Racial Minorities Face Discrimination From Across the Political Spectrum When Seeking to Form Ties on Social Media:...

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Political Psychology
• Computational Social Science

Background:

• Racial discrimination persists in various social contexts.
• Social media platforms are increasingly central to social interaction and tie formation.
• Understanding discrimination in online environments is crucial for social equity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally investigate racial discrimination in social media tie formation.
• To test predictions regarding political orientation's influence on racial bias in online interactions.
• To provide field-based evidence of discrimination on social media platforms.

Main Methods:

• A preregistered field experiment using randomly assigned research accounts.
• Accounts varied by race (Black, White) and political leaning (liberal, conservative, neutral).
• Examined tie formation reciprocation from a large, unaware sample of Twitter (X) users (N=5,951).

Main Results:

• Individuals were less likely to reciprocate social ties with Black accounts than White accounts.
• This racial bias in tie formation was not moderated by users' political orientation.
• No significant differences were found based on shared partisanship or partisan mismatch.

Conclusions:

• Provides field experimental evidence of racial discrimination in social media tie formation.
• Discrimination occurs across diverse political backgrounds, challenging assumptions about partisan moderation.
• Highlights the need to address racial bias in online social network development.