Social networks in COVID-19 America: Americans remotely together but politically apart

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a social dilemma; "social distancing" was required to stop the spread of disease, but close social contacts were needed more than ever to collectively overcome the unprecedented challenges of the crisis. How did Americans mobilize their social ties in response to the pandemic? Drawing from a nation-wide daily online survey of 36,345 Americans from April 2020 through April 2021, we examine the characteristics of Americans' core networks within which people discuss "important matters." Comparing the COVID-19 networks to those previously collected in eight national core network surveys from 1985 to 2016, we observe remarkable stability in the size and relationship composition of core networks during COVID-19. In contrast to the robust nature of core networks, we discover a significant rise in racial homophily among kin ties, and political homophily among non-kin ties. Simultaneously, our study reveals a significant surge in the adoption of remote communication technology to connect with individuals who are geographically distant. We demonstrate that the changing mode of communication contributes to increases in racial and political homophily. These results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic may bring people remotely together but only with the like-minded, deepening social divides in American society