BlueSky Thinking Summary

A study led by Adam Waytz of the Kellogg School explores how partisan biases are at play in shaping what people think about online content- in the wake of Elon Musk purchasing Twitter to rid it of bot-driven misinformation.

Co-authored with Shane Schweitzer and Kyle Dobson, this research unearthed the phenomenon of "political bot bias": that is, people tend more easily to attribute posts opposing their views to bots rather than to human beings.

This bias endures in discriminating actual bot from human-authored tweets.

Furthermore, the study finds that trust in content veracity decreases sharply, across political lines, when it is perceived to be bot-generated, increasing polarization.

The findings underscore a pervasive bot effect on social media discourse and alert one to its overestimation in propaganda but point to understanding human psychology around technological interactions as pivotal to mitigating their effects on divergence.

It further pressed home the need for more nuanced approaches to fostering more informed online interaction in light of the blurred lines between human and AI-generated content.