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“I Don't Like You Any More”: Facebook Unfriending by Israelis During the Israel-Gaza Conflict of 2014
Abstract
This article explores Facebook unfriending during the Israel–Gaza conflict of 2014. We suggest that politically motivated unfriending is a new kind of political gesture. We present an analysis of a survey of 1,013 Jewish Israeli Facebook users. A total of 16% of users unfriended or unfollowed a Facebook friend during the fighting. Unfriending was more prevalent among more ideologically extreme and more politically active Facebook users. Weak ties were most likely to be broken, and respondents mostly unfriended people because they took offense at what they had posted or disagreed with it. Although social network sites may expose people to diverse opinions, precisely by virtue of the many weak ties users have on them, our findings show these ties to be susceptible to dissolution.
... Imagine yourself scrolling through your social media feed, encountering a post from a friend with an opposing political opinion. Research found that exposure to divergent political opinions increases the tendency towards politically motivated disconnectivity on social media platforms (e.g., John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;John & Gal, 2018;Neubaum et al., 2021). For example, during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, Jewish Israeli Facebook users unfriended others to prevent certain content from appearing in their online public spheres (John & Gal, 2018). ...
... This phenomenon aligns with selective avoidance theory, wherein individuals favor like-minded opinions while avoiding information against their pre-existing viewpoints to evade cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957;Stroud, 2010). Unfollowing and unfriending on social media to sidestep encountering political disagreement are manifestations of selective avoidance behaviors (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Skoric, Zhu, & Lin, 2018). ...
... Among these, unfriending and unfollowing are the most prevalent types (Baysha, 2020;Zhu, 2023). Scholars have viewed unfriending as a deliberate decision to terminate a dyadic relationship, resulting in the removal of the connection between the two parties in apolitical everyday life (Sibona, 2014) as well as in politically motivated disconnective actions (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). Zhu et al. (2017) were the first to define unfriending (dissolving social ties) and unfollowing (removing or hiding content) as forms of selective avoidance within political movements. ...
While recent research has demonstrated how exposure to cross-cutting political opinions intensifies politically motivated disconnectivity on social media, there has been a notable gap in examining the influence of emotions and psychological traits in this process. Guided by the theories of selective avoidance and affective intelligence, our study employed a survey through Qualtrics panel drawn from a population-matching sample ( N = 498) of the US population to investigate how perceived political disagreement on social media affects decisions to unfollow and unfriend others through the induction of affective responses (e.g., anger, anxiety) and the role of psychological trait—need to belong. Controlling for demographics and political ideology, our mediation analysis revealed that perceived political disagreement was significantly related to anger, which was further positively associated with both unfollowing and unfriending on social media. Perceived political disagreement was also related to anxiety while anxiety was positively associated with individuals’ behaviors of unfollowing and unfriending. Furthermore, results showed that the need to belong played a significant role in moderating the relationship between perceived political disagreement and unfriending. When perceiving the same level of political disagreement, individuals with a higher need to belong were less likely to unfriend others on social media, compared to those with a lower need to belong. However, the need to belong did not exert a significant impact on how perceived political disagreement influenced unfollowing behavior. This study contributes to understanding the nuanced dynamics of disconnectivity on social media, particularly in navigating political disagreements.
... Studies show various reasons for political unfriending on social media platforms including weak social ties, friends of friends, and casual acquaintances being the most frequent victims of political unfriending (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). According to available literature, people who are exposed to stimuli that are controversial have a tendency to either avoid, ignore, or bypass unwanted content by unfriending. ...
... Users have control over the information they consume and the people they choose to interact with on social media by unfriending and blocking others. The limited amount of research on political unfriending that has been done centered on the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014 and was conducted in a highly charged environment (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... Political differences frequently become enthusiastically charged and apparent on social media sites within times of political disturbance, reflecting the divergence between opposing viewpoints in a debate around the world. According to John and Dvir-Gvirsman (2015) during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, 16% of Jewish Israeli Facebook users felt compelled to unfriend or unfollow others for political reasons. The major goal of unfriending and unfollowing is weak ties that convey selective avoidance of diverse info and perspectives on social media. ...
Political unfriending on social media in Pakistan refers to the increasing usage of social media platforms for political discourse and activism in the country. This research purpose is to explore the extent to which individuals are influenced by political differences and how this influence ultimately provokes them to unfriend other users from their social networks, this was observed under the umbrella of cognitive dissonance theory. In order to study this, a Survey was adopted as the research methodology to observe the viewpoints of individuals with respect to their political preferences on social media by employing a quantitative research design with the help of university students, a sample of 300 respondents was selected who responded over a questionnaire based upon closed-ended questions along with systematic sampling technique which is used for analyzing and interpreting data which helped us to draw a valid conclusion.
