Facebook’s “state-controlled media” labels appear to reduce engagement with content from authoritarian nations. A new study reveals that, with the added tags, users’ engagement decreased when they noticed content labeled as originating from Chinese and Russian government-run media. However, the labels also appeared to boost user favorability of posts from Canadian state media, suggesting broader perceptions of the country play into the tags’ effectiveness.
Researchers with Carnegie Mellon University, Indiana University and the University of Texas at Austin conducted the set of studies which “explored the causal impact of these labels on users’ intentions to engage with Facebook content.” When users noticed the label, they tended to reduce their engagement with it when it was a country they perceived negatively.