Political Network Diversity and Trust in Online Political Content

Abstract

Although scholars have learned much about the online information environment in recent years, there is scant evidence on the relationship between pre-existing political network diversity and trust in political content encountered on social media. In this study, I use nationally representative survey data to show that reported political network diversity predicts trust in political information on Facebook and Twitter. I proceed to conduct an original survey experiment that reveals such trust is only partly warranted; social media users in reportedly diverse political networks indiscriminately trust both true and false content more than those in less diverse networks. Given this apparent trade-off, I conduct a second survey experiment to identify the presence of heterogeneous treatment effects of accuracy nudging interventions by network diversity level, but I find none. Collectively, this analysis establishes that those who report more political diversity in their social networks believe more of the information they encounter on social media regardless of its accuracy and suggests that accuracy nudging interventions fail to overcome this difference.