2025/06/27 by Sacha Altay, Emma Hoes, Magdalena Wojcieszak · 1 voice · 16 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Anxiety #Computer science #Feeling #Internet privacy #Media Influence and Politics #Media studies #Misinformation and Its Impacts #News media #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Political science #Politics #Psychology #Social Media and Politics #Social media #Social psychology #Sociology #Worry
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02205-6
published in Nature Human Behaviour 9(9), 1833-1842 (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2025/06/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Many worry that news on social media leaves people uninformed or even misinformed. Here we conducted a preregistered two-wave online field experiment in France and Germany (N = 3,395) to estimate the effect of following the news on Instagram and WhatsApp. Participants were asked to follow two accounts for 2 weeks and activate the notifications. In the treatment condition, the accounts were those of news organizations, while in the control condition they covered cooking, cinema or art. The treatment enhanced current affairs knowledge, participants' ability to discern true from false news stories and awareness of true news stories, as well as trust in the news. The treatment had no significant effects on feelings of being informed, political efficacy, affective polarization and interest in news or politics. These results suggest that, while some forms of social media use are harmful, others are beneficial and can be leveraged to foster a well-informed society.