Echo Chamber or Public Sphere? Predicting Political Orientation and Measuring Political Homophily in Twitter Using Big Data. (19th March 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Colleoni, Elanor; Rozza, Alessandro; Arvidsson, Adam
• Is Part Of: Journal of communication. Volume 64:Number 2(2014:Apr.)
• Page Start: 317
• Page End: 332
• Publication Date: 2014-03-19
• Subjects: Communication -- Periodicals; Communication and traffic -- Periodicals; Information theory -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Periodicals; 302.2
• DOI: 10.1111/jcom.12084
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0021-9916

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="jcom12084-abs-0001"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p id="jcom12084-para-0001"> <italic>This paper investigates political homophily on Twitter. Using a combination of machine learning and social network analysis we classify users as Democrats or as Republicans based on the political content shared. We then investigate political homophily both in the network of reciprocated and nonreciprocated ties. We find that structures of political homophily differ strongly between Democrats and Republicans. In general, Democrats exhibit higher levels of political homophily. But Republicans who follow official Republican accounts exhibit higher levels of homophily than Democrats. In addition, levels of homophily are higher in the network of reciprocated followers than in the nonreciprocated network. We suggest that research on political homophily on the Internet should take the political culture and practices of users seriously</italic>.</p> </abstract>