Logo image
Cultural Fault Lines and Political Polarization
Conference proceeding

Cultural Fault Lines and Political Polarization

Yongren Shi, Kai Mast, Ingmar Weber, Agrippa Kellum, Michael Macy and ACM
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2017 ACM WEB SCIENCE CONFERENCE (WEBSCI '17), pp.213-217
01/01/2017
DOI: 10.1145/3091478.3091520

View Online

Abstract

Survey research reveals deep partisan divisions in the U.S. that extend beyond politics to include cultural tastes, lifestyle choices, and consumer preferences. We show how co-following on Twitter can be used to measure the extent to which these divisions are also evident in social media. We measure political alignment (location on the red-blue spectrum), relevance (overlap between cultural and political interests), and polarization (internal division) in music, movies, hobbies, sports, vehicles, food and drink, technology, universities, religions, and business. The results provide compelling evidence that "Tesla liberals" and "bird hunting conservatives" are stereotypes grounded in empirical reality.
Computer Science Computer Science, Information Systems Computer Science, Theory & Methods Science & Technology Technology

Details

Metrics

Logo image