Ideological and Temporal Components of Network Polarization in Online Political Participatory Media

Abstract

Political polarization is traditionally analyzed through the ideological stances of groups and parties, but it also has a behavioral component that manifests in the interactions between individuals. We present an empirical analysis of the digital traces of politicians in politnetz.ch, a Swiss online platform focused on political activity, in which politicians interact by creating support links, comments, and likes. We analyze network polarization as the level of intra-party cohesion with respect to inter-party connectivity, finding that supports show a very strongly polarized structure with respect to party alignment. The analysis of this multiplex network shows that each layer of interaction contains relevant information, where comment groups follow topics related to Swiss politics. Our analysis reveals that polarization in the layer of likes evolves in time, increasing close to the federal elections of 2011. Furthermore, we analyze the internal social network of each party through metrics related to hierarchical structures, information efficiency, and social resilience. Our results suggest that the online social structure of a party is related to its ideology, and reveal that the degree of connectivity across two parties increases when they are close in the ideological space of a multi-party system.

The Unheavenly Chorus: Political Voices of Organized Interests on Social Media

“…Second, from the standpoint of citizens, social media decreases the cost to individuals of participating in political activities and allows individuals to participate in a shared movement without necessarily being in the same location or acting simultaneously (Earl & Kimport, ). Third, social media technologies enable people to self‐select the type of information they want to consume, which has the potential to ideologically polarize information consumption (Bennett & Iyengar, ; Garcia, Abisheva, Schweighofer, Serdult, & Schweitzer, ; Gruzd & Roy, ; Hong, ; O'Hara & Stevens, ; Sunstein, ). Taken together, although social media has the potential to transform the power structure of political voices, very few researchers have provided empirical evidence related to this effect.…”

Soft Data and Public Policy: Can Social Media Offer Alternatives to Official Statistics in Urban Policymaking?

“…Among mainstream case studies is the analysis by Adamic and Glance () of the American political blogosphere. Similar research has followed (Conover et al, ); as an example, Garcia, Abisheva, Schweighofer, Serdult, and Schweitzer (, p. 47) analyzed online political participatory media, such as http://opencongress.org and politnetz.ch , in order to attain “a digital representation of a political system where voters and politicians can discuss in an online medium. These political participatory media serve as crowdsourcing platforms for the proposal and discussion of policies, leaving digital traces that allow unprecedented quantitative analyses of political interaction.”…”

Examining the Link Between Social Media Uses and Gratifications, and Political Tolerance and Dogmatism

“…This does not necessarily mean that political aspects that may be viewed as less desirable, such as political polarization, should be completely eradicated. As Garcia, Abisheva, Schweighofer, Serdült, and Schweitzer (, p. 46) note, “[p]olitical polarization is an important ingredient in the functioning of a democratic system, but too much of it can lead to gridlock or even violent conflict.” Given the potential of social media for enabling interaction, social media studies need to pay attention to identifying factors that can help develop desirable levels of interaction among politically diverse groups on social media.…”