Analyzing change in network polarization

Kearney, Michael W.

doi:10.1177/1461444818822813

Cited by 32 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(113 reference statements)

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“…The findings show that the prevailing political climate at any given time has a strong influence on people's decisions on how to react to divergent opinions on social media. Existing research points out that politically engaged and partisan users are the users who most often unfriend others (Kearney, 2019; J. K. Lee et al, 2014). Building on these findings, this article also demonstrates how politically disengaged and moderate users disconnect from others in peak moments of polarization.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 54%

“…The relationship between social media and polarization has become a contested issue in recent studies. Several studies show that social media leads to increasingly selective exposure to like-minded views and the formation of echo chambers (Himelboim et al, 2013; Kearney, 2019; Sunstein, 2002). At the same time, there are other studies balancing these findings that argue social media reduces mass political polarization (Barberá, 2014) or that echo chambers are overstated and actually only apply to a small segment of the population (Dubois & Blank, 2018).…”

Section: Polarization and Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Managing Diverse Online Networks in the Context of Polarization: Understanding How We Grow Apart on and through Social Media

Bozdağ

2020

Social Media + Society

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Social media enable their users to be connected with a diverse group of people increasing their chances of coming across divergent viewpoints. Thus, network diversity is a key issue for understanding the potentials of social media for creating a cross-cutting communication space that is one of the premises of a functioning democracy. This article analyzes the strategies social media users adopt to manage their network diversity in the context of increasing polarization. The study is based on 29 semi-structured interviews with diverse social media users from Turkey and qualitative network maps. Furthermore, the study adopts a cross-platform approach comparing Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp in relation to the diversity of their users’ networks. The study shows that social media users adopt different strategies interchangeably in specific contexts. These strategies include visible (unfriending, blocking) and invisible (muting, unfollowing, and ignoring) forms of disconnection, debating, observing divergent opinions, and self-censorship. Political interest of social media users, political climate, issue sensitivity, and “imagined affordances” of social media platforms play a role in users’ choices about which strategy to choose when they are confronted with divergent viewpoints through their diverse online networks. Building on the unfriending literature that points out to rather partisan users, who unfriend, unfollow or block others, this article demonstrates that in peak moments of polarization, also the politically disengaged or moderate users disconnect from diverse others.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Section: Polarization and Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Diverse Online Networks in the Context of Polarization: Understanding How We Grow Apart on and through Social Media

Bozdağ

2020

Social Media + Society

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“…The prevalence of negative emotions in the news context enables its rapid diffusion in online networks [ 67 , 68 ], while users’ sentiment negativity, in general, creates a favourable environment for their polarisation [ 69 ]. Partisan users were found to be especially likely to engage in homogeneous connections and produce more polarised network structures [ 70 ]. However, cross-platform differences in the polarisation dynamics have also been mapped by the previous research.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Users’ polarisation in dynamic discussion networks: The case of refugee crisis in Sweden

Kopacheva

Yantseva

2022

PLoS ONE

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This paper presents a study on the dynamics of sentiment polarisation in the active online discussion communities formed around a controversial topic—immigration. Using a collection of tweets in the Swedish language from 2012 to 2019, we track the development of the communities and their sentiment polarisation trajectories over time and in the context of an exogenous shock represented by the European refugee crisis in 2015. To achieve the goal of the study, we apply methods of network and sentiment analysis to map users’ interactions in the network communities and quantify users’ sentiment polarities. The results of the analysis give little evidence for users’ polarisation in the network and its communities, as well as suggest that the crisis had a limited effect on the polarisation dynamics on this social media platform. Yet, we notice a shift towards more negative tonality of users’ sentiments after the crisis and discuss possible explanations for the above-mentioned observations.

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“…Social networking sites also tend to become more heterogeneous over time. The more we use social networking sites, the greater the diversity of the people we talk to (Choi & Lee, 2015;Lee et al, 2014), although political networks may become polarised at the same time (Kearney, 2019). People also tend to block others on social networking sites, and one reason for this is that unknown people tend to pop up in discussions (Skoric et al, 2018).…”

Section: People Prefer Like-minded Individuals But Interact With Many Others Toomentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical review of filter bubbles and a comparison with selective exposure

Dahlgren

2021

Nordicom Review

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The new high-choice media environment has raised concerns that users of social networking sites primarily select political information that supports their political opinions and avoid information that challenges them. This behaviour is reinforced by personalisation algorithms that create filter bubbles and both narrow the available content and exclude challenging information over time. These concerns have, however, been contested. This article challenges the underlying theoretical assumptions about filter bubbles, and compares filter bubbles to what we already know about selective exposure and human psychology. The article lists nine counterarguments to the filter bubble thesis. In short, I argue that the assumptions of filter bubbles contradict many of the previous findings of selective exposure research. More specifically, when discussing filter bubbles there is a risk of confusing two arguments: one strong – but also trivial – that is about technology (e.g., personalisation leads to different information), and one weak and speculative – but also the most interesting – that is about society (e.g., personalisation increases political polarisation in society).

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Analyzing change in network polarization

Cited by 32 publications

References 86 publications

Managing Diverse Online Networks in the Context of Polarization: Understanding How We Grow Apart on and through Social Media

Managing Diverse Online Networks in the Context of Polarization: Understanding How We Grow Apart on and through Social Media

Users’ polarisation in dynamic discussion networks: The case of refugee crisis in Sweden

A critical review of filter bubbles and a comparison with selective exposure

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