Abstract
We examine partisan differences in the behavior, communication patterns and social interactions of more than 18,000 politically-active Twitter users to produce evidence that points to changing levels of partisan engagement with the American online political landscape. Analysis of a network defined by the communication activity of these users in proximity to the 2010 midterm congressional elections reveals a highly segregated, well clustered partisan community structure. Using cluster membership as a high-fidelity (87% accuracy) proxy for political affiliation, we characterize a wide range of differences in the behavior, communication and social connectivity of left- and right-leaning Twitter users. We find that in contrast to the online political dynamics of the 2008 campaign, right-leaning Twitter users exhibit greater levels of political activity, a more tightly interconnected social structure, and a communication network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of political information.
Highlights
1 Introduction Digitally-mediated communication has become an integral part of the American political landscape, providing citizens access to an unprecedented wealth of information and organizational resources for political activity
Pervasive is the influence of digital communication on the political process that almost one quarter ( %) of American adults got the majority of their news about the midterm congressional elections from online sources, a figure that has increased three-fold since the Pew Research Center began monitoring the statistic during the campaign [ ]
We demonstrate that right-leaning Twitter users exhibit greater levels of political activity, tighter social bonds, and a communication network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of political information, a finding that stands in stark contrast to the online political dynamics of the campaign
Summary
Digitally-mediated communication has become an integral part of the American political landscape, providing citizens access to an unprecedented wealth of information and organizational resources for political activity. The final community assignments are consistent and robust to fluctuations in starting conditions [ ] To determine whether these communities were composed of users from the political left and right, respectively, we used qualitative content analysis to evaluate the tweets produced by , random users appearing in the intersection of the mention and retweet networks [ , ]. Our analysis shows that left-leaning users produce less total political content, allocate proportionally less time to creating political content, are less likely to reveal their political ideology in their profile biography, and are less likely to share resources in the form of hyperlinks All of these findings stand in stark contrast to survey data and media reportage of the online political dynamics, and provide evidence in support of the notion that right-leaning voters are becoming more politically engaged online.
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