... In particular, social media users confront contrasting perspectives in a political context since social media enables exposure to opposing political opinions by not inhibiting societal norms of expressing differing viewpoints (Barnidge, 2017). This political disagreement leads social media users to gravitate towards engaging only with the content they agree with and avoid that they disagree with (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). These behaviors, known as selective exposure and avoidance, are exemplified by social media filtering actions, such as unfollowing and unfriending (Neubaum et al., 2021;Neely, 2021). ...
... For instance, X (formerly known as Twitter 1 ) employs "muting" while Facebook uses the terms "unfollowing" or "unfriending." Unfollowing is typically regarded as a less severe form of relationship termination than unfriending (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). Despite the varied labels, social media filtering is a widespread practice. ...
... Second, Facebook offers both dimensions of relationship termination (i.e., unfollowing and unfriending). Unlike X, which allows users to follow others without mutual permission and does not have the unfriending feature (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015), Facebook requires mutual permission to establish social relationships, making it possible to throw opponents into relationship termination situations (Sibona, 2014). Third, while partisan differences exist on other social media platforms (e.g., Instagram, X), similar shares of Democrats and Republicans report that they use Facebook (Gramlich, 2021). ...
To examine how political differences on social media disrupt user relationships, we conduct two 2 (political disagreement vs. political agreement) × 2 (civil vs. uncivil discussion) between-subjects experiments, with adult and college student samples. The results show that political disagreement heightens feelings of uncomfortableness, which in turn increases the intention to engage in social media filtering actions. Discussion manner moderates the association between uncomfortableness and social media filtering intention in college students, but not in adults. Uncomfortableness positively predicts filtering intention with civil discussion, whereas uncivil discussion leads to higher social media filtering intention regardless of the level of uncomfortableness. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings, which have implications for the development of strategies aimed at mitigating the trends of political polarization.
... Recently, pioneer scholars have begun examining how social media can be harnessed to implement planned interventions to reduce AP (e.g., Currin et al., 2022;Saveski et al., 2021). Nevertheless, the study of social media's role in 'natural' contexts that might decrease inter-party hostility is still largely overlooked (as an exception, see John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... Notably, conflicting findings exist, with some studies showing no impact on AP levels (Myrick, 2021) or even an increase (Jahani et al., 2022). However, almost none of these studies examined what might be the role of social media in (de)polarization under such threatening contexts (again, as an exception, see John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... An exception is the study of John and Dvir-Gvirsman (2015), who surveyed Israelis about their Facebook use habits during the Israel -Gaza Conflict of 2014 and identified what they term: 'politically motivated unfriending' -a digital practice and political gesture that increases AP. Their findings provide valuable insight into the real-world effect of threats on AP and initial evidence for social media's polarizing (and not depolarizing) role under these circumstances. ...
... Unfollowing is considered as the act of removing another person's content from a user's news feed to no longer receive updates (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Tang et al., 2018). Within the broader context of social media Cao and Sun (2018) conceptualized the act of discontinuing as users' intention to change behavior by reducing usage or quitting social media platforms. ...
... Unfollowing and political engagement on social media. This stream of research has explored individuals' reasons to unfollow in the context of political controversies and political engagement (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Krishna & Kim, 2020) highlighting the role of social media in shaping political discourse (Bode, 2016). Importantly, it has been shown that unfriending politicians, political pages or even other friends on social media is a new form of political gesture that reflects individuals' positioning (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... This stream of research has explored individuals' reasons to unfollow in the context of political controversies and political engagement (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Krishna & Kim, 2020) highlighting the role of social media in shaping political discourse (Bode, 2016). Importantly, it has been shown that unfriending politicians, political pages or even other friends on social media is a new form of political gesture that reflects individuals' positioning (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... network heterogeneity tend to encourage disconnection as diverse networks can breed and expose people to disagreements, conflicts, and other negative interactions (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). The nature and implications of disconnective behaviors are paradoxical: They not only shield people from political disagreements and challenges that are critical to deliberation but also protect them from social sanctions that are important to personal well-being (Barnidge, Peacock, Kim, Kim, & Xenos, 2022;John & Gal, 2018;Zhu & Skoric, 2021). ...
... Existing research consistently finds that encountering disagreeable political content from those holding opposing ideologies is associated with a higher likelihood of unfriending. This is evident in various political contexts, such as the United States before the 2012 presidential election, the Israel-Gaza armed conflict in 2014, and Hong Kong before the 2017 chief executive election (Bode, 2016;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Kaiser, Vaccari, & Chadwick, 2022;Zhu & Skoric, 2021). Weighing in on the debate on whether the Internet is facilitating a turn toward avoidance (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008;Garrett, Carnahan, & Lynch, 2013), the abovementioned findings suggest that disconnective political behaviors constitute a form of selective avoidance. ...
