Ideological and Temporal Components of Network Polarization in Online Political Participatory Media

Political polarization is traditionally analyzed through the ideological stances of groups and parties, but it also has a behavioral component that manifests in the interactions between individuals. We present an empirical analysis of the digital traces of politicians in politnetz.ch, a Swiss online platform focused on political activity, in which politicians interact by creating support links, comments, and likes. We analyze network polarization as the level of intra- party cohesion with respect to inter-party connectivity, finding that supports show a very strongly polarized structure with respect to party alignment. The analysis of this multiplex network shows that each layer of interaction contains relevant information, where comment groups follow topics related to Swiss politics. Our analysis reveals that polarization in the layer of likes evolves in time, increasing close to the federal elections of 2011. Furthermore, we analyze the internal social network of each party through metrics related to hierarchical structures, information efficiency, and social resilience. Our results suggest that the online social structure of a party is related to its ideology, and reveal that the degree of connectivity across two parties increases when they are close in the ideological space of a multi-party system.Comment: 35 pages, 11 figures, Internet, Policy & Politics Conference, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 25-26 September 201

Distorting mirror: Formation of party political sphere on social media in Finland

In this dissertation, I assess interaction in social media as a novel mode of political participation and ask how are party politics extended within the social media public sphere in Finland during the 2010s. In this research, I evaluate the formation of the social media political sphere by analyzing the party–political, demographic, and ideological standings from which the sphere is produced and accessed, and how these factors are reconstructing social structures and orders on social media platforms. This dissertation concentrates on the six largest parties in Finland, namely the Social Democratic Party, the Finns Party, the National Coalition Party, the Center Party, the Green League, and the Left Alliance. By combining theoretical perspectives from a variety of academic fields, such as sociology, political science, social psychology, and economic sociology, the dissertation attempts to produce nuanced understandings of social, ideological, and party-political origins of digital participation and other topical phenomena, such as political polarization and spread of hate speech, in the Finnish political context. In addition to a theoretical introduction, the dissertation comprises five research articles that cross-expose the party-related political actions on social media platforms from different perspectives. Articles I and II form temporal and structural frames for understanding the evolution of the social media political sphere in Finland. In Article I, we investigate the current state of and recent changes in access to social media, as well as the utilization of social media platforms for various purposes by the Finnish population. The social mechanisms that guide the formation of the social structure of the social media sphere are evaluated in Article II. In the following articles, we provide a more nuanced understanding of the formation of the social media political sphere. In Article III, we evaluate the state of the social media political sphere by assessing social media participation among party supporter groups in the Finnish political field and contribute to the discussion on the effects of party supporters’ sociodemographic background and value-based premises on social media participation. In Articles IV and V, social media participation is understood as an explanatory mechanism associated with party supporters’ behavioral tendencies on social media and affective aspects of party members’ commitment to their parties. The research contributes novel knowledge related to political participation in social media and the formation of the political sphere in Finland during the 2010s. In the dissertation, I propose that political discussions in social media could be understood as a political activity through which participants can modify the public opinion by raising ideological aims and desires within the public sphere. The research illuminates how social structures and ideological aims both accelerate and attenuate political activity in the social media political sphere. In addition, the research shows how social structures and ideological stances are reflected in the structures of social media networks. Results of the dissertation also indicate that the social media political sphere emphasizes the visibility of the new identity parties, namely the Finns Party, the Green League, and the Left Alliance. Accordingly, the results infer that political discussions related to post-material and neo-conservative issues are highlighted on social media, which is especially reflected in the pronounced activity of the new identity parties’ supporters and members within both the social media sphere and political parties.