The Social Media Accelerator: A New Research Environment
What is the SMA?
The Social Media Accelerator (SMA) is a novel platform developed by our lab that enables researchers to design customized social media environments for randomized field experiments. The SMA allows researchers to study how social media influences political polarization by providing a controlled space to test the impact of various platform features and content.
What can the SMA do?
Researchers can administer surveys before, during, and after the users interact with the platform. The platform is also set up to collect fine-grained behavioral data, like what content people view or click on, and how long users dwell on particular posts.
The SMA also has the capacity to leverage Artificial Intelligence, meaning that researchers can explore whether large language models can simulate human behavior in a research setting.
The SMA has helped the lab answer questions such as: what happens when the platform offers users the option to avoid toxic political content? How does being outnumbered by people with different political views impact a user’s comfort with sharing opinions on social media?
Check out a short demo of the SMA from a user's perspective here!
You can also read more about the SMA in our paper, “Do we Need a Social Media Accelerator?” here.