... Second, political disagreement is relational. Weak ties that transmit novel information and differing views are most susceptible to dissolution (Barnidge et al., 2022;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Skoric et al., 2018Skoric et al., , 2022 because they lack the kind of relational closeness and rapport that inhibit people from doing so (Neubaum, Cargnino, Winter et al., 2021). This is amplified by context collapse on social media that renders individuals feeling accountable for the content in their own newsfeeds (John & Gal, 2018;Schwarz & Shani, 2016). ...
Recent years have seen a surging scholarly interest in disconnective political behaviors on social media, commonly termed "politically motivated unfriending." This study presents a systematic review of 28 articles (34 studies) on this topic. Through content analysis, it provides a robust synthesis of the trend, contexts, and focuses of the research, the scale and prevalence of politically motivated unfriending, and its antecedents and consequences. Through inductive thematic coding, it identifies 3 recurring themes with regard to the conceptualizations of politically motivated unfriending-it is understood as selective avoidance under the normative framework of the public sphere, self-care following the logic of personal spaces, and a means to create safe spaces within unequal social structures. This systematic review highlights the importance of understanding the political implications of social media through the lens of disconnectivity, demonstrates the democratic paradox of disconnection, and offers recommendations for future research.
... The answer is of significance to health professionals, public health officials, and communication scholars alike, as boundary regulation has significant implications for the functioning of social networks, including their informational credibility and openness to corrective information. Although previous studies have examined the frequency of and motivations for unfriending in sociopolitical contexts [16][17][18], relatively little attention has been paid to unfriending in the context of public health discourse. ...
... To date, academic analyses of unfriending on social media have focused primarily on sociopolitical contexts such as election cycles [16], protest movements [17], and geopolitical conflicts [18]. Relatively little attention has been paid to unfriending in the context of public health. ...
... Prior studies on social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic have considered the impacts of decisions such as which accounts or sources to follow for COVID-19 pandemic-related information [1]. This study-building on prior research in the fields of political science and communication [16,18,34]-focuses specifically on unfriending behaviors, which shape future information environments based on user reactions to information exposure. ...
Background:
Social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook have been central to the global exchange of health-related information throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but during this time online interactions have arisen as a source of stress and conflict for many SNS-users. Prior research suggests that many users have engaged in significant "boundary regulation", during this period, using online behaviors such as "unfriending" to refine and reorient their social networks in response to pandemic related information.
Objective:
This study examines Facebook "unfriending" during (and related to) the first year of the pandemic in order to better understand how SNS users have managed and maintained their social networks around COVID-19. On one hand, unfriending may be motivated by an attempt to protect the utility/accuracy of a users' informational environment. On the other, it may be motivated by a desire to "tune out" alternative viewpoints/opinions. Both motivations may have significant implications for public health discourse and outcomes.
Methods:
A sample of 824 active Facebook users (drawn from a representative survey of 1,000 American adults) was analyzed using a series of logit regression models. Survey respondents were selected via a stratified quota sampling approach to ensure a representative sample of the U.S. population. Balanced quotas were determined (by region of the country) for gender, age, race, ethnicity, and political affiliation.
Results:
In total, 31.7% (261/824) of active Facebook users unfriended at least one account over COVID-related posts during the first year of the pandemic. The most common reasons for unfriending included "making political comments about COVID-19" (23.2%; 191/824) and "posting information that was inconsistent with public health guidelines" (19.7%; 162/824). As hypothesized, reliance on Facebook for COVID-related news/information was associated with a greater likelihood of unfriending, particularly in response to information that was inconsistent with public health guidelines. Political factors (particularly partisan intensity) were also predictive of unfriending, especially in the case of COVID-related disagreements.
Conclusions:
Both information utility concerns and political factors were associated with a greater likelihood of COVID-related unfriending, though the magnitude of effects associated with utility appear to be greater. While utility-motivated unfriending may lead to more reliable health information experiences for some SNS-users, the tendency of consumers to assess accuracy and credibility on the basis of partisan predilections obscures this finding and warrants further consideration.
... Disconnection is an essential element in people's social media practices. It provides an important lens to understand how citizens (dis)engage in politics in everyday online interactions (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Zhu & Skoric, 2022). Existing research primarily focuses on what is termed "politically motivated unfriending" on SNSs like Facebook, and mainly explains the phenomenon from the perspective of political disagreement. ...
