Social media affordances change the quality of political discussion

What is it about?

Did Twitter’s 140-to-280 switch ameliorate some of these problems? Our research, recently published in the Journal of Communication, finds that it did. We set up a quasi-experiment comparing the qualities of political discussions before and after the character-limit changeover. Then, using natural language processing methods, we trained a machine learning classifier that automatically labels tweets that are uncivil, tweets that offered justifications for their positions, and tweets that showed deliberative processes.

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Why is it important?

Social media companies can improve online discourse — without censorship. Tech companies are continually testing and comparing various aspects of their products — for instance, experimenting with font size and layout — to see what improves user engagement and satisfaction, and ultimately increases profits. Along the way, they could work to design more civil platforms. For instance, they could decrease anonymity, change the “like” button to a “respect” button, or clearly post discussion rules. If they don’t already, we hope platforms will test ways in which design can improve the quality of social media discussions.