Solomon Messing Explained

Solomon Messing is a researcher and data scientist known for his work on how algorithms and social information embedded in new technologies affect the way people understand the political world. He was the founding Director of Pew Research Center's Data Labs,^[1] research scientist at Facebook and Twitter,^[2] chief scientist at Acronym,^{[3] [4]} and is now Research Associate Professor at New York University.

Messing's work quantifying media polarization and filter bubbles was published in Science^[5] and has been influential in the field of political communication^[6] and sparked media commentary on the role of networks and algorithms in the media ecosystem.^{[7] [8] [9] [10]} His work on how people understand election forecasting^[11] was the subject of public debate about the role of election forecasting in the democratic process^{[12] [13] [14] [15]} and was cited by FiveThirtyEight's Politics Podcast^[16] as a reason for changing the forecast from percent change of winning to odds.

He also led the technical effort at Facebook to release perhaps the largest ever social media data set for research, which relied on a controversial technology, differential privacy, to protect data from malicious actors.^{[17] [18]}

Messing earned his PhD in 2013 as well as a master's degree in Statistics from Stanford University.^[19]

Most cited peer-reviewed journal articles

• Bakshy E, Messing S, Adamic LA. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science. 2015 Jun 5;348(6239):1130-2. cited 2441 times in Google Scholar^[20]
• Messing S, Westwood SJ. Selective exposure in the age of social media: Endorsements trump partisan source affiliation when selecting news online. Communication Research. 2014 Dec;41(8):1042-63. cited 925 times in Google Scholar
• Grimmer J, Messing S, Westwood SJ. How words and money cultivate a personal vote: The effect of legislator credit claiming on constituent credit allocation' American Political Science Review. 2012 Nov;106(4):703-19.cited 311 times in Google Scholar
• Bond R, Messing S. Quantifying social media’s political space: Estimating ideology from publicly revealed preferences on Facebook. American Political Science Review. 2015 Feb;109(1):62-78. cited 182 times in Google Scholar

Notes and References

1. News: Q&A with Solomon Messing of Pew Research Center's Data Labs Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. 2018-10-24. en-US.
2. Web site: Solomon Messing. Facebook Research . Facebook . https://web.archive.org/web/20190611084610/https://research.fb.com/people/messing-solomon/ . 11 June 2019. 2019-06-11 .
3. News: Pasternack . Alex . This data expert helped Trump win. Now he's built a machine to take him down . 1 December 2021 . 2 November 2020.
4. Web site: Election forecasts helped elect Trump in 2016. It could happen again in 2020. . Yahoo News. en-US. 2020-10-06.
5. Bakshy. Eytan. Messing. Solomon. Adamic. Lada. 2015-05-07. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science. 348. 6239. en. 1130–2. 10.1126/science.aaa1160. 0036-8075. 25953820. 2015Sci...348.1130B. 206632821. free.
6. Web site: Google Scholar. scholar.google.com. 2018-10-25.
7. News: Facebook Use Polarizing? Site Begs to Differ. Manjoo. Farhad. 2015-05-07. New York Times. 2018-10-24. en.
8. News: Facebook study says it's mainly your fault–not theirs–that you click on things you already agree with. Mooney. Chris. May 7, 2015. Washington Post. 2017-01-12.
9. News: Facebook studies news feed balance. Webb. Jonathan. 2015-05-07. BBC News. 2018-10-24. en-GB.
10. News: Does Facebook's News Feed control your world view?. 2018-10-24. en.
11. Westwood. Sean. Messing. Solomon. Lelkes. Yphtach. 2018. Projecting Confidence: How the Probabilistic Horse Race Confuses and Demobilizes the Public. SSRN Working Paper Series. en. 10.2139/ssrn.3117054. 1556-5068. 3117054. 102488084.
12. News: Analysis Clinton's Achilles' heel in 2016 may have been overconfidence. Bump. Philip. Washington Post. en. 2018-10-24.
13. News: Americans Don't Understand Election Predictions Expressed As Probabilities. Kilgore. Ed. Intelligencer. 2018-10-24. en.
14. Web site: Study Finds Election Forecasts Lower Voter Turnout. politicalwire.com. en-US. 2018-10-24.
15. News: Forecasting the midterms: Uncertainty with a chance of finger-pointing. Uberti. David. 2018-10-18. Columbia Journalism Review. 2018-10-24. en.
16. News: Politics Podcast: What's So Wrong With Nancy Pelosi?. 2018-02-12. FiveThirtyEight. 2018-10-24. en-US.
17. Web site: Flamini . Daniela . What can researchers find among the 32 million URLs Facebook just released to Social Science One? . Poynter . 11 October 2019 . Poynter.
18. Book: Aral . Sinan . The Hype Machine . Sep 14, 2021 . Crown/Archetype . 276 . 9780593240403 .
19. Web site: SMaPP Global . New York University Social Media and Political Participation Lab . New York University.
20. Web site: Google Scholar.