Twitter wants to be transparent.
In a long press release, the social network gave the results of an introspection on the highlighting of political content on the platform.
And if Twitter does not explain it clearly, the content from profiles identified on the right is, in six of the seven countries where the study was conducted, more highlighted by the platform than the others.
Overall, content from political figures, whatever the side, is particularly highlighted by the Twitter algorithm.
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Since 2016, the social network Twitter has allowed its users to choose to see the most recent tweets appear at the top of their home page or those, sorted by the famous algorithm, the most relevant with regard to each person's interests. .
It is therefore this “sorting”, and the highlights that it naturally generates, which was closely scrutinized in this study.
Republicans "amplified"
In France, it is Les Républicains whose publications are the most “amplified” by the Twitter algorithm, in other words, they will be more often displayed in the “timelines” of users. Then come the posts from accounts affiliated with the majority and the Modem, then, quite far behind, the publications of France Insoumise or the Socialists. The finding is even more marked in the United Kingdom, where the amplification of publications from the Conservative Party is around 175%, when it barely exceeds 100% for Labor, the Labor Party. In Spain and Canada, the amplification differences are also very marked, a little more than in the United States, even if the Republicans are put forward slightly better than the Democrats. The only exception of the seven countries examined,Germany, where the far-right AfD party and the left-wing Die Linke party are both relatively under-emphasized.
The phenomenon is very marked in the United Kingdom.
The study, which covers hundreds of millions of tweets containing links to articles shared on the social network over a period of time, gives very little explanation for this highlighting of publications from right-wing parties. .
Twitter recalls that a user's timeline is defined as much by their own interactions on the network as by the algorithm itself.
The company also specifies that if the publications emanating from the various right-wing parties are put forward more, it is because the algorithm considers them as
“more relevant”
.
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On the other hand, Twitter recognizes that it does not know how to better explain this phenomenon for the moment, and that research will continue.
“
This research sheds light on the complex interactions between an algorithm and the people who use the platform
,” writes Twitter.
Algorithmic amplification is not a bad thing in itself -all algorithms amplify-.
But amplification can be problematic if it is due more to the algorithm than to interactions between users.
"
