Frictions in News Consumption: Evidence from Social Media

Abstract

We document pervasive frictions in news consumption on social media, and test interventions designed to address them through a large field experiment on Facebook. We find that a simple, platform-integrated interface prompting active choice significantly and persistently reduces the partisan slant of users’ Facebook news portfolios, while coupling this interface with information substantially improves portfolio reliability. Our interventions also increase alignment between users’ stated preferences and their Facebook portfolios and influence off-platform news consumption. The results underscore the promise of simple, behaviorally-informed, and scalable interventions to improve news consumption on social media platforms.