社交媒體如何讓人們變成"沉默者"

The Internet might be a useful tool for activists and organizers, in episodes from the Arab Spring to the Ice Bucket Challenge. But over all, it has diminished rather than enhanced political participation, according to new data.
從“阿拉伯之春”到“冰桶挑戰”，互聯網在許多事件中可能都是活動人士和組織者的有效工具。但最新數據顯示，從總體上看，互聯網卻削弱而不是提高了人們的政治參與度。

Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, has the effect of tamping down diversity of opinion and stifling debate about public affairs. It makes people less likely to voice opinions, particularly when they think their views differ from those of their friends, according to a report published Tuesday by researchers at Pew Research Center and Rutgers University.
Twitter和Facebook等社交媒體實際上壓制了觀點的多樣性，而且抑制了人們對公共事務的討論。皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)和羅格斯大學(Rutgers University)的研究人員週二發表的報告稱，社交媒體降低了人們表達意見的可能性，尤其是當他們認爲自己的看法與朋友不同的時候。

The researchers also found that those who use social media regularly are more reluctant to express dissenting views in the offline world.
研究人員還發現，與其他人相比，經常使用社交媒體的人在線下的世界裏，更加不願意表達不同觀點。

The Internet, it seems, is contributing to the polarization of America, as people surround themselves with people who think like them and hesitate to say anything different. Internet companies magnify the effect, by tweaking their algorithms to show us more content from people who are similar to us.
這樣看來，隨着人們讓自己周圍只剩下與自己看法相似，而且不願意提出不同的看法的人，互聯網正在加劇美國民衆觀點的分化。互聯網公司通過調整算法，向我們展示了更多與我們相似的人發佈的內容，於是放大了這一效應。

"People who use social media are finding new ways to engage politically, but there's a big difference between political participation and deliberation," said Keith N. Hampton, an associate professor of communication at Rutgers and an author of the study. "People are less likely to express opinions and to be exposed to the other side, and that's exposure we'd like to see in a democracy."
“使用社交媒體的人，發現了參與政治的新方式，但政治參與和政治討論是有很大區別的，”本文的作者之一、羅格斯大學傳播學副教授基思·N·漢普頓(Keith N. Hampton)說，“人們不那麼傾向於表達看法了，也不願意與不同立場的人接觸。我們在民主制度中，是期望見到這種接觸的。”

The researchers set out to investigate the effect of the Internet on the so-called spiral of silence, a theory that people are less likely to express their views if they believe they differ from those of their friends, family and colleagues. The Internet, many people thought, would do away with that notion because it connects more heterogeneous people and gives even minority voices a bullhorn.
研究人員打算探索互聯網對所謂的“沉默的螺旋”的影響。該理論認爲，當人們認爲自己的觀點與朋友、家人或同事不同時，表達自己看法的意願就會降低。許多人認爲，互聯網會讓這個概念徹底消失，因爲它讓更加相異的人們聯繫在一起，甚至還能傳播少數羣體的聲音。

Instead, the researchers found, the Internet reflects the offline world, where people have always gravitated toward like-minded friends and shied away from expressing divergent opinions. (There is a reason for the old rule to avoid religion or politics at the dinner table.)
然而研究人員發現，互聯網就是線下世界的反映。在線下世界，人們就總是會被想法相同的朋友吸引，遠離表達不同意見的人。（所以纔有在餐桌上避談宗教或政治的老規矩。）

And in some ways, the Internet has deepened that divide. It makes it easy for people to read only news and opinions from people they agree with. In many cases, people don't even make that choice for themselves. Last week, Twitter said it would begin showing people tweets even from people they don't follow if enough other people they follow favorite them. On Monday, Facebook said it would hide stories with certain types of headlines in the news feed. Meanwhile, harassment from online bullies who attack people who express opinions has become a vexing problem for social media sites and their users.
而互聯網以某些方式加深了這種分化。它讓人們很容易就可以只閱讀自己認同的人發佈的消息和觀點。許多情況下，人們甚至無需自己做出這樣的選擇。Twitter上星期稱，將開始向用戶顯示一些他們沒有關注的人發佈的消息，只要他們關注的用戶中，有足夠多的人收藏那條消息。週一，Facebook表示，將在用戶的頁面上隱藏標題屬於某些類型的報道。與此同時，網上不良用戶對錶達觀點的人進行騷擾，已經成了一個令社交網站和用戶都深感頭疼的問題。

