The ability of humans to create and disseminate culture is often credited as the single most
important factor of our success as a species. In this Perspective, we explore the notion of …

Nearly five billion people around the world now use social media, and this number
continues to grow. One of the primary goals of social media platforms is to capture and …

Deployed AI systems often do not work. They can be constructed haphazardly, deployed
indiscriminately, and promoted deceptively. However, despite this reality, scholars, the …

Online misinformation promotes distrust in science, undermines public health, and may drive
civil unrest. During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, Facebook—the world's largest …

Do online platforms facilitate the consumption of potentially harmful content? Using paired
behavioral and survey data provided by participants recruited from a representative sample …

We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining
generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation …

Existing studies of political polarization are often limited to a single country and one form of
polarization, hindering a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. Here we …

On digital media, algorithms that process data and recommend content have become
ubiquitous. Their fast and barely regulated adoption has raised concerns about their role in …

Mounting evidence indicates that the artificial intelligence (AI) systems that rank our social
media feeds bear nontrivial responsibility for amplifying partisan animosity: negative …

Recent studies have documented the type of content that is most likely to spread widely, or
go “viral,” on social media, yet little is known about people's perceptions of what goes viral or …