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Quantifying Social Media’s Political Space: Estimating Ideology from Publicly Revealed Preferences on Facebook

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  • BOND, ROBERT
  • MESSING, SOLOMON

Abstract

We demonstrate that social media data represent a useful resource for testing models of legislative and individual-level political behavior and attitudes. First, we develop a model to estimate the ideology of politicians and their supporters using social media data on individual citizens’ endorsements of political figures. Our measure allows us to place politicians and more than 6 million citizens who are active in social media on the same metric. We validate the ideological estimates that result from the scaling process by showing they correlate highly with existing measures of ideology from Congress, and with individual-level self-reported political views. Finally, we use these measures to study the relationship between ideology and age, social relationships and ideology, and the relationship between friend ideology and turnout.

Suggested Citation

  • Bond, Robert & Messing, Solomon, 2015. "Quantifying Social Media’s Political Space: Estimating Ideology from Publicly Revealed Preferences on Facebook," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 62-78, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:109:y:2015:i:01:p:62-78_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Soojong Kim, 2019. "Directionality of information flow and echoes without chambers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-22, May.
    2. Zachary J. Auter & Jeffrey A. Fine, 2018. "Social Media Campaigning: Mobilization and Fundraising on Facebook," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 99(1), pages 185-200, March.
    3. Ignacio Ramos-Vidal, 2022. "Structural Cohesion, Role Equivalence, or Homophily: Which Process Best Explains Social Homogeneity?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Garz, Marcel & Sörensen, Jil & Stone, Daniel F., 2020. "Partisan selective engagement: Evidence from Facebook," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 91-108.
    5. Anjie Fang & Philip Habel & Iadh Ounis & Craig MacDonald, 2019. "Votes on Twitter: Assessing Candidate Preferences and Topics of Discussion During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440187, March.
    6. Cerina, Roberto & Duch, Raymond, 2020. "Measuring public opinion via digital footprints," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 987-1002.
    7. Christopher J Fariss & James Lo, 2020. "Innovations in concepts and measurement for the study of peace and conflict," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(6), pages 669-678, November.

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