Get How Social Media Don't Really Polarize People Or Do They

#LongRead — Get Why Social Media Don’t Really Polarize People. Or Do They?

Filter bubble, confirmation bias, reciprocal liking: regardless of the terms used, social media have been painted as tools that polarize people, including but not limited to, of course, politics.

In this week’s long reads selection, we’ve decided to feature two articles, about the same topic, from the same publisher — Vox — yet offering two opposite perspectives:

  • On the one hand, in The year social media changed everything, Aja Romano highlights the impact of Facebook & Google on the 2016 US Election, showing how social media & search engines contributed to polarizing people.

Of course, these articles are about politics on the surface, but they also address a much more important question: does the Internet influence and polarize people, or do people influence and polarize the Internet?

The answer is probably both, and it’s perfectly fine.

What’s in it for social media managers: as community managers, we basically have two options to build and engage with our communities. We can either divide and conquer, in an “us versus them” kind of approach, hence fostering polarization. Or we can decide to make people come together and stress on what we have in common, hence alleviating polarization. Beyond a marketing strategic choice, it’s almost a civic decision.


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