... Existing research primarily focuses on what is termed "politically motivated unfriending" on SNSs like Facebook, and mainly explains the phenomenon from the perspective of political disagreement. Following the normative expectation that contact with opposing views is critical to the deliberative processes, scholars often see disconnection as democratically problematic because it reduces political diversity (e.g., John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Neubaum, Cargnino, & Maleszka, 2021;Yang, Barnidge, & Rojas, 2017;Zhu, Skoric, & Shen, 2017). In this study, we highlight that whether, how, and why people resort to disconnection when facing political disagreement depends on the political environment they are in. ...
... Existing findings suggest that heavier SNS users with larger and more diverse networks are more inclined to sever or suspend ties with others because of political disagreement. Weak ties are more susceptible than strong ties because they bring in differing views but lack the kind of relationship qualities that prevents conflicts (Barnidge, Peacock, Kim, Kim, & Xenos, 2022;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Neubaum, Cargnino, & Maleszka, 2021;Neubaum, Cargnino, Winter, & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2021;. Notably, these findings apply to SNSs where political interactions are often difficult and uncertain because of the large number of weak ties, collapsed contexts, and undefined boundaries between the private and public (Thorson, 2014). ...
... In addition, some scholars have raised concerns that unfriending may lead individuals into echo chambers or promote political polarization (Goyanes et al., 2021;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). However, only a limited number of studies have tested the role of unfriending in promoting homogenous community formation (e.g., Sasahara et al., 2021). ...
... Previous research has demonstrated that citizens with high political involvement or extreme ideologies (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015) and who are in larger and more diverse social networks (Barnidge et al., 2022) are most likely to unfriend others. Exposure to severe political disagreement (i.e., conflicting views that threaten personal values or beliefs) has also been identified as a significant predictor of unfriending (Bode, 2016;Neubaum et al., 2021;Sibona, 2014), especially in times of political turmoil (Zhu et al., 2017). ...
... Regardless of whether unfriending inevitably leads to the formation of echo chambers, it seems clear that unfriending reduces network diversity and increases network homogeneity. Scholars have expressed concerns that unfriending may lead to increased polarization by reducing exposure to heterogeneous perspectives (Goyanes et al., 2021;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Sasahara et al., 2021). Indeed, some research provides evidence that social media unfriending increases political talk with like-minded others while reducing discussion with dissimilar others . ...
Cross-cutting discussion is the foundation of deliberative democracy. However, previous research has reported inconsistent results regarding the effects of exposure to dissimilar perspectives on political polarization. This study aims to extend the literature by exploring how cross-cutting discussion influences affective polarization through unfriending and how this indirect effect is contingent upon exposure to incivility. The study analyzes panel data from a two-wave online survey conducted in South Korea (N = 890). The results show a significantly positive indirect effect of unfriending, suggesting that cross-cutting discussion further reinforces affective polarization via unfriending. Furthermore, the study identifies the boundary conditions for this mediating mechanism, showing that the mediated relationship of cross-cutting discussion on affective polarization via unfriending is stronger for those who are more exposed to incivility on social media.
... Although the increase in political polarization largely parallels the prevalence of social media use across the world (Barnidge, Peacock, Kim, Kim, & Xenos, 2022), extant research yielded mixed findings regarding the role of social media in political polarization. Some showed that social media use spurs political polarization because users can practice selective exposure (Barnidge, Peacock, Kim, Kim, & Xenos, 2020;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Sunstein, 2018), while others found no such effects (Peterson, Goel, & Iyengar, 2021) or even depolarizing effects (e.g., Beam, Hutchens, & Hmielowski, 2018;Kobayashi, 2020). The contradictory findings suggest that social media effects on political polarization might take different routes through a variety of mediating mechanisms. ...
... First, extant research provides two competing propositions regarding social media's effects on polarization. Some argue that social media allow users to create echo chambers by seeking like-minded and avoiding dissimilar information, which consequently makes people more polarized (Barnidge et al., 2020;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). Many studies examined how a selective approach (i.e., seeking like-minded information) influences political polarization. ...
... It is easy to filter out dissenting information by unfriending and muting. Such behaviors further trigger algorithms that automatically filter dissonant information, leading to the creation of echo chambers (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Sunstein, 2018). Previous research provides compelling evidence supporting the prevalence of selective avoidance of social media in different societies (e.g., Baysha, 2020;Gruzd & Roy, 2014;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Shin & Thorson, 2017;Zhu, Skoric, & Shen, 2017). ...
