Online Fragmentation in Wartime: A Longitudinal Analysis of Tweets about Syria, 2011–2013. Issue 1 (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Freelon, Deen; Lynch, Marc; Aday, Sean
• Editors: Shah, Dhavan V.; Cappella, Joseph N.; Neuman, W. Russell
• Is Part Of: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Volume 659:Issue 1(2015:May)
• Page Start: 166
• Page End: 179
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: Syria -- Twitter -- fragmentation -- network analysis -- longitudinal; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- United States -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 300
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716214563921
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0002-7162

Abstract

Theorists have long predicted that like-minded individuals will tend to use social media to self-segregate into enclaves and that this tendency toward homophily will increase over time. Many studies have found moment-in-time evidence of network homophily, but very few have been able to directly measure longitudinal changes in the diversity of social media users' habits. This is due in part to a lack of appropriate tools and methods for such investigations. This study takes a step toward developing those methods. Drawing on the complete historical record of public retweets posted between January 2011 and August 2013, we propose and justify a partial method of measuring increases or decreases in network homophily. We demonstrate that Twitter network communities that focused on Syria are in general highly fragmented and homophilous; however, only one of the nine detected network communities that persisted over time exhibited a clear increase in homophily.