Partisan Platforms: Responses to Perceived Liberal Bias in Social Media

A Research Paper submitted to the Department of Engineering and Society

Presented to the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Virginia • Charlottesville, Virginia

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Science, School of Engineering

Luke Giraudeau Spring, 2021

On my honor as a University Student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment as defined by the Honor Guidelines for Thesis-Related Assignments

Signature ______Date ______Luke Giraudeau

Approved ______Date ______Richard Jacques, Department of Engineering and Society

Introduction

In the United States, public opinion about tech companies’ political biases is divided along partisan lines (Vogels, Perrin, & Anderson, 2020). In the U.S. since 2018, 69 percent of

Republicans claim that technology companies favor liberal views, whereas only 19 percent of

Democrats say that technology companies favor the alternative view. Over 50 percent of liberals believe that perspectives are treated equally, whereas only 22 percent of conservatives feel this way. Critics who allege bias have organized to promote legislation such as the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act (2020) as well as an executive order (Executive Order 13,925, 2020).

Furthermore, conservative entrepreneurs have produced new social media platforms such as Gab and Parler that claim to honor users’ freedom of speech (Fair, Wesslen, 2019).

According to Feuls, Fieseler, and Suphan (2014), “Although social networks are typically positive stimuli, social media are not generally utilized when the individual’s perception of social media is negative.” Perception can be affected by mass media, data security distrust, personal motivations, competencies, experiences, and “most notably, the individual’s social network.”

This study draws attention to the social and psychological effects that occur when social media users are shunned. Kirdemir (2020) recently found heightened polarization on Twitter during the

COVID-19 pandemic. Most Twitter users primarily receive information consistent with the views they most endorse. By deploying neutral bots to observe social media behavior on individual accounts, Chen et al. (2020) found evidence of algorithmic content shifting and of content ranking that aligned with individuals’ personal biases.

Turning Point USA, a conservative student action organization, has alleged that

“Twitter/Facebook/Instagram regularly restrict conservatives’ reach and suppress any news that could be potentially damaging to the Left” (Smith 2020). The Heritage Foundation, a

1 conservative policy forum, has also claimed that they have seen “firsthand how Big Tech companies block or otherwise limit the reach of (our own) content… because that information doesn’t agree with certain platforms’ social or political agendas” (James 2020). Conservative

Facebook groups that support Trump, such as the “NJ Women for Trump” group, believe that their group’s page was removed because of the tech companies’ political biases (Fruen 2020).

PragerU, a conservative organization with a YouTube channel, filed a lawsuit in 2017 that alleged Google’s “censorship is entirely ideologically driven” (PragerU 2017). Conservative author Charlie Kirk has charged that he was in a “kind of hostage situation with Twitter” after

Twitter allegedly locked him out of his personal account (O’Reilly 2020). Conservative writer and activist Brent Bozell has claimed that “if they can do it to the president of the United States, they can do it to anyone …every platform in Silicon Valley today is censoring conservatives”

(Flood 2020).

Social Media Cancelling

Social media “de-platforming,” which is the act of being “cancelled,” banned, or removed from a platform, has resulted in unique response and activity by conservative users who perceive it as issuing from liberal bias. One response has been a “calling out” of the perceived bias through further posting on the platform, changing influence strategies, or as Rogers (2020) found, many people who are deemed unfit by Twitter and YouTube, often migrate to less regulated platforms such as Telegram or Gab.

Sometimes the “de-platforming” is a direct ban bestowed by the social media company itself, as is the case of the controversial banning of Donald Trump from Twitter (Twitter 2021), but it can also be social pressure from users on the platform. This social pressure is known as

2 online shunning, or cyberostracism. Social media shunning has pertinence in media and entertainment, such as a television show plot being altered or cast member removed through backlash on social media (Anderson-Lopez, Lambert, Budaj 2021). An example of this is seen in the de-platforming of Gina Carano, an actress cast by Lucas Films starring in the popular

Mandalorian film series. After a series of controversial political tweets by Carano, Disney was prompted by the ensuing outcry on the platform to fire Carano (Victor 2021).