This study proposes a moderated mediation model to understand how social media use influences political polarization through two competing mechanisms and how such mechanisms are conditioned by political tolerance. The model was tested with a survey of 1,200 Hong Kong residents after the prolonged Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement. We found that social media use was positively correlated with attitudinal and affective polarization. Such polarizing effects were channeled through politically motivated selective avoidance, but there were noticeable depolarizing effects induced by increased network heterogeneity. More importantly, political tolerance could further amplify the depolarizing effects of social media use. In contrast, political tolerance cannot counteract the polarizing effect of social media use channeled through selective avoidance.
... In addition to interpersonal contexts, the literature suggests that intergroup conflict and ideological divergence can motivate large-scale avoidance behaviours, especially during times of sociopolitical turmoil. For example, John and Dvir-Gvirsman (2015) found that during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, 16% of Israeli Jewish respondents unfriended or unfollowed a Facebook friend primarily due to perceived political discord and ideological offense. Likewise, Zhu, Skoric, and Shen (2017) found that 15.6% of respondents performed politically motivated selective avoidance behaviours during the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement. ...
... The existing literature has extensively examined politically motivated avoidance behaviours in Asian contexts, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Israel (John and Dvir-Gvirsman 2015;Skoric, Zhu, and Lin 2018). However, fewer studies have explored how avoidance behaviours take place in Western democracies during times of political turmoil (Skoric et al. 2022). ...
... are positively associated with selective avoidance. These results are consistent with previous studies which have found similar results (John and Dvir-Gvirsman 2015). Therefore, both H1 and H2 are supported. ...
As the 2020 United State Presidential election presented tense partisan conflicts, we sought to explore whether and how such a social and ideological fissure can lead to large-scale politically motivated avoidance behaviours. Building on prior literature, we examine how social media behaviours (i.e. expressive social media news use and political discussion with weak ties) and social psychological attitudes (i.e. surveillance anxiety) are associated with selective avoidance on social media. Further, we explore cognitive ability's direct and indirect roles in influencing avoidance behaviours. We used online panel survey data collected during the 2020 election to test our assumptions. The findings suggest that those with high levels of expressive social media news use, political discussions with weak ties, and surveillance anxiety engage in more frequent selective avoidance. On the contrary, those with high cognitive ability are less likely to engage in selective avoidance. Furthermore, moderation effects suggest that low cognitive users with greater surveillance anxiety and frequent discussions with weak ties are most accustomed to selective avoidance. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.
... The present study focuses on interpersonal political disagreement and its effects on political expression on social media. In the social media environment, people can respond to disagreements by deciding with whom they want to establish relationships and those they prefer to avoid (Bode, 2016;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;John & Agbarya, 2020;Yang et al., 2017). The present study conceptualizes such disconnective actions as information repertoire filtration (Reagan, 1996;Robinson, 2014;Wolf & Schnauber, 2015). ...
... In the online environment, an information repertoire is a user's selection and manipulation of a "particular combination of sources people use to learn about the political world" (Wolfsfeld et al., 2016(Wolfsfeld et al., , p. 2098). In the multi-choice social media environment, filtering one's information repertoire includes such activities as terminating connections using blocking and unfriending (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015) and stopping the receipt of information, such as opting out of online communities or unsubscribing from an online forum (Yang et al., 2017). ...
... Therefore, people would selectively avoid those who hold a different viewpoint. Filtering information repertoire in the face of political disagreement helps people to harmonize their online environment, which contains no or fewer counter-attitudinal voices (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). Several empirical studies have also found that disagreement is a primary reason people filter their information repertoire (Dutton et al., 2019). ...
The present research aims to extend the literature on the effects of interpersonal political disagreement on political expression on social media. It investigates how disagreement-motivated information repertoire filtration and discussion network heterogeneity play a role in the disagreement–expression nexus. A two-wave online panel survey (n = 791) implemented in Hong Kong finds that encountering disagreement during political conversations is associated with filtering the information repertoire. While information repertoire filtration itself may not lead to political expression, political disagreement influenced political expression via information repertoire filtration, and this effect was stronger when network heterogeneity was low. The result indicates that politically motivated selectivity makes already-homogeneous online networks even more fragmented. The present study enriches the literature regarding how digitally mediated disconnectivity creates a personalized, homogeneous private sphere during interpersonal political communication, which may fail to nurture an open and inclusive society.
... Indeed, Zhu's (2023) recent review of politically-motivated unfriending found only 28 relevant articles published between 2015 and 2022. Part of the reason for this is that social media services deny researchers access to data about unfriending (John & Nissenbaum, 2019), meaning that substantive quantitative data can only be gathered through expensive surveys (for early examples, see John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Yang et al., 2017;Zhu et al., 2016). ...
... On the other hand, research in political communication inquires into the role of cross-cutting opinions in unfriending, which puts content ahead of the person posting it (e.g., Bode, 2016;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Neubaum et al., 2021;Yang et al., 2017). Which one of these a particular act of unfriending or unfollowing is more similar to is knowable only if we ask the person carrying it out. ...
