More Like this

1. Whose Advantage? Measuring Attention Dynamics across YouTube and Twitter on Controversial Topics

   Lee, JooYoung ; Wu, Siqi ; Ertugrul, Ali Mert ; Lin, Yu-Ru ; Xie, Lexing ( January 2022 , Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media)

   The ideological asymmetries have been recently observed in contested online spaces, where conservative voices seem to be relatively more pronounced even though liberals are known to have the population advantage on digital platforms. Most prior research, however, focused on either one single platform or one single political topic. Whether an ideological group garners more attention across platforms and/or topics, and how the attention dynamics evolve over time, have not been explored. In this work, we present a quantitative study that links collective attention across two social platforms -- YouTube and Twitter, centered on online activities surrounding popular videos of three controversial political topics including Abortion, Gun control, and Black Lives Matter over 16 months. We propose several sets of video-centric metrics to characterize how online attention is accumulated for different ideological groups. We find that neither side is on a winning streak: left-leaning videos are overall more viewed, more engaging, but less tweeted than right-leaning videos. The attention time series unfold quicker for left-leaning videos, but span a longer time for right-leaning videos. Network analysis on the early adopters and tweet cascades show that the information diffusion for left-leaning videos tends to involve centralized actors; while that for right-leaning videos starts earlier in the attention lifecycle. In sum, our findings go beyond the static picture of ideological asymmetries in digital spaces and provide a set of methods to quantify attention dynamics across different social platforms. 

   more » « less
2. Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09812-3  

   Enders, Adam ; Farhart, Christina ; Miller, Joanne ; Uscinski, Joseph ; Saunders, Kyle ; Drochon, Hugo ( July 2022 , Political Behavior)

   A sizable literature tracing back to Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style (1964) argues that Republicans and conservatives are more likely to believe conspiracy theories than Democrats and liberals. However, the evidence for this proposition is mixed. Since conspiracy theory beliefs are associated with dangerous orientations and behaviors, it is imperative that social scientists better understand the connection between conspiracy theories and political orientations. Employing 20 surveys of Americans from 2012 to 2021 (total n = 37,776), as well as surveys of 20 additional countries spanning six continents (total n = 26,416), we undertake an expansive investigation of the asymmetry thesis. First, we examine the relationship between beliefs in 52 conspiracy theories and both partisanship and ideology in the U.S.; this analysis is buttressed by an examination of beliefs in 11 conspiracy theories across 20 more countries. In our second test, we hold constant the content of the conspiracy theories investigated—manipulating only the partisanship of the theorized villains—to decipher whether those on the left or right are more likely to accuse political out-groups of conspiring. Finally, we inspect correlations between political orientations and the general predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories over the span of a decade. In no instance do we observe systematic evidence of a political asymmetry. Instead, the strength and direction of the relationship between political orientations and conspiricism is dependent on the characteristics of the specific conspiracy beliefs employed by researchers and the socio-political context in which those ideas are considered. 

   more » « less
3. Deep Alignment with Country Shrinks the Moral Gap Between Conservatives and Liberals

   https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12534  

   Talaifar, Sanaz ; Swann, Jr., William B. ( October 2018 , Political Psychology)

   Moral foundations theory suggests that relative to liberals, conservatives care more about values that are believed to bind group members together: loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation. In contrast, we propose that individuals who are deeply aligned (“fused”) with their group should display elevated commitment to group‐oriented moral values, regardless of their political orientation. The results of three studies supported this hypothesis. The tendency for conservatives to endorse the binding foundations more than liberals only emerged among weakly and moderately fused Americans. In fact, liberals strongly fused with the United States endorsed “binding” foundationsmorethan average conservatives and to the same extent as strongly fused conservatives. These results indicate that to fully understand moral prerogatives, one must consider the nature of the connections people form to the group, as well as their political orientation.

    

   more » « less
4. Conservatives’ Moral Foundations Are More Densely Connected Than Liberals’ Moral Foundations

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220916070  

   Turner-Zwinkels, Felicity M. ; Johnson, Branden B. ; Sibley, Chris G. ; Brandt, Mark J. ( May 2020 , Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

   We use network psychometrics to map a subsection of moral belief systems predicted by moral foundations theory (MFT). This approach conceptualizes moral systems as networks, with moral beliefs represented as nodes connected by direct relations. As such, it advances a novel test of MFT’s claim that liberals and conservatives have different systems of foundational moral values, which we test in three large datasets ( NSample1 = 854; NSample2 = 679; NSample3 = 2,572), from two countries (the United States and New Zealand). Results supported our first hypothesis that liberals’ moral systems show more segregation between individualizing and binding foundations than conservatives. Results showed only weak support for our second hypothesis, that this pattern would be more typical of higher educated than less educated liberals/conservatives. Findings support a systems approach to MFT and show the value of modeling moral belief systems as networks. 

   more » « less
5. Political Discussion is Abundant in Non-political Subreddits (and Less Toxic)

   Rajadesingan, Ashwin ; Budak, Ceren ; Resnick, Paul ( May 2021 , Proceedings of the Fifteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media)

   Budak, Ceren ; Cha, Meeyoung ; Quercia, Daniele ; Xie, Lexing (Ed.)

   Research on online political communication has primarily focused on content in explicitly political spaces. In this work, we set out to determine the amount of political talk missed using this approach. Focusing on Reddit, we estimate that nearly half of all political talk takes place in subreddits that host political content less than 25% of the time. In other words, cumulatively, political talk in non-political spaces is abundant. We further examine the nature of political talk and show that political conversations are less toxic in non-political subreddits. Indeed, the average toxicity of political comments replying to a out-partisan in non-political subreddits is less than even the toxicity of co-partisan replies in explicitly political subreddits. 

   more » « less