CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 85Social and Intergroup PsychologySocial Media and PoliticsMisinformation and Its Impacts

Testing the effects of Facebook usage in an ethnically polarized setting

Open access
Asimovic, Nejla, Nagler, Jonathan, Bonneau, Richard, Tucker, Joshua A.·2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI 10.1073/pnas.2022819118PMC PMC8237683
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Despite the belief that social media is altering intergroup dynamics—bringing people closer or further alienating them from one another—the impact of social media on interethnic attitudes has yet to be rigorously evaluated, especially within areas with tenuous interethnic relations. We report results from a randomized controlled trial in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), exploring the effects of exposure to social media during 1 wk around genocide remembrance in July 2019 on a set of interethnic attitudes of Facebook users. We find evidence that, counter to preregistered expectations, people who deactivated their Facebook profiles report lower regard for ethnic outgroups than those who remained active. Moreover, we present additional evidence suggesting that this effect is likely conditional on the level of ethnic heterogeneity of respondents’ residence. We also extend the analysis to include measures of subjective well-being and knowledge of news. Here, we find that Facebook deactivation leads to suggestive improvements in subjective wellbeing and a decrease in knowledge of current events, replicating results from recent research in the United States in a very different context, thus increasing our confidence in the generalizability of these effects.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1073/pnas.2022819118

Cites

9 of 9 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Multiple articles found that engagement with digital media increased political knowledge and that engagement with political content on social media increased political interest among adolescents.

    “Multiple articles found that engagement with digital media increased political knowledge67,70,72,74 and that engagement with political content on social media increased political interest among adolescents111.”

    From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [72]

    The H3 section (page unavailable) reports suggestive evidence that Facebook deactivation increased political disaffection, which is consistent with a possible link between Facebook use and affinity toward politics. But the paper does not establish that engagement specifically with political content increased political interest among adolescents; it also expresses lower confidence in its disaffection measure. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Not having online contact with (probably moderate) ethnic out-group members in Bosnia-Herzegovina increased affective polarization.

    “However, not having online contact with (probably moderate) ethnic out-group members in Bosnia-Herzegovina increased affective polarization (Asimovic et al., 2021).”

    From Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media. (2024) · cites this paper as Asimovic et al., 2021

    The Abstract reports that deactivating Facebook for one week in Bosnia and Herzegovina led to more negative attitudes toward ethnic outgroups. The Discussion says deactivation may have reduced outgroup contact, but treats that as one possible explanation rather than an established cause; it does not establish that the outgroup contacts were moderate. The measured outcome was outgroup regard, not affective polarization as such. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Deleting Facebook during genocide remembrance week in Bosnia increased ethnic polarization, especially if people had particularly homogeneous offline social networks.

    “For example, deleting Facebook during genocide remembrance week in Bosnia actually increased ethnic polarization, especially if people had particularly homogeneous offline social networks (Asimovic et al. 2021).”

    From Social Media and Morality. (2024) · cites this paper as Asimovic et al. 2021

    The Abstract and Research Design report that deactivating Facebook during the Srebrenica genocide commemoration week led to more negative attitudes toward ethnic outgroups. The Discussion finds a stronger effect among residents of ethnically homogeneous towns, but uses town composition as a proxy for offline networks; that analysis was not preregistered. The claim presents homogeneous offline networks as an established individual-level condition rather than a tentative inference from where participants lived. Page numbers were not provided in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Two randomized controlled trials testing the effects of deactivating Facebook observed small to moderate decreases in anxiety, one in depression, and one in loneliness.

    “Two randomized controlled trials testing the effects of deactivating Facebook (Allcott et al., 2020; Asimovic et al., 2021) observed small to moderate decreases in anxiety, one in depression, and one in loneliness.”

    From Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media. (2024) · cites this paper as Asimovic et al., 2021

  • Life satisfaction did not change after deactivating Facebook for 1 week, but increased after 4 weeks.

    “Life satisfaction did not change after deactivating Facebook for 1 week (Asimovic et al., 2021), but increased after 4 weeks (Allcott et al., 2020).”

