IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v10y2022i2p81-92.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Homophily and Polarization in Twitter Political Networks: A Cross-Country Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Esteve-Del-Valle

    (Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands)

Abstract

Homophily, the tendency of people to have ties with those who are similar, is a fundamental pattern to understand human relations. As such, the study of homophily can provide key insights into the flow of information and behaviors within political contexts. Indeed, some degree of polarization is necessary for the functioning of liberal democracies, but too much polarization can increase the adoption of extreme political positions and create democratic gridlock. The relationship between homophilous communication ties and political polarization is thus fundamental because it affects a pillar of democratic regimes: the need for public debate where divergent ideas and interests can be confronted. This research compares the degree of homophily and political polarization in Catalan MPs’ Twitter mentions network to Dutch MPs’ Twitter mentions network. Exponential random graph models were employed on a one-year sample of mentions among Dutch MPs ( N = 7,356) and on a one-year, three-month sample of mentions among Catalan MPs ( N = 19,507). Party polarization was measured by calculating the external–internal index of both Twitter mentions networks. Results reveal that the mentions among Catalan MPs are much more homophilous than those among the Dutch MPs. Indeed, there is a positive relationship between the degree of MPs’ homophilous communication ties and the degree of political polarization observed in each network.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Esteve-Del-Valle, 2022. "Homophily and Polarization in Twitter Political Networks: A Cross-Country Analysis," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 81-92.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:81-92
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v10i2.4948
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4948
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v10i2.4948?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mutz, Diana C., 2001. "Facilitating Communication across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(1), pages 97-114, March.
    2. Hunter, David R. & Handcock, Mark S. & Butts, Carter T. & Goodreau, Steven M. & Morris, Martina, 2008. "ergm: A Package to Fit, Simulate and Diagnose Exponential-Family Models for Networks," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 24(i03).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marc Esteve-Del-Valle, 2022. "Homophily and Polarization in Twitter Political Networks: A Cross-Country Analysis," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 81-92.
    2. Darko Cherepnalkoski & Andreas Karpf & Igor Mozetič & Miha Grčar, 2016. "Cohesion and Coalition Formation in the European Parliament: Roll-Call Votes and Twitter Activities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-27, November.
    3. Neal, Zachary & Domagalski, Rachel & Yan, Xiaoqin, 2020. "Party Control as a Context for Homophily in Collaborations among US House Representatives, 1981 -- 2015," OSF Preprints qwdxs, Center for Open Science.
    4. Prochnow, Tyler & Patterson, Megan S. & Hartnell, Logan & West, Geoffrey & Umstattd Meyer, M. Renée, 2021. "Implications of race and ethnicity for child physical activity and social connections at summer care programs," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    5. Krivitsky, Pavel N., 2017. "Using contrastive divergence to seed Monte Carlo MLE for exponential-family random graph models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 149-161.
    6. Patience Pokuaa Gambrah & Qian Yu, 2025. "Smallholder farmers’ network structure: a case study in Ghana," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 1-17, March.
    7. Ma, Ding & Yu, Qian & Li, Jing & Ge, Mengni, 2021. "Innovation diffusion enabler or barrier: An investigation of international patenting based on temporal exponential random graph models," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    8. De Nicola, Giacomo & Fritz, Cornelius & Mehrl, Marius & Kauermann, Göran, 2023. "Dependence matters: Statistical models to identify the drivers of tie formation in economic networks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 351-363.
    9. Ashani Amarasinghe & Paul A. Raschky, 2022. "Competing for Attention - The Effect of Talk Radio on Elections and Political Polarization in the US," SoDa Laboratories Working Paper Series 2022-02, Monash University, SoDa Laboratories.
    10. Changwei Yuan & Jinrui Zhu & Shuai Zhang & Jiannan Zhao & Shibo Zhu, 2024. "Analysis of the Spatial Correlation Network and Driving Mechanism of China’s Transportation Carbon Emission Intensity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-23, April.
    11. Li, Yonglin & Zuo, Zhili & Cheng, Jinhua & Xu, Deyi, 2024. "Evolutionary characteristics and structural dependence determinants of global lithium trade network: An industry chain perspective," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    12. Lasse Folke Henriksen & Stefano Ponte, 2018. "Public orchestration, social networks, and transnational environmental governance: Lessons from the aviation industry," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(1), pages 23-45, March.
    13. Niles Breuer & Federico Varese, 2023. "The Structure of Trade-type and Governance-type Organized Crime Groups: A Network Study," The British Journal of Criminology, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, vol. 63(4), pages 867-888.
    14. Lindita Camaj, 2019. "From Selective Exposure to Selective Information Processing: A Motivated Reasoning Approach," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(3), pages 8-11.
    15. Pavel N. Krivitsky & Laura M. Koehly & Christopher Steven Marcum, 2020. "Exponential-Family Random Graph Models for Multi-Layer Networks," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 85(3), pages 630-659, September.
    16. Dan Simon & Nicholas Scurich, 2013. "The Effect of Legal Expert Commentary on Lay Judgments of Judicial Decision Making," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(4), pages 797-814, December.
    17. Zenou, Yves & Lindquist, Matthew, 2014. "Key Players in Co-Offending Networks," CEPR Discussion Papers 9889, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Christian Homburg & Theresa R. Schyma (née Morguet) & Sebastian Hohenberg & Yashar Atefi & Robin-Christopher M. Ruhnau, 2024. "“Coopetition” in the presence of team and individual incentives: Evidence from the advice network of a sales organization," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 306-328, March.
    19. Emily Casleton & Daniel J. Nordman & Mark S. Kaiser, 2022. "Modeling Transitivity in Local Structure Graph Models," Sankhya A: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Springer;Indian Statistical Institute, vol. 84(1), pages 389-417, June.
    20. Suesse Thomas & Chambers Ray, 2018. "Using Social Network Information for Survey Estimation," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 34(1), pages 181-209, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:81-92. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.