Tweeting From Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber?

被引:937
作者
Barbera, Pablo [1 ]
Jost, John T. [1 ,2 ,3 ]
Nagler, Jonathan [3 ]
Tucker, Joshua A. [3 ]
Bonneau, Richard [4 ]
机构
[1] NYU, Ctr Data Sci, New York, NY 10003 USA
[2] NYU, Dept Psychol, New York, NY 10003 USA
[3] NYU, Dept Polit, New York, NY 10003 USA
[4] NYU, Ctr Genom & Syst Biol, New York, NY 10003 USA
基金
美国国家科学基金会;
关键词
political ideology; polarization; social media; open data; open materials; SELECTIVE EXPOSURE; ATTITUDE EXTREMITY; CONSERVATIVES; POLARIZATION; IDEOLOGY; FEATHER; BIRDS; NEWS;
D O I
10.1177/0956797615594620
中图分类号
B84 [心理学];
学科分类号
04 ; 0402 ;
摘要
We estimated ideological preferences of 3.8 million Twitter users and, using a data set of nearly 150 million tweets concerning 12 political and nonpolitical issues, explored whether online communication resembles an echo chamber (as a result of selective exposure and ideological segregation) or a national conversation. We observed that information was exchanged primarily among individuals with similar ideological preferences in the case of political issues (e.g., 2012 presidential election, 2013 government shutdown) but not many other current events (e.g., 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 2014 Super Bowl). Discussion of the Newtown shootings in 2012 reflected a dynamic process, beginning as a national conversation before transforming into a polarized exchange. With respect to both political and nonpolitical issues, liberals were more likely than conservatives to engage in cross-ideological dissemination; this is an important asymmetry with respect to the structure of communication that is consistent with psychological theory and research bearing on ideological differences in epistemic, existential, and relational motivation. Overall, we conclude that previous work may have overestimated the degree of ideological segregation in social-media usage.
引用
收藏
页码:1531 / 1542
页数:12
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