Ivan Garibay of UCF has found that controversial online posts were seen by twice the number of people and traveled twice as fast when compared to neutral posts. Garibay analyzed Reddit posts to better understand the attention of social media users.
“There may be an incentive in terms of influence and audience size for a social media user to consistently include controversial and provocative topics on their posts,” Garibay says. “This benefits the person posting the messages. However, controversial comments can be divisive, which could contribute to a polarized audience and society.”
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