Science publishes eLetter on 2023 study by Guess et al., as well as response by Guess et al.

In 2023, Science published the study, “How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?” by Andrew Guess et al. Now, Chhandak Bagchi and colleagues – in an eLetter that will appear on the 2023 study – state that the study’s “reporting and conclusions did not account for a series of temporary emergency changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm in the wake of the 2020 U.S. presidential election that were designed to diminish the spread of voter-fraud misinformation. This issue may have led readers to misinterpret the results of that study and to conclude that the Facebook news feed algorithm used outside of the study period mitigates political misinformation...”

In an eLetter in response to Bagchi et al., Guess et al. acknowledge the criticism that their control condition changed during their experiment but say that, while that may have impacted how generalizable the results are to other contexts, it did not impact the validity and conclusion of their 2023 study. They agree that readers should not incorrectly conclude that the results of their 2023 paper speak to versions of the Facebook algorithm used outside the study period and highlight several places in their original study where they noted this. “We appreciate the opportunity to underscore the message to future readers that our results were in comparison to the feed-ranking algorithm used by Facebook at the time of the study.”

Bagcchi and colleagues say the results of the 2023 study by Guess et al. have implications for society – and for the research community. From a research perspective, “there is a need for independent research of social media platforms and consistent, transparent disclosures about major changes to their algorithms,” say the authors. “Laws such as the Digital Services Act in the European Union and the proposed Platform Accountability and Transparency Act in the U.S., if properly enforced, could empower researchers to conduct independent audits of social media platforms and better understand the potentially serious effects of ever-changing social media algorithms on the public.” (Among the authors on the Bagchi et al. eLetter, Przemyslaw A. Grabowicz recently moved from a position in the US to the University College Dublin, partly motivated by the introduction of the Digital Services Act.) Guess and colleagues write, “We…agree with Bagchi et al. on the importance of increased social media and algorithmic transparency for understanding the political impact of digital technologies.”

The two eLetters are accompanied by an Editorial by Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp.