Politically Motivated Avoidance in Social Networks: A Study of Facebook and the 2020 Presidential Election

Abstract

This study considers politically motivated unfriending/unfollowing on Facebook in the lead up to the 2020 Presidential election. As social media has grown more central to public discourse, it has been suggested that these types of avoidance behaviors might contribute to the formation of partisan echo chambers, whereby users may limit their exposure to competing viewpoints and corrective information by eliminating the network ties that transmit it. Building on prior research, this study explores the relationship between politically motivated avoidance and user perceptions of social media’s credibility as a source of political information. A pre-election survey of voting age adults in the state of Florida is analyzed to identify both the frequency and predictors of politically motivated avoidance. The results suggest that avoidance is a function of both individual political characteristics and user perceptions of information credibility. The findings are considered in the context of previous literature, and important avenues for future research are discussed.

Social Media Feeds Amid the Election Everyday: Digital Boundaries and Disruption During the 2020 U.S. Election

“…Political communication literature has devoted significant attention to practices and effects of political avoidance on social media, such as unfriending networked political detractors (e.g., Neely, 2021). However, this paper challenges scholars to examine how people use and consume social media to define boundaries between realms of political experience.…”

“…Ultimately, my findings suggest that participants understand their feeds as spaces for articulating and maintaining symbolic boundaries. This is not merely to endorse their own political beliefs, as prior research suggests (e.g., Neely, 2021), but also to maintain imagined distinctions between their experiences of politics and everyday life online.…”

Users’ Motivations for Facebook Unfriending During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Survey Study

“…To date, academic analyses of unfriending on social media have focused primarily on sociopolitical contexts such as election cycles [ 16 ], protest movements [ 17 ], and geopolitical conflicts [ 18 ]. Relatively little attention has been paid to unfriending in the context of public health.…”

“…Prior studies on social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic have considered the impacts of decisions such as which accounts or sources to follow for COVID-19 pandemic–related information [ 1 ]. This study—building on prior research in the fields of political science and communication [ 16 , 18 , 34 ]—focuses specifically on unfriending behaviors, which shape future information environments based on user reactions to information exposure.…”

“…Although selective avoidance offers one potential motivation for unfriending, recent studies have suggested that unfriending may be a function of information utility rather than partisan predilections. For example, Neely [ 16 ] found a strong relationship between unfriending and SNS users’ perceptions of information credibility, wherein those who lacked confidence in the accuracy of information shared in their social network were substantially more likely to engage in unfriending. Metzger et al [ 41 ] reached similar conclusions, namely that selective exposure and avoidance appeared to be a function of how consumers assessed the credibility of an information source rather than the experience of any cognitive dissonance from being exposed to counterattitudinal information.…”