The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Context matters: political polarization on Twitter from a comparative perspective
Abstract
This article explores the issue of political polarization on social media. It shows that the intensity of polarization on Twitter varies greatly from one country to another. The analysis is performed using network-analytic audience duplication approach and is based on the data about the followers of the political parties’ Twitter accounts in 16 democratic countries. Based on the topology of the audience duplication graphs, the political Twitterspheres of the countries are classified as perfectly integrated, integrated, mixed, polarized and perfectly polarized. Explorative analysis shows that polarization is the highest in two-party systems with plurality electoral rules and the lowest in multi-party systems with proportional voting. The findings help explain the discrepancies in the results of previous studies into polarization on social media. The results of the study indicate that extrapolation of the findings from single-case studies on the topic is impossible in most cases, suggesting that more comparative studies on the matter are necessary to better understand the subject and get generalizable results.
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In the citing paper
“La fragmentación según contenidos de particular interés es tangible, como muestran numerosos estudios sobre el uso de información en medios sociales (especialmente Twitter), que grafican burbujas multicolores con limitadas conexiones vinculantes (ver Urman, 2019).”
From ¿Es válido atribuir la polarización política a la comunicación digital? Sobre burbujas, plataformas y polarización afectiva (2020) · cites this paper as Urman, 2019
In the citing paper
“la polarización es más alta en los sistemas bipartidistas, y más baja, en los sistemas bipartidistas con voto proporcional (Urman, 2020), lo que sugiere una extrapolación a los sistemas presidencialistas de doble vuelta en América Latina”
From Emociones y polarización de las comunidades digitales en América Latina: elecciones presidenciales 2018-2019 (2023) · cites this paper as Urman, 2020
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Persian Twitter in the 2017 Presidential Election: Networked Publics and Struggling on Power
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Disconnective practices and partisan polarization: Persian Twitter’s fragmented public sphere
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Collective Information Processing in the Public Information Environment
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Metadata
- Authors
- Urman, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Bern (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Urman, Aleksandra
- ORCID
- Urman, Aleksandra
- Venue
- Media, Culture & Society
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2019-10-15
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 857-879
- ISSN
- 0163-4437 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-3675
- OpenAlex
- W2980432476
- Cited by
- 108
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 4
- FWCI
- 23.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Media Culture & Society (publishedVersion)
- Bern Open Repository and Information System (University of Bern) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Keywords
- political polarization, Twitter, social media, political parties, network topology, two-party system, proportional representation, electoral systems, cross-national comparison, democratic countries
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