-- Väitöstutkimus käsittelee sosiaalisessa mediassa käytävää keskustelua uudenlaisena yhteiskunnallisen osallistumisen muotona ja kysyy, miten puoluepolitiikka välittyy sosiaalisen median tilaan 2010-luvun Suomessa. Tutkimus lähestyy sosiaalista mediaa politiikan tilana keskittyen jäljittämään, mistä sosiaalisista ja ideologisista lähtökohdista tilaan liitytään, mistä lähtökohdista tilaa täytetään sekä miten nämä lähtökohdat vaikuttavat tilan sosiaaliseen rakenteeseen ja järjestykseen. Tutkimus nojaa politiikan sosiologiseen, politologiseen, sosiaalipsykologiseen sekä taloussosiologiseen teoriaan ja yhdistelee uudella tavalla eri kentillä käytyjä tieteellisiä keskusteluja. Siten tutkimus monipuolistaa nykyistä ymmärrystä digitaalisesta osallistumisesta ja auttaa hahmottamaan sosiaalisen median ajankohtaisten ilmiöiden – kuten muun muassa kuplaantumisen, polarisaation ja vihapuheen – taustalla piileviä yhteiskunnallisia rakenteita, puoluelähtöisiä eroja sekä ideologisia kannusteita. Johdanto- ja yhteenveto-osuuden lisäksi tutkimus sisältää viisi tutkimusartikkelia, joissa sosiaalisen median kautta tapahtuvaa poliittista osallistumista ja puolueiden edellytyksiä sosiaalisen median julkisessa tilassa tarkastellaan erilaisia näkökulmia ja aineistoja hyödyntäen. Väitöstutkimuksen kaksi ensimmäistä artikkelia muodostavat ajallisen ja rakenteellisen kehyksen sosiaalisen media tilan muodostumisen ymmärtämiselle. Ensimmäisessä artikkelissa tarkastelemme sosiaalisen median käytön väestöryhmäkohtaisia eroja sekä ajallisia muutoksia 2010-luvun Suomessa. Toisessa artikkelissa puolestaan tutkimme sosiaalisen median verkostojen muodostumiseen liittyviä sosiaalisia ja poliittisia mekanismeja. Väitöstutkimuksen kolmannessa, neljännessä sekä viidennessä artikkelissa paneudumme yksityiskohtaisemmin sosiaalisessa mediassa tapahtuvaan poliittiseen toimintaan. Kolmannessa artikkelissa tutkimme, miten suomalaisten puolueiden kannattajat käyttävät sosiaalista mediaa poliittisiin tarkoituksiin sekä miten kannattajaryhmien sosiodemografinen tausta ja poliittiset asenteet vaikuttavat sosiaalisessa mediassa tapahtuvaan poliittiseen osallistumiseen. Neljännessä ja viidennessä artikkelissa sosiaalisen median poliittista osallistumista lähestytään selittävänä toimintana, joka on yhteydessä niin puoluekannattajien sosiaalisen median toiminta- ja käyttäytymistapoihin kuin puoluejäsenten kokemaan puoluesitoutumiseen. Käsillä oleva väitöstutkimus tuottaa uutta empiiristä tietoa sosiaalisessa mediassa tapahtuvasta poliittisesta osallistumisesta ja (puolue)poliittisen tilan muodostumisesta 2010-luvun Suomessa. Tutkimuksessa esitän, että sosiaalisessa mediassa tapahtuva yhteiskunnallisten aiheiden kommentointi ja niihin liittyvä keskustelu voidaan ymmärtää politiikan tekemisenä, jossa keskusteluun osallistumalla muokataan sosiaalisen median julkista tilaa ja nostetaan ideologisia tavoitteita suuremman yleisön nähtäville. Tutkimus valottaa, miten sosiaaliset rakenteet ja ideologiset asenteet yhtäältä kannustavat ja toisaalta vaimentavat suomalaisten osallistumista sosiaalisessa mediassa. Samoin tutkimus osoittaa, miten sosiaaliset rakenteet ja ideologiset tavoitteet heijastuvat sosiaalisen median käyttäjien sosiaalisiin verkostoihin. Sosiaalisten rakenteiden sekä ideologisten asenteiden merkityksellisyydestä johtuen sosiaaliseen mediaan muotoutuva poliittinen tila korostaa erityisesti uusien identiteettipuolueiden – eli perussuomalaisten, vihreiden ja vasemmistoliiton – tavoitteiden näkyvyyttä julkisessa keskustelussa sekä näiden puolueiden asemaa suomalaisella poliittisella kentällä. Samoin tutkimus antaa viitteitä siitä, miten sosiaalisessa mediassa tapahtuva poliittinen keskustelu kärjistyy erityisesti postmaterialististen sekä uuskonservatismisten ryhmien välillä, mikä osaltaan heijastuu uusien identiteettipuolueiden kannattajien ja jäsenten toimintaan sekä sosiaalisessa mediassa että poliittisissa puolueissa

