Can Social Media Platforms Transcend Political Labels? An Analysis of Neutral Conservations on Truth Social

TL;DR

This study investigates whether Truth Social, often perceived as politically biased, actually hosts neutral content by analyzing Wikipedia links, revealing that neutral topics tend to garner less engagement but are present on the platform.

Contribution

The paper provides empirical evidence that content with Wikipedia links on Truth Social is more neutral and less toxic, challenging assumptions about ideological homogeneity.

Findings

Wikipedia links correlate with more neutral content

Wiki Truths receive lower engagement than Non-Wiki Truths

Content neutrality varies within the platform, not uniformly across all posts

Abstract

There is a prevailing perception that content on a social media platform generally have the same political leaning. These platforms are often viewed as ideologically congruent entities, reflecting the majority opinion of their users; a prime example of this is Truth Social. While this perception may exist, it is essential to verify the platform's credibility, acknowledging that such platforms contain meaningful insights with neutral stances. To this end, we examine the dissemination of Wikipedia links on the alt-right platform, Truth Social. Wikipedia is recognized for enforcing content neutrality and serves as a unique lens to analyze the objectivity of user-generated content on Truth Social. By scrutinizing Truths with and without Wikipedia links, identifying toxicity trends & recognizing coordinated networks, we observe a lower level of engagement and a tendency for Truths shared on Truth Social to cover more neutral topics when it includes Wikipedia links (Wiki Truths). Given the significantly different engagement and nature of content shared of Wiki Truths against Non-Wiki Truths, we emphasize that we should not generalize the techno-political affiliation of a social media platform, but rather should investigate the content closely.