After being terminated, Carano announced plans to collaborate with the conservative news media organization, The Daily Wire to produce an upcoming feature film (Pearce 2021). In an interview with Deadline (Wiseman 2021), Carano said, “The Daily Wire is helping make one of my dreams — to develop and produce my own film — come true. I cried out and my prayer was answered. I am sending out a direct message of hope to everyone living in fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob. I have only just begun using my voice which is now freer than ever before, and I hope it inspires others to do the same. They can’t cancel us if we don’t let them.” In Carano’s situation, de-platforming resulted in transition of influence, by creating media elsewhere.

Another way conservative social media users counteract perceived bias is by moving to different platforms. However, migrating to alternative social media may not offer as much apparent benefit to the individual. It will be important for researchers to continue to analyze the social effects of this transition. Users may respond in multiple ways; moreover, the result carries a slew of consequences for these individuals. To quote Rogers, “Being cancelled by Facebook,

Instagram, Twitter, and/or YouTube has stark consequences for the maintenance of a fan base, following and revenue stream.” However, as mainstream social media corporations de-platform

3 and shift what content is to be considered acceptable, business is meanwhile being sent to less regulated platforms (Rogers 2020).

One such example of a low-regulation platform is Gab, the self-proclaimed social media platform that protects free speech. Gab been accused not only of housing de-platformed conservatives, but many in the alt-right. This has escalated to the point of major technology providers such as GoDaddy and Stripe pulling resources from Gab, such that they have had to build their own (Robertson 2018). After the January 6th Capitol march occurred in Washington

D.C., Twitter decided to ban numerous social media accounts of people who supported the actions taken place during the march. Gab reported that as these bans took place, their userbase increased at a rate of 10,000 user per hour, which significantly boosted platform activity (Brandt,

Dean 2021).

Echo Chambers

A common criticism of Gab and similar platforms is that they are “echo chambers.” This title implies ideological uniformity resulting in unwanted behavior, primarily that of political polarization (Abril 2021). A recent scientific report published by a collaboration of Italian researchers analyzed the reproductive nature of information on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram,

Twitter, Gab, and Reddit (Cinelli, Quattrociocchi, Galeazzy, 2020). They noted that whether a media post is flagged as questionable has little to no influence on its potential to spread. Instead, they suggested that the primary cause of spread is “driven by the interaction paradigm imposed by the specific social media or/and by the specific interaction patterns of groups of users engaged with the topic.”

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By considering COVID-19 media as a use-case, a 2020 study found “that the way in which users process information in a segregated environment such as Gab is homogeneous and does not depend on the source. The unconcern of Gab users with respect to the source in terms of endorsement and sentiment dynamics seems to provide further evidence for a mechanism of reinforcement that tends to interpret every news within a collective narrative that is typically found in echo chambers.” For users on the platform Gab, the methodology to sort through news media was not through the validity of the source, but rather by shared narrative and premediated thought processes. This implies that either notions of trust were developed apart from the platform and perhaps prior to use, rather than through discourse on the on platform itself.

A comparative analysis was done using 1B pieces of data from over 1M users showing that in comparison to Reddit and Gab, Facebook and Twitter were dominated by echo chambers in the observed datasets. By analyzing the method of news consumption on these platforms, the study found evidence that platforms which incorporate social networks and user preferences into content feeds, increases the presence of these echo chambers and adds to polarization (Cinelli,

Morales et al. 2020). This indicates that on some scale, Facebook and Twitter are more prone to echo chambers due to algorithmic content control despite being more ideologically diverse as a whole. This study shows that the algorithmic shifting which takes places in these platforms are active agents in increasing polarization, whereas the same evidence is not found in Gab.

News Media Bias

Conservatives that have responded to perceived bias by calling out the technology companies, changing the way they work, or migrating to new platforms, have a common theme in their de-platforming. The initiation of their response flows from a conflict of perspective.