Modeling Ideological Salience and Framing in Polarized Online Groups with Graph Neural Networks and Structured Sparsity

The increasing polarization of online political discourse calls for computational tools that automatically detect and monitor ideological divides in social media. We introduce a minimally supervised method that leverages the network structure of online discussion forums, specifically Reddit, to detect polarized concepts. We model polarization along the dimensions of salience and framing, drawing upon insights from moral psychology. Our architecture combines graph neural networks with structured sparsity learning and results in representations for concepts and subreddits that capture temporal ideological dynamics such as right-wing and left-wing radicalization

Echo Chambers in Parliamentary Twitter Networks:The Catalan Case

Social media is transforming relations among members of parliaments, but are members taking advantage of these new media to broaden their party and ideological communication environment, or they are mainly communicating with other party members and ideologically aligned peers? This article tests whether parliamentarians’ use of Twitter is opening communication flows or confining them to representatives of the same party or ideology. The study is based on a data set spanning the period January 1, 2013, to March 31, 2014, which covers all relations (4,516), retweets (6,045), and mentions (19,507) among Catalan parliamentarians. Our results indicate that communication flows are polarized along party and ideological lines. The degree of polarization of this network depends, however, on where the interactions occur: The relations network is the most polarized; cross-party and cross-ideological interactions are greater in the retweet network and most present in the mention network

Exploiting Open Data to analyze discussion and controversy in online citizen participation

In this paper we propose a computational approach that applies data mining techniques to analyze the citizen participation recorded in an online digital platform. Differently to previous work, the approach exploits external knowledge extracted from Open Government Data for processing the citizens’ proposals and debates of the platform, enabling to characterize targeted issues and problems, and analyze the levels of discussion, sup-port and controversy raised by the proposals. As a result of our analysis, we derive a number of insights and conclusions of interest and value for both citizens and government stakeholders in decision and policy making tasks. Among others, we show that proposals targeting issues that affect large majorities tend to be supported by citizens and ultimately implemented by the city council, but leave aside other very important issues affecting minority groups. Our study reveals that most controversial, likely relevant, problems do not always receive sufficient attention in e-participation. Moreover, it identifies several types of controversy, related to ideological and socioeconomic factors and political attitude

Modeling and Analyzing Collective Behavior Captured by Many-to-Many Networks

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

'Enclaves of exposure' : a conceptual viewpoint to explore cross-ideology exposure on social network sites

Previous studies indicate mixed results as to whether social media constitutes ideological echo chambers. This inconsistency may arise due to a lack of theoretical frames that acknowledge the fact that contextual and technological factors allow varying levels of cross-cutting exposure on social media. This study suggests an alternative theoretical lens, divergence of exposure – co-existence of user groups with varying degrees of cross-ideology exposure related to the same issue – as a notion that serves as an overarching perspective. We suggest that mediated spaces, such as social media groups, can serve as enclaves of exposure that offer affordances for formation of user groups irrespective of offline social distinctions. Yet social elements cause some of them to display more cross-ideology exchange than others. To establish this claim empirically, we examine two Facebook page user networks (‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ and ‘Sri Lankans Hate Channel 4’) that emerged in response to Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, a controversial documentary broadcast by Channel 4 that accused Sri Lankan armed forces of human rights violation during the final stage of the separatist conflict in Sri Lanka. The results showed that the Facebook group network that supported the claims made by Channel 4 is more diverse in terms of ethnic composition, and is neither assortative nor disassortative across ethnicity, suggesting the presence of cross-ethnicity interaction. The pro-allegiant group was largely homogenous and less active, resembling a passive echo chamber. ‘Social mediation’ repurposes enclaves of exposure to represent polarized ideologies where some venues display cross-ideology exposure, while others resemble an ‘echo chamber’