This article presents for the first time a classification of, and lexicon for, features for dissolving interpersonal ties in digital environments: blocking, unfriending, unfollowing, muting, withholding, and ejecting. There are two main motivations and two main contributions. The first motivation is that analyses of social media features have not included treatment of features for interpersonal disconnectivity; the second is that analyses of interpersonal disconnectivity have not included reference to the features that enable it. The two main contributions are the disambiguation of a confusing terminological field, thus making it possible to analytically distinguish between types of feature, and an intervention in the question of whether the features described in the article concern filtering information or avoiding people . Data were collected from 37 social media platforms and other services that enable digitally-mediated communication. Features for interpersonal disconnectivity were documented and then the features were grouped based on five questions about their use, where A is the person using the feature, and B is the target of A’s use of the feature: (a) Does it affect A’s feed?; (b) does it affect B’s feed?; (c) is A still connected to B?; (d) is B still connected to A?; (e) can A and B see each other’s profile?
... Moreover, the relative influence of positive and negative contact on prejudice was stronger for positive contact at the starting point, but the reverse was true when focusing on contact change throughout the four waves of the study (Cernat, 2017). This divisive nature of intergroup conflict is also highlighted by studies on Facebook unfriending, which found that conflict dissolves weak social ties and can damage even strong ones, like close friendships (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015), and by studies on homophily, which found that conflict damages non-homophilous ties, like cross-group relations (McPherson et al., 2001). Given these disruptive effects of conflict, it is important to look at the negativa reducía los efectos positivos. ...
... Además, la influencia relativa del contacto positivo y negativo en el prejuicio era mayor en el contacto positivo al principio pero lo mismo sucedía a la inversa, al centrarse en el cambio del contacto durante las cuatro fases del estudio (Cernat, 2017). Este carácter divisorio del conflicto intergrupal también se puso de relieve en estudios sobre la supresión de contactos de la lista de amigos en las redes sociales, que revelaron que el conflicto disuelve los lazos sociales más débiles y puede perjudicar incluso los más fuertes, como las amistades más cercanas (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015), y también en estudios sobre homofilia que revelan que el conflicto perjudica los lazos homófilos, como las relaciones intergrupales (McPherson et al., 2001). Dados estos efectos disruptivos del conflicto, es importante examinar los factores que amplifican su identidad. ...
Opportunities for contact reduce prejudice via positive contact and increase it via negative contact. However, the relative importance of these routes varies considerably, and it is unclear what processes are crucial in this respect. The analysis of a sample of Romanian students (N = 232) revealed that outgroup anger moderated both the paths from opportunities for contact to contact and from contact to positive outgroup attitudes: at low levels of anger, the positive route was dominant, whereas at higher levels of anger, the negative route reduced the positive effects. These results underline an important connection between the waning and waxing of intergroup conflict and intergroup contact.
... For example, one study has shown that unfriending Michal Reifen-Tagar and Nava Levit-Binnun contributed equally to this work. on social media due to political disagreement contributed to creating homogenous online political environments and further promoted polarization (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). In the absence of respectful and effective cross-partisan communication, competing viewpoints risk deteriorating into violent conflict. ...
... Although Israeli society suffers from multiple divisions due to ethnic, religious, economic, ideological, and power differences between social groups (Bar-Tal, 2007;John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015), Israeli teachers reported dealing with controversial issues 15% less than they deem advisable and 16% reported avoiding such topics in their classrooms altogether (Halperin, 2016). Historically, Israeli teachers were required to avoid discussion of any controversial issues with their students in order to support national unity (Gindi & Ron Erlich, 2018). ...
Objectives
Effective deliberation in society is important for democratic participation and for societal cohesion. Enabling youth to engage in classroom discussions on controversial issues is one important tool for promoting democratic values. However, teachers are often reluctant to engage their students in such discussions, and only a few interventions attempt to address this gap. This study suggests the integration of mindfulness as a key ingredient in such interventions.
Methods
We examined the effects of a mindfulness-informed conflict transformation intervention on the approach of teachers and students toward engaging with discussions on controversial issues in the classroom, and on students’ experience in such discussions. Four Arab Israeli schools were cluster-randomized into experimental condition and active control condition. Teachers and students completed pre- and post-intervention self-report questionnaires related to motivation, conduct, and behavior during discussions on controversial issues. Interventions included teachers’ training and engagement in two discussions.
