How Do Filtering Choices Impact the Structures of Audience Networks? A Simulation Study Using Data from 26 Countries

Mangold, Frank; Scharkow, Michael

doi:10.1080/19312458.2020.1724274

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The blurriness of the supposed distinctions between elite culture and pop culture and the fast-changing online social network urges us to reconsider the model of interaction between cultural consumption and social connections and theorize this process in a more real-time flexible way (Mangold & Scharkow, 2020). Can people pursue elite culture and form social connections with out-group members with the same aesthetic values as a pop-culture conversion approach?…”

Section: The Evolving Media Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Breaking the Structural Reinforcement: An Agent-Based Model on Cultural Consumption and Social Relations

Zhong

Hilbert

Frey

2022

Social Science Computer Review

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Theorists since Marx, Bourdieu, and DiMaggio have asked how individual choices on cultural preference interact with collective social network structure. The rise of social media in today’s communication landscape motivates us to take a closer look at the involved dynamics. We designed an agent-based model to explore how different behavioral principles for cultural choice and communicative affiliation affect (1) collective consumption patterns, (2) social segregation, and (3) resilience of the emergent dynamic during exogenous distributions. We analyze the influence of individual agency on network structure, and vice versa, by simulating agents who pursue elite or popular culture, while communicating with others based on homophily or randomness. Our method allows us to go beyond specific constellations and explore the realm of theoretically possible combinations. We then used an exogenous disturbance on elite culture cost to test the resilience of social network structure. We found that only in societies where economic factors drive cultural consumption, increased access to elite culture can lead to reorganization in the social network and reduce segregation between different social groups. This is because the disturbance on consumption provides agents opportunities to connect with other social groups and opens a window for social mixing. We end by discussing how our model allows us to inform a diverse set of empirical research questions, including the cultural markets of social media, the digital divide, and the split between free misinformation and established news outlets.

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Section: The Evolving Media Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Breaking the Structural Reinforcement: An Agent-Based Model on Cultural Consumption and Social Relations

Zhong

Hilbert

Frey

2022

Social Science Computer Review

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“…Meanwhile, recent studies on audience fragmentation have primarily tried to identify the fragmented consumption between news outlets (e.g. Mangold and Scharkow, 2020; Mukerjee et al, 2018; Peng and Yang 2021; Webster and Ksiazek, 2012; Yang et al, 2020; Yuan and Ksiazek, 2015), but rarely investigated the media content that people actually consumed on these outlets. Since many news websites offer multiple topics that target different audiences’ interests, such as politics, sports, and health, the aforementioned studies did not directly test Prior’s assumption although their findings consistently suggested that audience fragmentation was overstated.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

No trade-offs between news and entertainment: Evidence from online engagement data

Huang¹,

Tian

2022

New Media & Society

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In today’s high-choice media environment, some scholars are concerned that people selectively consume media content based on personal interests and avoid others, which might lead to audience fragmentation across different content genres. Individually, there might be trade-offs between those genres, especially entertainment versus news. This study analyzed a large user engagement dataset (~40,000 users’ comments) collected from the Chinese information application Toutiao, one of the most popular information distribution platforms in China. The results showed that (1) the commenters were not fragmented between content genres, and (2) the users’ news engagement was positively associated with their entertainment engagement. The findings indicate that the availability of high media choices will not reduce the news engagement of those who have strong interest in entertainment. Instead, news engagement might increase alongside the augmentation of the sum of information engagement. Finally, we discussed the differences between relative news engagement and absolute news engagement.

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Facebook as an Avenue to News: A Comparison and Validation of Approaches to Identify Facebook Referrals

Schmidt,

Mangold,

Stier

et al. 2024

Political Communication

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How Do Filtering Choices Impact the Structures of Audience Networks? A Simulation Study Using Data from 26 Countries

Cited by 6 publications

References 46 publications

Breaking the Structural Reinforcement: An Agent-Based Model on Cultural Consumption and Social Relations

Breaking the Structural Reinforcement: An Agent-Based Model on Cultural Consumption and Social Relations

No trade-offs between news and entertainment: Evidence from online engagement data

Facebook as an Avenue to News: A Comparison and Validation of Approaches to Identify Facebook Referrals

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