    From Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media. (2024) · cites this paper as Asimovic et al., 2021

    Asimovic et al. studied a one-week Facebook deactivation, but the Results section reports effects on anxiety, loneliness, and a composite wellbeing index—not whether life satisfaction changed. Searches for “life satisfaction” and “satisfaction with life” found no passage establishing the cited one-week claim. The four-week finding is attributed to a different source in the citing sentence. (LLM, conf=0.72)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 23

  1. [1]J. A. Tucker, Data from “Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature.” Loughborough University. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/37088. Accessed 7 June 2021.
  2. [3]N. Persily, J. A. Tucker, Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  3. [6]J. Poushter, C. Bishop, H. Chwe, Social media use continues to rise in developing countries but plateaus across developed ones (Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C., 2018), vol. 22.
  4. [8]M. Tromholt, The Facebook experiment: Quitting Facebook leads to higher levels of well-being. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 19, 661– 666 (2016). 27831756
  5. [14]M. Hewstone, H. Swart, Fifty-odd years of inter-group contact: From hypothesis to integrated theory. Br. J. Soc. Psychol. 50, 374– 386 (2011). 21884537
  6. [19]E. Bakshy, S. Messing, L. A. Adamic, Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science 348, 1130– 1132 (2015). 25953820
  7. [20]H. Rainie, B. Wellman, Networked: The New Social Operating System (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012), vol. 419.
  8. [22]C. T. Carr, E. J. Varney, J. R. Blesse, “Social media and intergroup communication: Collapsing and expanding group contexts” in Advances in and Prospects for Intergroup Communication, H. Giles, A. Maass, Eds. (Peter Lang, New York, NY, 2016), pp. 155– 173.
  9. [24]M. Granovetter, “ The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited” in Social Structure and Network Analysis, P. V. Marsden, N. Lin, Eds. (Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA, 1982), pp. 105– 130.
  10. [32]K. Faucher, Social Capital Online (University of Westminster Press, 2018).
  11. [34]M. Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2008).
  12. [36]Y. Amichai-Hamburger, T. Hayat, “ Social Networking” in The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects, P. Rössler, C. A. Hoffner and L. van Zoonen, Eds. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017), pp. 1– 12.
  13. [39]A. Mehrabian, Nonverbal Communication (Routledge, 2017).
  14. [40]S. Paolini, J. Harwood, M. Rubin, Negative intergroup contact makes group memberships salient: Explaining why intergroup conflict endures. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 36, 1723– 1738 (2010). 21051766
  15. [42]A. Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (Penguin, 2017).
  16. [48]G. W. Imbens, D. B. Rubin, Causal Inference in Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
  17. [50]L. Boxell, M. Gentzkow, J. M. Shapiro, Cross-country trends in affective polarization (Tech Rep. No. w26669, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2020).
  18. [51]S. DellaVigna, E. La Ferrara, “ Economic and social impacts of the media” in Handbook of Media Economics, S. P. Anderson, J. Waldfogel, D. Strömberg, Eds. (Elsevier, 2015), vol. 1, pp. 723– 768.
  19. [54]J. Ray Vollhardt, “ Collective victimization” in Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict, L. R. Tropp, Ed. (Oxford University Press, New York, 2012), pp. 136– 157.
  20. [58]S. C. Wright, A. Aron, T. McLaughlin-Volpe, S. A. Ropp, The extended contact effect: Knowledge of cross-group friendships and prejudice. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 73, 73 (1997).
  21. [59]S. Paolini, M. Hewstone, E. Cairns, Direct and indirect intergroup friendship effects: Testing the moderating role of the affective-cognitive bases of prejudice. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 33, 1406– 1420 (2007). 17933736
  22. [62]A. Gelman, J. Carlin, Beyond power calculations: Assessing type s (sign) and type m (magnitude) errors. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 9, 641– 651 (2014). 26186114
  23. [63]M. Bailey, “ The determinants of social connectedness in Europe” in Social Informatics. SocInfo 2020, S. Aref, Eds. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, 2020), vol. 12467, pp. 1– 14.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Asimovic, N., Nagler, J., Bonneau, R., & Tucker, J. A.
Affiliations
  • New York University (US)
  • Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (US)
Corresponding author
Asimovic, Nejla
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Published
2021-06-15
Volume
118
Issue
25
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
DOI
10.1073/pnas.2022819118
PMC
PMC8237683
OpenAlex
W3171472364
Cited by
85
References
9
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 7
FWCI
19.40
Type
journal article
Language
en
Update notices
correction (2026-05-11)
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
Keywords
social media use, intergroup attitudes, ethnic polarization, genocide memory, Bosnian genocide, ethnic diversity, subjective well-being, interethnic relations
MeSH terms
Attitude, Ethnicity, Health, Humans, Surveys and Questionnaires, Knowledge, Intention to Treat Analysis, Social Media, Genocide

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review