IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v8y2020i4p63-72.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Online Political Dialogue: Does Polarization Trigger More Deliberation?

Author

Listed:
  • Ignacio-Jesús Serrano-Contreras

    (Department of Political Science, University of Granada, Spain)

  • Javier García-Marín

    (Department of Political Science, University of Granada, Spain)

  • Óscar G. Luengo

    (Department of Political Science, University of Granada, Spain)

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing consolidation of different realms where citizens can deliberate and discuss a variety of topics of general interest, including politics. The comments on news posts in online media are a good example. The first theoretical contributions called attention to the potential of those spaces to build a healthy (civic and participatory) public sphere, going much deeper in the process of political dialogue and deliberation (Fung, Gilman, & Shkabatur, 2013; Lilleker & Jackson, 2008; O’Reilly, 2005; Stromer-Galley & Wichowski, 2011). Polarization has been configured as a constant feature of the quality of the mentioned dialogues, particularly in Mediterranean countries (polarized pluralists’ cases). One of the research challenges at the moment has to do with the scrutiny of polarization within the political deliberation provoked by news stories. The goal of this article is the analysis of political dialogue from the perspective of the polarization in the increasingly popular network YouTube, which is presenting very particular characteristics. Using a sample of almost 400,000 posted comments about diverse topics (climate change, the Catalonian crisis, and Political parties’ electoral ads) we propose an automated method in order to measure polarization. Our hypothesis is that the number of comments (quantitative variable) is positively related to their polarization (qualitative variable). We will also include in the examination information about the ideological editorial line of newspapers, the type of topic under discussion, the amount of traceable dialogue, etc. We propose an index to (1) measure the polarization of each comment and use it to show how this value has behaved over time; and (2) verify the hypothesis using the average polarization of comments for each video.

Suggested Citation

  • Ignacio-Jesús Serrano-Contreras & Javier García-Marín & Óscar G. Luengo, 2020. "Measuring Online Political Dialogue: Does Polarization Trigger More Deliberation?," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 63-72.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v8:y:2020:i:4:p:63-72
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v8i4.3149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3149
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v8i4.3149?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. Bernhardt, Dan & Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2008. "Political polarization and the electoral effects of media bias," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1092-1104, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Samantha C. Phillips & Joshua Uyheng & Kathleen M. Carley, 2023. "A high-dimensional approach to measuring online polarization," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 1147-1178, October.

    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. Bernhardt, Lea & Dewenter, Ralf & Thomas, Tobias, 2023. "Measuring partisan media bias in US newscasts from 2001 to 2012," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. Shane Greenstein & Yuan Gu & Feng Zhu, 2016. "Ideological Segregation among Online Collaborators: Evidence from Wikipedians," Harvard Business School Working Papers 17-028, Harvard Business School, revised Mar 2017.
    3. Dewenter, Ralf & Dulleck, Uwe & Thomas, Tobias, 2018. "The political coverage index and its application to government capture," Research Papers 6, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Federico Vaccari, 2023. "Influential news and policy-making," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1363-1418, November.
    5. Deena A. Isom & Hunter M. Boehme & Toniqua C. Mikell & Stephen Chicoine & Marion Renner, 2021. "Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right," Societies, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-20, July.
    6. Maxim Ananyev & Ekaterina Volkova, 2024. "Media ownership and ideological slant: Evidence from Australian newspaper mergers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(12), pages 1-20, December.
    7. Felix Chopra & Ingar K. Haaland & Christopher Roth, 2019. "Do People Value More Informative News?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8026, CESifo.
    8. Stefan Krasa & Mattias Polborn, 2007. "Majority-efficiency and Competition-efficiency in a Binary Policy Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 1958, CESifo.
    9. Larcinese, Valentino & Puglisi, Riccardo & Snyder, James M., 2011. "Partisan bias in economic news: Evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of U.S. newspapers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1178-1189.
    10. Lin Hu & Anqi Li & Ilya Segal, 2019. "The Politics of Personalized News Aggregation," Papers 1910.11405, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    11. Ozerturk, Saltuk, 2022. "Media access, bias and public opinion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    12. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    13. Katsuya Kobayashi & Hideo Konishi, 2016. "Endogenous party structure," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 317-351, November.
    14. Daron Acemoglu & Alexander Wolitzky, 2012. "Cycles of Distrust: An Economic Model," NBER Working Papers 18257, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. repec:osf:socarx:fy2we_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Ascensión Andina Díaz, 2011. "Mass Media in Economics: Origins and Subsequent Contributions," Working Papers 2011-02, Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center.
    17. Ignacio-Jesús Serrano-Contreras & Javier García-Marín & Óscar G. Luengo, 2020. "Measuring Online Political Dialogue: Does Polarization Trigger More Deliberation?," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 63-72.
    18. Mathias Bühler & Andrew Dickens & Andrew C. Dickens, 2024. "From Couch to Poll: Media Content and the Value of Local Information," CESifo Working Paper Series 10959, CESifo.
    19. Dewenter, Ralf & Linder, Melissa & Thomas, Tobias, 2018. "Can media drive the electorate? The impact of media coverage on party affiliation and voting intentions," Research Papers 7, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    20. John Duggan & César Martinelli, 2008. "The Role of Media Slant in Elections and Economics," Wallis Working Papers WP54, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    21. Shane Greenstein & Feng Zhu, 2012. "Is Wikipedia Biased?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 343-348, May.

    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:v8:y:2020:i:4:p:63-72. 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.