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Cited by 91Social Media and PoliticsMisinformation and Its ImpactsMedia Influence and Politics

Most users do not follow political elites on Twitter; those who do show overwhelming preferences for ideological congruity

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Wojcieszak, Magdalena, Casas, Andreu, Yu, Xudong, Nagler, Jonathan, Tucker, Joshua A.·2022·Science Advances
DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abn9418PMC PMC9524832
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Abstract

We offer comprehensive evidence of preferences for ideological congruity when people engage with politicians, pundits, and news organizations on social media. Using 4 years of data (2016–2019) from a random sample of 1.5 million Twitter users, we examine three behaviors studied separately to date: (i) following of in-group versus out-group elites, (ii) sharing in-group versus out-group information (retweeting), and (iii) commenting on the shared information (quote tweeting). We find that the majority of users (60%) do not follow any political elites. Those who do follow in-group elite accounts at much higher rates than out-group accounts (90 versus 10%), share information from in-group elites 13 times more frequently than from out-group elites, and often add negative comments to the shared out-group information. Conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to share in-group versus out-group content. These patterns are robust, emerge across issues and political elites, and exist regardless of users’ ideological extremity.

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  • Users' preference for pro-attitudinal political content and sources is a key factor contributing to greater exposure to in-group content compared to out-group content.

    “This is in line with prior research suggesting that users' preference for pro-attitudinal political content and sources is a key factor contributing to greater exposure to in-group content compared to out-group content [5,25,52].”

    From Twitter's Algorithm: Amplifying Anger, Animosity, and Affective Polarization (2023) · cites this paper as [52]

    The Results report that users who engage with political elites overwhelmingly follow and share in-group sources and content. The Discussion suggests this could make indirect exposure mostly in-group, but explicitly says the study cannot capture content users merely see. It therefore supports the proposed link, not a demonstrated finding that preference is a key factor causing greater exposure. (LLM, conf=0.82)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Social media feeds are typically limited to content from accounts that users already follow, which include few that are cross-cutting and many that are non-political.

    “Social media feeds are typically limited to content from accounts that users already follow, which include few that are cross-cutting and many that are non-political22.”

    From Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing (2023) · cites this paper as [22]

    The Results and Discussion (pages unavailable) support the account-following portion: most sampled Twitter users followed no political elites studied, and those who did rarely followed cross-cutting elites; celebrity following was more common. But the paper says it could not capture what users saw in their feeds and notes possible exposure through retweets and algorithmic amplification. It therefore does not establish that feeds are typically limited to content from accounts users already follow. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Prior observational studies of information exposure on platforms focus on Twitter, which is used by only 23% of the public, or the news diet of a small minority of active adult US Facebook users who self-identified as conservative or liberal in 2014-2015.

    “Prior observational studies of information exposure on platforms focus on Twitter, which is used by only 23% of the public19–22, or the news diet of the small minority of active adult users in the US who self-identified as conservative or liberal on Facebook in 2014–201523.”

    From Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing (2023) · cites this paper as [22]

    Split into 2 atoms — 0 confirmed, 2 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

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  • Partisans are much more likely to share the posts of elites who are members of their own party on X (formerly Twitter).

    “Regarding social media, Wojcieszak et al. (2022) find analogous evidence of echo chambers on X (formerly known as Twitter), showing that partisans are much more likely to share the posts of elites who are members of their own party.”

    From How to study democratic backsliding (2024) · cites this paper as Wojcieszak et al., 2022

    The Results report that users shared about 13 tweets from ideologically in-group elites for every one from an out-group elite, with the pattern also present for politicians. But the paper classifies users and elites as liberal or conservative, not by party membership, and its elite sample includes pundits and media organizations as well as politicians. It therefore supports a preference for ideologically aligned elites, not the more specific claim about elites who belong to a user's own party. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 8

  1. [3]E. Pariser, The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think (Penguin Books, reprint edition, 2012).
  2. [4]C. R. Sunstein, Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Princeton Univ. Press, 2018).
  3. [8]N. Persily, J. A. Tucker, Eds., Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field, Prospects for Reform (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020).
  4. [31]M. B. Brewer, Ingroup identification and intergroup conflict, in Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict Reduction, R. D. Ashmore, L. Jussim, D. Wilder, Eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 17–41.
  5. [34]J. M. Berry, S. Sobieraj, The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013).
  6. [66]F. R. Baumgartner, B. D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
  7. [68]T. Mikolov, K. Chen, G. Corrado, J. Dean, Efficient estimation of word representations in vector space, in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Learning Representations, ICLR 2013 (Workshop Track Proceedings, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, 2 to 4 May 2013).
  8. [69]D. P. Kingma, J. Ba, Adam: A method for stochastic optimization, in Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Learning Representations, ICLR 2015 (Conference Track Proceedings, San Diego, CA, USA, 7 to 9 May 2015).

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Authors
Wojcieszak, M., Casas, A., Yu, X., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. A.
Affiliations
  • University of California, Davis (US)
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
  • University of Amsterdam (NL)
  • New York University (US)
Corresponding author
Wojcieszak, Magdalena
ORCID
Venue
Science Advances
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Published
2022-09-30
Volume
8
Issue
39
Pages
eabn9418-eabn9418
ISSN
2375-2548 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abn9418
PMC
PMC9524832
OpenAlex
W4298055475
Cited by
90
References
64
Citations by year
2026: 17 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 3
FWCI
27.80
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Science Advances (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • VU Research Portal (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
Keywords
political elites, Twitter, social media engagement, retweets, political polarization, news organizations, PUNDIT

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