Humans are acutely attuned to the approval of others, constantly reading cues to judge whether people agree with them, the researchers said. Active social media users get many more of these cues — like status updates, news stories people choose to share and photos of how they spend their days — and so they become less likely to speak up.
研究人員稱，人類都強烈渴望得到他人的認可，不斷地解讀各種信號，判斷人們是否認同自己。活躍的社交媒體用戶能夠獲得更多的此類信號——比如狀態更新、人們分享的消息，以及他們日常生活的照片——因此越來越不願意表達自己的看法。

For the study, researchers asked people about the revelations of National Security Agency surveillance by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a topic on which Americans were almost evenly divided.
爲了完成這份報告，研究人員調查了一些人對泄密者愛德華·斯諾登(Edward Snowden)揭露美國國家安全局（National Security Agency，簡稱NSA）監控項目的看法，美國人對這個問題基本上存在兩種觀點，且持兩種觀點的人數相當。

Most people surveyed said they would be willing to discuss government surveillance at dinner with family or friends, at a community meeting or at work. The only two settings where most people said they would not discuss it were Facebook and Twitter. And people who use Facebook a few times a day were half as likely as others to say they would voice an opinion about it in a real-world conversation with friends.
大多數的被調查者稱，他們願意在餐桌上與家人和朋友討論政府監控項目的問題，也願意在社區聚會或工作場所這麼做。多數人表示，他們唯獨不願在Facebook和Twitter上討論這個話題。而每天多次登錄Facebook的人，自稱願意在現實裏與朋友的交談中就此事發表意見的概率，與其他人相比會低一半。

Yet if Facebook users thought their Facebook friends agreed with their position on the issue, they were 1.9 times more likely to join a discussion there. And people with fervent views, either in favor of or against government spying, were 2.4 times more likely to say they would join a conversation about it on Facebook. Interestingly, those with less education were more likely to speak up on Facebook, while those with more education were more likely to be silent on Facebook yet express their opinion in a group of family or friends.
然而，如果Facebook用戶認爲，自己在該網站上的好友同意自己的立場，他們在Facebook上參與討論的可能性就會增加1.9倍。無論是支持還是反對政府監控項目的人，如果態度十分強烈，願意參與Facebook討論的可能性就會增加2.4倍。有趣的是，受教育程度較低的人更有可能在Facebook上暢所欲言，而受教育程度較高的人，則更傾向於在Facebook上保持沉默，同時在家人或朋友中表達自己的觀點。

The study also found that for all the discussion of social media becoming the place where people find and discuss news, most people said they got information about the N.S.A. revelations from TV and radio, while Facebook and Twitter were the least likely to be news sources.
研究還發現，儘管很多人都說社交媒體正在成爲發現和討論新聞事件的平臺，但多數人表示，他們是通過電視和廣播得知了NSA泄密的消息，而Facebook和Twitter成爲消息來源的可能性最小。

These findings are limited because the researchers studied a single news event. But consider another recent controversial public affairs story that people discussed online — the protests in Ferguson, Mo. Of the posts you read on Twitter and Facebook from people you know, how many were in line with your point of view and how many were divergent, and how likely were you to speak up?
這些發現是具有侷限性的，因爲研究人員只研究了一個新聞事件。但我們可以想想人們最近在網上討論的另一樁爭議性公共事件——密蘇里州弗格森的抗議活動。在你讀到的Twitter和Facebook上的帖子中，有多少觀點與你一致，有多少不同觀點，你又有多大可能在上面發表看法？