Social media platforms can significantly influence people’s perceptions and beliefs. While studies have been conducted to understand this social media discourse, there has been limited work in designing effective interventions. To tackle this problem, we designed an experimental study setup that replicates social media phenomena within controlled virtual laboratory settings. Our experimental framework is grounded in existing literature, taking inspiration from the Delphi study method, and consisting of common current social media functionalities to emulate the ``social media experience". [Read]

We use this framework to quantify the effects of a randomized social network structure on belief rigidity, specifically examining the potential benefits of introducing randomness into the network. Our analysis indicates that individuals' beliefs are influenced by peer opinions, regardless of whether those opinions are similar to or differ from their own. Our results also suggest that people incorporate a slightly higher variety of different peer opinions into their networks when the recommendation algorithm provides them with diverse content.