Analyzing polarization of social media users and news sites during political campaigns

Marozzo, Fabrizio; Bessi, Alessandro

doi:10.1007/s13278-017-0479-5

Cited by 83 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Social media, especially Twitter, is often discussed in terms of its potential for facilitating the discursive isolation of users (Garrett, Carnahan, & Lynch, 2011;Hong & Kim, 2016;Morales, Borondo, Losada, & Benito, 2015). As individuals create communication networks on Twitter with those who share similar beliefs, it has been argued that social media significantly contributes to the polarization of public opinion (Bail et al, 2018;Marozzo & Bessi, 2017). Context, however, matters: communicative separation may occur for certain topics, while no significant differences may be traced in other issues (Barberá, Jost, Nagler, Tucker, & Bonneau, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Echo Chambers Based on Partisanship? Twitter and Political Polarity in Poland and Hungary

Matuszewski

Szabó

2019

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, we investigate how Twitter allows individuals in Hungary and Poland to experience different political views. To comprehend citizens’ exposure to political information, “who’s following who?” graphs of 455,912 users in Hungary (851,557 connections) and 1,803,837 users in Poland (10,124,501 connections) are examined. Our conceptual point of departure is that Twitter follower networks tell us whether individuals prefer to be members of a group that receives one-sided political messages, or whether they tend to form politically heterogeneous clusters that cut across ideological lines. Methodologically, such connections are best studied by means of computer-aided quantitative research complemented by the sociocentric approach of network analysis. Our data date from September 2018. The findings for Poland do not support the hypothesis of clusters emerging along partisan lines. Likewise, the Hungarian case reveals sharp group divisions on Twitter, the nodes however are diverse and overlapping in terms of political leaning. The data suggest that exposure and segregation in follower networks are not necessarily based on partisanship.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Echo Chambers Based on Partisanship? Twitter and Political Polarity in Poland and Hungary

Matuszewski

Szabó

2019

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Besides the German Federal Elections, various other major political events have been closely monitored using quantitative approaches, including the US Presidential Elections (2008) (Malouf & Mullen, ), the Arab Spring in Egypt (2011) (Boecking, Hall, & Schneider, ), the General Elections in Belgium (2011) (De Fortuny, De Smedt, Martens, & Daelemans, ), the Presidential Ballot in France (2011) (Ceron, Curini, Iacus, & Porro, ), the Independence Referendum in Scotland (2014) (Wagner, ), the Brexit referendum (2016) (Hurlimann et al, ), and the constitutional referendum in Italy (2016) (Marozzo & Bessi, )—to name just a few.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Proximity Between Newspapers and Political Parties: The Sentiment Political Compass

Falck¹,

Marstaller²,

Stoehr³

et al. 2019

Policy & Internet

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The proximity between newspapers and political parties is strongly subjective and difficult to measure. Yet, political tendencies of newspapers can have a significant impact on voters’ opinion‐forming and ought to be known by the public in a transparent and timely manner. This article introduces the Sentiment Political Compass (SPC), a data‐driven framework for analyzing political bias of newspapers toward political parties. Using the SPC, newspapers are embedded in a two‐dimensional space (left‐leaning vs. right‐leaning, libertarian vs. autocratic). To assess the informative value of our framework, we crawled a data set consisting of 180,000 newspaper articles from twenty‐five newspapers during the German Federal Elections over a time period of 18 months and extracted 740,000 political entities enriched with their contextual sentiment. We analyze this dataset on the party‐ and politician‐level as well as considering the temporal dimension and draw insights about the relationship between newspapers and political parties. We provide the data set and our code open‐source at http://www.politicalcompass.de to encourage the application of the SPC to other political landscapes.

show abstract

“…Tweets User engagement To access Twitter users' engagement with e-cigarette companies' tweets, the number of likes and retweets were measured. Although number of likes and retweets may be somewhat different from individuals' self-reported attitude toward social media content, the two variables have been widely used as a proxy of social media users' levels of engagement in studies that examined Tweets (e.g., Chung & Yoon, 2013;Marozzo & Bessi, 2018). Researchers have pointed out that Twitter users are more likely to retweet others' tweets when they find the tweets interesting (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013).…”

Section: Companymentioning

confidence: 99%

Electronic Cigarette Companies’ Twitter Messages: Public Interest (Mis)communication

Kim

Pardun

Overton

2019

JPIC

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite increased controversies over the health effects of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), little is known about how the public interest issue has been discussed by e-cigarette companies on social media. Using arguments from the theory of planned behavior as a guide, this study examines how e-cigarette companies engage with potential customers on Twitter. Using quantitative content analysis, this study examined 525 tweets from the top five e-cigarette companies that occurred between July 9, 2016, and September 9, 2016, one month before and after the U.S Food and Drug Administration implemented a new regulation limiting sales and distribution of tobacco products to minors. Results indicate that the deeming did not affect e-cigarette companies’ message strategies on Twitter. Theoretical and practical applications for public interest communications are discussed.

show abstract

Analyzing polarization of social media users and news sites during political campaigns

Cited by 83 publications

References 28 publications

Are Echo Chambers Based on Partisanship? Twitter and Political Polarity in Poland and Hungary

Are Echo Chambers Based on Partisanship? Twitter and Political Polarity in Poland and Hungary

Measuring Proximity Between Newspapers and Political Parties: The Sentiment Political Compass

Electronic Cigarette Companies’ Twitter Messages: Public Interest (Mis)communication

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About