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Proper research is still needed to evaluate and predict response from perspective; however, an area of study that closely models collective narrative decisioning is bias research. Considering the assumptions social media users incorporate as they interact with other users and media pieces on social networks provide numerous insights.

A 2020 study presented by the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media empirically considered assumptions relating to risks of creating media bias datasets. “The fundamental task at the core of building political bias datasets is ‘inferring the political leaning of individual news outlets or articles.’” (Ganguly, Kulshrestha, An, Kwak, 2020). There were three notable findings: 1) The political rating of media can be tainted by the political perspective of the rater, 2) The political perspective of the media piece does not necessitate the political perspective of the publisher, and 3) The publisher’s political perspective can shift on different issues. While not exhaustive, these findings point to the complexity in concretely judging bias in news media pieces shared online, particularly for algorithms that may rely on data collection.

This research highlights that the political rating of a media piece is tainted by the readers’ bias, and if the rating of the piece is correct, does not necessarily indicate the rating of the publisher. The publisher may also shift ratings with time. This interpretation research provides a framework for viewing conservative mobilization and its justification. If a conservative is banned on a social media platform for approving a new media piece- as was the case with

Twitter taking a position on a ballot validity issue (O’Reilly 2020)- it could indicate partisan bias, but it could also reveal a mistake. When Twitter underwent backlash after they blocked a

New York Post to a story that later became verified, Jack Dorsey Twitter CEO responded saying,

“straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix.”

(Bursztynsky 2020)

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In addition to interpretative challenges, language used in media pieces that are discussed on social media can elicit unwanted response. Feick et al. (2021) showed that when news media exaggerates reports by using sensationalist language, this is likely to elicit targeted emotional responses from readers. The research considers terrorist and threat level reports to show that levels of fear can be produced independent of the facts given. Thus, it is a reasonable pursuit for technology companies to acknowledge the intent of the publisher for addressing tone bias which may incite unwanted conflicts.

Conclusion

In the U.S. since 2018, how have political conservatives mobilized to counteract perceived liberal bias in social media?

Since 2018, political conservatives have mobilized to counteract perceived liberal bias in social media by one of three addressed responses, 1) “calling out” the bias through further platform posting and activity, 2) altering real world activity, and 3) migrating to alternative low moderation social media platforms.

The perception of bias is responded to by claims of de-platforming. De-platforming is quickly becoming an acceptable solution to behavior social media companies see as improper, although this method has consequences. As Rogers (2020) aptly concluded, “But mainstream social media drives more traffic to extreme content than alternative social media platforms or other websites… When de-platforming leads to such declines in attention, questions arise about its effectiveness. Is it indeed a viable means to detoxify mainstream social media and the Internet more broadly, and/or does it prompt the individuals to migrate to other platforms with more welcoming and ‘oxygen-giving’ extreme publics?”

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The effects of echo chambers are debated, but their existence within social media has been reasonably quantified and rated between platforms by Cinelli et. al. (2020) and determined to be or differing quantity. A common criticism of Gab was that since a largely partisan group created the platform, its tendency towards echo chamber generation is greater. While overall it may be true of the userbase, the platform was shown to not create chambers at the rate of other platforms. Due to algorithmic content manipulation through user feeds, Twitter and Facebook show a higher tendency than Gab toward echo chambers. Echo chambers are known to cause political polarization, which is present in all platforms.

The mobilization of conservatives from perceived liberal bias is a subject that has many questions for further research. The partisan divide is growing and becoming increasingly evident in social media platforms. With polarization already having crept into the United States, leaders will be faced with the rising need to evaluate the societal effects of social media. Technologists will be challenged by the social significance of the platforms they design and will have to choose to work together across partisan lines to establish online social systems that instigate unity rather than persistent conflict. Social media platforms hold significant power to shape individual’s opportunities and outcomes, such as the case with Gina Carano’s de-platforming and Donald

Trump’s Twitter ban. However, the stakeholders in this issue include all people, and so it is necessary that these systems are employed to benefit individual people regardless of belief paradigm – and by doing so create a more unified world.

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