Sponsor
Political Science
B&I Workshop: Jon Green (Duke)
Wednesday, February 14,
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Jon Green will be presenting his ongoing project on "Curation Bubbles." Please see the abstract below.
Abstract:
Research concerning the extent of filter bubbles, echo chambers, or other forms of politically segregated information consumption typically conceptualizes political appeal at the source level. However, information on social media is characterized by networked curation processes in which users select other users from whom to receive information, and those users in turn share socially useful information from a variety of sources. We demonstrate that politically homogeneous curation bubbles often bring individual stories to audiences atypical of the sources that produced them. This leads domain-level measures of audience partisanship based on social media sharing behavior to mischaracterize the partisan appeal of sources' constituent stories -- especially for sources with more moderate overall estimates. Accounting for networked curation aligns theory and measurement of political information consumption on social media.
Abstract:
Research concerning the extent of filter bubbles, echo chambers, or other forms of politically segregated information consumption typically conceptualizes political appeal at the source level. However, information on social media is characterized by networked curation processes in which users select other users from whom to receive information, and those users in turn share socially useful information from a variety of sources. We demonstrate that politically homogeneous curation bubbles often bring individual stories to audiences atypical of the sources that produced them. This leads domain-level measures of audience partisanship based on social media sharing behavior to mischaracterize the partisan appeal of sources' constituent stories -- especially for sources with more moderate overall estimates. Accounting for networked curation aligns theory and measurement of political information consumption on social media.