Arguing with Strangers on the Internet

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - Motivated by the goal of reducing the polarization of opinions online, new EPFL/UNIL research indicates that this may be far more difficult than expected, even when using liked or respected celebrities as spokespeople. Celebrities, thanks to their level of fame, are often considered to be influential and many have used their status to campaign for issues they believe to be important - consider Beyoncé's feminist activism or Leonardo DiCaprio's outspokenness on Climate Change. With this perceived influence, governments around the world regularly try to enlist celebrities as spokespeople in information campaigns, including in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to raise awareness for social distancing or to support vaccination efforts. But new EPFL/UNIL research has found that enlisting celebrities to change or influence people's opinions might actually be counterproductive, and instead make an audience less empathetic towards the celebrity spokesperson. Researchers from the Data Science Lab (dlab) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences  at  EPFL , with colleagues from the University of Lausanne's Institute of Psychology,  performed a randomized controlled trial with crowd workers to measure whether their perspectives on a selection of topics such as immigration, vaccination, climate change and abortion changed after messages from celebrity spokespeople who they liked, disliked, agreed or disagreed with, as well as a dissenting opinion from an expert who was unknown to them.