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SUMMARY:The Causal Effects of Political Incivility in Social Media Discuss
 ions - Chris Bail (Duke University)
DTSTART:20251114T160000Z
DTEND:20251114T170000Z
UID:TALK240142@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Yara Kyrychenko
DESCRIPTION:Professor Chris Bail (Duke University) will present his new 
 paper on the causal effects of political incivility in social media discus
 sions. \n\nPaper Abstract:\n\nPolitical discussions serve many important 
 functions in democratic societies\, but increasingly occur on social media
  where incivility pervades. How does incivility in online political discus
 sions impact conversational dynamics and outcomes? Using a novel research 
 platform\, we perform a preregistered experiment testing incivility’s ca
 usal effects in online political discussions. Participants use a mobile ap
 plication to access a social media feed manipulated to vary in political i
 ncivility\, with discussions driven by synthetic users powered by GPT-4. P
 articipants experiencing the politically uncivil feed reported less comfor
 t sharing views and were less likely to comment on political posts but par
 adoxically created more original posts. Their content also contained more 
 hostile features such as profanity and insults. Furthermore\, exposure to 
 political incivility led to more negative views of out-party voters while 
 in-party ratings remain unchanged. These findings highlight how uncivil po
 litical discussions on social media simultaneously discourage open express
 ion while fueling hostility.\n\nPreprint: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/yaq
 29_v1 \n\nSpeaker Bio:\n\nChris Bail is Professor of Sociology\, Computer
  Science\, Political Science\, and Public Policy at Duke University\, wher
 e he directs the Society-Centered AI Initiative and co-directs the Polariz
 ation Lab. He studies how artificial intelligence shapes human behavior in
  a range of different settings—and social media platforms in particular.
 \n\nJoin the Teams meeting:\n\nMeeting ID: 345 300 303 310 5\n\nPasscode: 
 BC9y7T7x
LOCATION:Online
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