Investigating effects of social endorsements on exposure to and engagement with political disagreement on social networking sites*

Abstract

AbstractObjectiveSocial networking sites (SNSs) provide users with a variety of opportunities to encounter political disagreement. One important factor of the encounters with disagreement could be social endorsements because SNS users can easily engage with other people's posts via functions, such as liking and retweeting. The goal of this study is to test the hypothesis by examining the relationship between social endorsements, exposure to political disagreement (XPD), and information seeking.MethodsWe use a national survey conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. Ordinary least squares regression models are specified for analysis.ResultsWe find that SNS users who prefer reading political information endorsed by others are more likely to encounter political disagreement. We also find that XPD on SNSs encourages people to search for more information about the counter‐attitudinal posts, especially when the encountered disagreement is perceived to have good arguments and rationales.ConclusionOverall, social endorsement enhances the probability of XPD on SNSs. This in turn facilitates individuals’ search for more information, an important feature in democracy.