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New Study Finds How People Evaluate Online Political Posts

November 15, 2018

New Study Finds How People Evaluate Online Political Posts

Computers in Human Behavior Cover

Associate Professor David DeAndrea, Assistant Professor Robert Bond and PhD student Megan Vendemia published an article in Computers in Human Behavior about how user comments affect how political messages are evaluated on social media websites. Through an online experiment, they examined the degree to which obscuring political affiliations of online sources influences how viewers evaluate the political messages they share through social media. Results found that policy organizations that delete social media comments were less trusted and endorsed. The commenters affiliated with these policy organizations were less trusted and endorsed, as well. Results also showed the political ideology of the experiment’s participants did not influence their evaluations of the policy organizations.