Social media is renowned as being rife with disinformation, misinformation, and all forms of so-called “fake news” – but a new study out of France suggests it could nonetheless overall keep us more informed.
During the French presidential election in 2022, researchers at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po had 1117 people delete their Facebook accounts.
The team surveyed the participants about their mood and well-being, political knowledge, and level of political and social polarisation during the election, and compared their results with 1129 people who did not deactivate their accounts.
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Overall, the 1117 who were without Facebook in this time reported slightly higher wellbeing, including increased feelings of joy and fulfillment.
But there was a flipside in that the same group proved less politically aware, and not just by their own estimate.
Researchers tested participants with arrays of headlines – half drawn from verified news reports, and others written that were “plausible” but false.
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Those who had remained active on Facebook proved more able to pick out political falsehoods – though interestingly, both groups were adept at spotting the real headlines relating to entertainment and sport.
The researchers said this suggested Facebook played an important part in connecting people with political news that they would not ordinarily seek out – through friends’ posts or shared articles, for example.
But they found that the polarisation and political division in either group did not wane, despite a third arm of the experiment involving messages to some members of each to encourage them to be “more informed, civil, and open-minded”.
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