Brendan Nyhan

New podcast on polarization and democracy

90. Are American politics more polarized than ever? Brendan Nyhan thinks social media just helps us see it more.

New podcast on US 2020 Facebook study

89. Facebook scores your politics with a number. Brendan Nyhan figured out what they do with it. (Part 1 of 2)

New podcast interview on Sean Carroll's Mindscape

New study, report, and podcast

I'm one of the lead authors on a new article in Nature titled "Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing" that was published today. It's one of four articles published today from the US 2020 Facebook and Instagram Election Study on which I was coauthor (the other three were published in a special issue of Science).

We also just released a new Bright Line Watch report on expert and public perceptions of the legal cases against Donald Trump.

I talked about both of them with Mike Pesca on The Gist:

UCLA Law panel on threats to democracy

New podcast - on Mike Pesca's The Gist

New podcast with Mike Pesca talking about the latest Bright Line Watch report and the state of American democracy:

New Bright Line Watch report/interview

From our new Bright Line Watch report:

• The gap between Republicans and Democrats in confidence in American elections remains large, but has diminished in the past year. Compared to November 2021, somewhat more Republicans recognize the legitimacy of Biden’s 2020 victory and express confidence in the integrity of the vote count in the upcoming midterm elections.
• Both experts and the public, including four in five Republicans, say it is important for candidates who lose fair elections to publicly acknowledge defeat, but hundreds of 2022 Republican candidates for Congress or statewide office continue to deny that former President Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020 or question the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. Across the three most comprehensive media tallies, the estimated percentage of deniers among Republicans is 31% for Attorney General candidates, 49% for governor, 31–39% for Secretary of State, 41–55% for U.S. House, and 35–41% for U.S. Senate. These ratings are generally consistent; about 80% of ratings are identical between organizations.
• Experts rate the prevalence of 2020 election denialism among Republican candidates for statewide office as the most abnormal and important event of the past year and one of the most extreme to take place since 2016. 91% of experts rate a 2024 Trump candidacy as a threat to democracy, including 35% who rate it as an extraordinary threat and 39% who rate it as a serious threat.
• 70% of experts view a prosecution of Trump as beneficial to U.S. democracy, including 16% who rate it as an extraordinary benefit and 35% who rate it as a serious benefit.
• Majorities of the public believe Trump committed crimes in trying to overturn the 2020 election, in his actions related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and in handling classified documents and favor prosecution for each. However, the partisan splits on these issues are profound – approximately 90% of Democrats favor prosecution and close to 90% of Republicans oppose it. Experts overwhelmingly support prosecution. The academic experts we surveyed anticipate that some high-profile candidates in the 2022 midterm elections will refuse to concede. They also anticipate continued politicization of Supreme Court appointments.
• Experts are divided, however, on whether the Supreme Court will endorse the Independent State Legislature theory, which would allow state legislatures to regulate elections without constraint from institutions such as state courts and constitutions.
• Assessments of the performance of U.S. democracy are stable and consistent with past surveys, but every group surveyed – experts and the public, Democrats and Republicans – anticipates a decline in the quality of U.S. democracy five and 10 years in the future.

My interview about the report with NPR's Here and Now:

Big Technology podcast interview

New SciAm: Open the social media black box

From our new piece in Scientific American:

Social media platforms are where billions of people around the world go to connect with others, get information and make sense of the world. These companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok and Reddit, collect vast amounts of data based on every interaction that takes place on their platforms.

And despite the fact that social media has become one of our most important public forums for speech, several of the most important platforms are controlled by a small number of people. Mark Zuckerberg controls 58% of the voting share of Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, effectively giving him sole control of two of the largest social platforms. Now that Twitter’s board has accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to take the company private, that platform will likewise soon be under the control of a single person. All these companies have a history of sharing scant portions of data about their platforms with researchers, preventing us from understanding the impacts of social media to individuals and society. Such singular ownership of the three most powerful social media platforms makes us fear this lockdown on data sharing will continue.

After two decades of little regulation, it is time to require more transparency from social media companies.

Panel with the Surgeon General on COVID-19 misinfo

FiveThirtyEight podcast interview

We discuss the latest Bright Line Watch report:

CBS Sunday Morning interview

Democratic lawmakers were scrambling this week to salvage support for President Joe Biden's social and environmental agenda. @jdickerson discusses the drama of the majority-party's political showdown. https://t.co/B22fJVvqwJ pic.twitter.com/ul9RZKd4ft

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) October 3, 2021

Three new podcast interviews

New On the Media: The Green Lantern theory

From my new interview with On the Media:

Last weekend, the Biden administration began rolling out the American Rescue Plan: the $1.9 trillion act that has been lauded as "the most significant piece of legislation passed for working families in many, many decades." It includes major assistance for families, businesses, and community organizations struggling in the pandemic. But amidst this sea of stimulus was one glaring absence, one of Biden’s core campaign promises: the $15 minimum wage hike.

After a handful of moderate Democrats shot down that provision, some progressive journalists blamed Biden for not fighting tooth and nail to get it in the bill. This belief, that a president’s legislative shortcomings are the product of a lack of will, is what some media critics call “The Green Lantern theory of the presidency.” The Green Lantern Corps, for those unfamiliar with the DC Comics canon, are a class of superheroes who can conjure supernatural weapons using sheer willpower.

Whether Biden really could've done more is a mystery, but it's a perennial media narrative says Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, and the man who coined the Green Lantern theory of the presidency. He and Brooke discuss the limits on executive power, and the history of presidents who thought they could expand it.

New WaPo: Who watches extremist videos on YouTube?

From my new piece in The Washington Post:

YouTube is overshadowed by Facebook and Twitter in the debate over the harms of social media, but the site has massive reach — 3 in 4 Americans report using it. This growth has been driven by YouTube's use of algorithms to recommend more videos to watch, a feature that critics warn can lead people down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and racism.

In 2018, for example, the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci described how YouTube started suggesting she check out "white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content" after she started watching videos of Donald Trump rallies in 2016, prompting her to warn about the site "potentially helping to radicalize billions of people."

Google — YouTube's parent company — has sought to address these concerns. In 2019, for instance, it announced new efforts to remove objectionable content and reduce recommendations to "borderline" content that raises concerns without violating site policies.

Has YouTube done enough to curb harmful material on the platform? In a new report published by the Anti-Defamation League, my co-authors and I find that alarming levels of exposure to potentially harmful content continue. When we directly measured the browsing habits of a diverse national sample of 915 participants, we found that more than 9 percent viewed at least one YouTube video from a channel that has been identified as extremist or white supremacist; meanwhile, 22 percent viewed one or more videos from "alternative" channels, defined as non-extremist channels that serve as possible gateways to fringe ideas.