Results
Teachers in the experimental condition (as opposed to those in the control group) showed significantly higher levels of mindfulness in conflict (manipulation check, p < 0.001; φ=1.00), motivation to engage students in discussions on controversial issues (p < 0.05; φ=0.36), and democratic conduct in such discussions (p < 0.05; φ=0.43). Students of teachers in the experimental group (versus control group) exhibited a more positive experience (p < 0.05, 95% CI 0.12, 0.89) and improved behavior (p < 0.05; φ=0.62) during discussions, and greater motivation to engage in future discussions (p < 0.001; 95% CI 0.31, 0.94).
Conclusions
This research demonstrates that mindfulness-informed conflict transformation intervention can enhance the motivation, conduct, and behavior of both teachers and students when they engage in challenging classroom discussions on controversial issues.
Preregistration
This study is not preregistered.
... As preferências individuais também foram consideradas em vários dos artigos analisados para explicar a "seletividade", ou o evitar, como prática de resistência: não querer interagir com um determinado meio, evitar um determinado tipo de programa ou conteúdo. Evitar certos conteúdos de forma seletiva nas redes sociais pode também ser expressão das opções individuais de envolvimento político (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Yang et. al., 2017). ...
... Na era digital, as informações pessoais tornaram-se um produto de dados recolhidos, processados, armazenados, recuperados, comprados e vendidos, uma vez que é quase impossível estar on-line, andar na rua, utilizar transportes públicos, Resistência aos media e desconexão digital na literatura ocidental pagar com cartão de crédito ou fazer uma chamada telefónica sem que os dados sejam captados e, por conseguinte, vigiados (Manokha, 2018). Nessa perspectiva, estudos recentes têm vindo a destacar o que se poderia designar por consequências invisíveis ou novos tipos de consequências produzidas pela evitação selectiva (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). As tecnologias digitais treinam algoritmos para filtrar automaticamente dissonâncias indesejadas e criar ecologias de conteúdos rigorosamente controladas ou cápsulas de filtragem que podem levar a um maior isolamento das visões do mundo umas das outras. ...
Este artigo visa contribuir para o debate sobre a desconexão digital por meio do conceito de resistência, um construto relacionado e mais estabelecido nos estudos dos media e da comunicação. Para tal, realizámos uma meta-análise aos artigos científicos que abordam ambos os conceitos e destacamos duas tendências principais: uma perspetiva centrada nos media e uma outra centrada no contexto. A análise da literatura sugere que essas duas tendências principais não são lineares nem sequenciais, mas cíclicas e recursivas. Ou seja, essas tendências podem ser entendidas como relatos de ondas de constrangimentos. Em conclusão, o artigo sugere que os estudos sobre a desconexão se beneficiariam se se afastassem de uma perspetiva assente em uma agência individualista em favor de uma abordagem mais sensível ao contexto.
... The act of unfriending has gained public recognition as an impactful political gesture (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). Across the world, there is a growing online movement calling for people to unfriend contacts who do not agree with their political views. ...
... Unfriending was found more prevalent among more ideologically extreme and more politically active Facebook users. Weak ties were most likely to be broken, and respondents mostly unfriended people because they took offense at what they had posted or disagreed with it (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... 21 (1), 2025 (Festinger, 1957;Swann, 1989). Socially, online friendships often form among people with similar sociodemographic and personal characteristics, leading to reduced exposure to differing opinions (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001;Nicholas, 2015). Technically, search engines filter information to cater to the assumed needs of users, resulting in personalized search results and potentially narrower perspectives (Geschke, Lorenz & Holtz, 2019;Nguyen, 2020;Pariser, 2011). ...
Accelerating digitalization actualizes the importance of secondary science education in developing students’ digital abilities, such as retrieving and appraising scientific information online. However, there is little research and policy guidance on the purposes and challenges of teaching digital abilities in science classrooms. This article reports on a mixed-methods study that explored how upper secondary school students in Sweden reasoned about their digital abilities when searching for scientific information online. The results reveal three key themes: the role of scientific terminology in improving search accuracy, as students noted how precise terms yielded more credible results; the need for deliberate search strategies, including using questions or keywords depending on the context; and, the impact of selective exposure, as students became aware of how personalized results could reinforce existing beliefs and limit perspective diversity. Based on these insights, we introduce the concept of ‘digital versatility’ and outline a model, Digital Versatility in Online Searching (DVOS), that integrates essential digital abilities (source literacy, information abilities, and search abilities) with scientific subject knowledge. The DVOS model provides guidance for teachers in instructional planning and offers a basis for future research on digital abilities in science education.
