title: Tweeting From Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber?
abstract: 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.
authors: Center for Data Science pablo.barbera@nyu.edu.
authors: Pablo
authors: P
authors: Barberá
authors: Center for Data Science Department of Psychology Department of Politics.
authors: John T
authors: JT
authors: Jost
authors: Department of Politics.
authors: Jonathan
authors: J
authors: Nagler
authors: Department of Politics.
authors: Joshua A
authors: JA
authors: Tucker
authors: Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University.
authors: Richard
authors: R
authors: Bonneau
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D009042:Motivation; D011057:Politics; D011582:Psychological Theory; D061108:Social Media / Q000706:statistics & numerical data* / Q000639:trends; D014481:United States
keywords: open data; open materials; polarization; political ideology; social media