 7.5 percent more likely to see Republican posts than Democratic ones."
"“Our findings show partisan imbalances in political information exposure on a platform dominated by algorithmic recommendations, with implications for platform governance and democratic discourse,” the researchers wrote in their study, which was published in Nature this week."
A study of TikTok’s recommendation system during the 2024 presidential election found political exposure skewed more conservative regardless of user preferences. Researchers created more than 300 bot accounts in Democratic-leaning New York, Republican-leaning Texas, and the purple state of Georgia. Some bots were trained to engage positively with Democratic messaging, while others were trained to engage positively with Republican content. Over 27 weeks, the researchers monitored the bots’ “For You” pages and analyzed more than 280,000 suggested videos. Republican-leaning bots were more likely to receive Republican-leaning content. Democratic-leaning bots were more likely to receive Republican-leaning content than Democratic-leaning content. The results indicate partisan imbalances in algorithmic political information exposure.
#tiktok #political-polarization #algorithmic-recommendations #2024-us-presidential-election #social-media-research
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