Political Polarization in Online News Consumption

Garimella, Kiran; Smith, Tim; Weiss, Rebecca; West, Robert

doi:10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18049

Cited by 35 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Finally, the two sides of the debate have about the same proportion of tweets with URLs (around 23%). Earlier works have shown a polarization in terms of news sources accompanying political polarization (Garimella et al 2021), however here we find differences in behavior beyond sharing news media. Table 4 shows the top domains of the URLs posted by proand anti-mask users, along with the counts.…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 65%

Authority without Care: Moral Values behind the Mask Mandate Response

Mejova

Kalimeri

Morales³

2023

ICWSM

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Face masks are one of the cheapest and most effective non-pharmaceutical interventions available against airborne diseases such as COVID-19. Unfortunately, they have been met with resistance by a substantial fraction of the populace, especially in the U.S. In this study, we uncover the latent moral values that underpin the response to the mask mandate, and paint them against the country's political backdrop. We monitor the discussion about masks on Twitter, which involves almost 600k users in a time span of 7 months. By using a combination of graph mining, natural language processing, topic modeling, content analysis, and time series analysis, we characterize the responses to the mask mandate of both those in favor and against them. We base our analysis on the theoretical frameworks of Moral Foundation Theory and Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Our results show that, while the anti-mask stance is associated with a conservative political leaning, the moral values expressed by its adherents diverge from the ones typically used by conservatives. In particular, the expected emphasis on the values of authority and purity is accompanied by an atypical dearth of in-group loyalty. We find that after the mandate, both pro- and anti-mask sides decrease their emphasis on care about others, and increase their attention on authority and fairness, further politicizing the issue. In addition, the mask mandate reverses the expression of Individualism-Collectivism between the two sides, with an increase of individualism in the anti-mask narrative, and a decrease in the pro-mask one. We argue that monitoring the dynamics of moral positioning is crucial for designing effective public health campaigns that are sensitive to the underlying values of the target audience.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 65%

Authority without Care: Moral Values behind the Mask Mandate Response

Mejova

Kalimeri

Morales³

2023

ICWSM

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“…There have been several analyses of political homophily on digital platforms, especially on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where politically-active users generally tend to connect with and consume content from sources that align with their political views (Bakshy, Messing, and Adamic 2015;Conover et al 2011;Cossard et al 2020;Garimella et al 2021;Cinelli et al 2021). There is also evidence suggesting these trends, at least on Twitter, are intensifying over time (Garimella and Weber 2017).…”

Section: Analyses Of Political Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspective-Taking to Reduce Affective Polarization on Social Media

Saveski

Gillani

Yuan

et al. 2022

ICWSM

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The intensification of affective polarization worldwide has raised new questions about how social media platforms might be further fracturing an already-divided public sphere. As opposed to ideological polarization, affective polarization is defined less by divergent policy preferences and more by strong negative emotions towards opposing political groups, and thus arguably poses a formidable threat to rational democratic discourse. We explore if prompting perspective-taking on social media platforms can help enhance empathy between opposing groups as a first step towards reducing affective polarization. Specifically, we deploy a randomized field experiment through a browser extension to 1,611 participants on Twitter, which enables participants to randomly replace their feeds with those belonging to accounts whose political views either agree with or diverge from their own. We find that simply exposing participants to "outgroup" feeds enhances engagement, but not an understanding of why others hold their political views. On the other hand, framing the experience in familiar, empathic terms by prompting participants to recall a disagreement with a friend does not affect engagement, but does increase their ability to understand opposing views. Our findings illustrate how social media platforms might take simple steps that align with business objectives to reduce affective polarization.

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“…Por ello, ha surgido un amplio catálogo de prácticas para el desarrollo de esa alfabetización mediática que suelen incorporar el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico (Savage et al, 2021), la promoción de la diversidad en el consumo informativo (Garimella et al, 2021), la verificación de la información y el uso responsable de las redes sociales (Tucker et al, 2018) o la promoción de una ciudadanía activa (Essomba;Nadeu;Tarrés, 2023). Sin embargo, la forma de alcanzar estos objetivos no es concluyente, puesto que se ha pivotado desde estilos clásicos de alfabetización (De-Abreu, 2019) a otros que incorporan estrategias como la gamificación o el aprendizaje basado en juegos (Chang et al, 2020;Glas et al, 2023).…”

Section: Desafíos Y Estrategias Para Combatir La Polarización Políticaunclassified

Polarización política y medios de comunicación, su impacto en la democracia y en la sociedad

Berrocal-Gonzalo,

Waisbord,

Gómez-García

2023

EPI

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Este artículo examina la relación entre la polarización política y los medios de comunicación en la sociedad contemporánea. La polarización se ha convertido en un fenómeno prevalente en muchos países, caracterizado por la creciente división de opiniones y actitudes extremas entre diferentes grupos políticos. Los medios de comunicación, como actores clave en la difusión de información y la formación de la opinión pública, desempeñan un papel fundamental en la perpetuación o mitigación de este proceso. Este trabajo presenta una conceptualización del fenómeno y examina su vinculación con la situación mediática, estableciendo su origen y también sus consecuencias: la segmentación de audiencias, el sensacionalismo o el sesgo mediático. Asimismo, se realiza una aproximación a la inteligencia artificial, el análisis de datos, la personalización de los mensajes, los chatbots o los algoritmos como agentes influyentes en el crecimiento de la polarización política. Los efectos de la polarización afectan a la sociedad en su consumo de medios y al propio funcionamiento de la democracia. La fragmentación informativa, la creciente desconfianza hacia los medios, el absentismo en la vida política son algunas de las consecuencias más significativas. De ahí que en este artículo se aborden las posibles soluciones y estrategias para fomentar un discurso público más constructivo y menos polarizado.

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Political Polarization in Online News Consumption

Cited by 35 publications

References 22 publications

Authority without Care: Moral Values behind the Mask Mandate Response

Authority without Care: Moral Values behind the Mask Mandate Response

Perspective-Taking to Reduce Affective Polarization on Social Media

Polarización política y medios de comunicación, su impacto en la democracia y en la sociedad

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