... ed by social media features such as unfriending, unfollowing, blocking, and muting-actions that sever ties between individuals, groups, and ideas. Critique in this area centers on its broader impact on democracy, with concerns that disconnection restricts information flows and diminishes engagement across political and social divides (Bozdag, 2020;N. A. John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Kim et al., 2022;Zhu et al., 2017). Conversely, digital disconnection research focuses on intentional withdrawal from devices, technologies, and platformsvoluntary non-use of digital media. Concerned primarily with individual well-being, scholars see disconnection as a form of self-care against the relentless demands of hyperconnectivity ...
p>This thematic issue examines disconnectivity in a world where connectivity is often assumed to be the norm. Drawing on multiple areas of research, such as political unfriending, digital disconnection, migration studies, and media censorship, it delves into the complexities of disconnectivity, moving beyond its framing as voluntary choice and individual practice. Collectively, studies in this issue highlight disconnection as a compelled act for self-protection and a collective strategy to tackle systemic problems. By examining enforced and coerced disconnection, they also reveal disconnection's dual role as control and resistance. Through a multi-contextual and interdisciplinary lens, this issue challenges the normative assumptions implicit in our current understandings of disconnection, and, in doing so, advances the field.</p
... Confirmed time and again in homophilic interactions (Slater, 2007), users' prior beliefs may be increasingly removed from possible doubt or reservation (Lerman et al., 2016), eroding their tolerance of competing views. In consequence, users' willingness and ability to engage in controversial political debate and seek widely acceptable solutions may be compromised (e.g., Wojcieszak, 2010), up to the point of disengaging from cross-cutting communication ties (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... Nevertheless, extant research has also documented other reactions by users when they encounter alternative views online and perceive those as a threat to their own identity, which include avoidance (e.g. John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015), attack (e.g. Mor et al., 2016;Chen & Lu, 2017) or polarization (e.g. ...
This research relies on a two-stage content analysis of Reddit to test the assumption that by emphasizing othering and polarizing opinions, homogeneous ideological spaces trigger impolite and uncivil comments towards others, as opposed to spaces that enable cross partisan-ideological exposure, which overall are seen as positive for democracy. It examines subreddits with varying probability of occurrence of echo chamber effects to measure the prevalence and the targets of incivility and studies the interactions in which these comments emerge in discussions about immigration. Findings show that incivility is higher in subreddits that bring together users with the same ideological and political profile, in which echo chamber effects are more likely to occur, but the redditors’ reactions are similar in both types of environments. The targets of incivility vary according to the political orientation of the comments and the political context of the country.
... Confirmed time and again in homophilic interactions (Slater, 2007), users' prior beliefs may be increasingly removed from possible doubt or reservation (Lerman et al., 2016), eroding their tolerance of competing views. In consequence, users' willingness and ability to engage in controversial political debate and seek widely acceptable solutions may be compromised (e.g., Wojcieszak, 2010), up to the point of disengaging from cross-cutting communication ties (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). ...
... 9 Myrick, 2021. 10 For an example of another study that makes a similarly nuanced argument, see: Carothers, 2023. 11 John and Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Harel et al., 2020;Carothers, 2023. We test our argument with two pre-registered survey experiments that prime representative samples of the U.S. public with a realistic and contemporary foreign threat: China. ...
Can foreign threats reduce domestic polarization, and if so, under what conditions? This is an important question for the United States given the severity of internal division and the emergence of China as a potentially unifying external peril. We offer a novel theoretical argument about when external danger will rally Americans based on the nexus between the vividness of foreign danger and bipartisan elite agreement about the threat. We test our theory through a series of pre-registered survey experiments. We find that vivid foreign threats, in isolation, do not reduce domestic polarization and therefore the danger from China alone may not be sufficient to spur domestic unity. However, vivid foreign threats in combination with policymaker agreement about the threat does significantly reduce domestic polarization. This reduction in polarization comes at a cost: increased public willingness to violate use of force norms against China. Overall, our study establishes that foreign peril can reduce domestic polarization under certain circumstances, and demonstrates that elite reactions to foreign threats are highly important in shaping wider domestic effects.
... Moreover, while external threats can lead to cohesion and minimize the ideological gap, this has not been the case in Israel. For example,John & Dvir-Gvirsman (2015) found that during the Israeli-Gaza conflict in 2014, the divide between ideological groups grew and reached the point in which individuals 'unfriended' the political 'others' on social media. ...
How people perceive social norms plays a vital role in conflict dynamics. Whereas most previous studies on social norms have focused on people’s perceptions of others’ beliefs and behaviors, the role of emotional social influence in conflict transformation has thus far been less studied. Yet, emotion norms may also be important, considering that it is well established that how people feel about the opponent group strongly shapes their conflict-related attitudes and behaviors. In this study, based on an original survey conducted in Israel in 2022 (N = 620), we examine how people perceive emotion norms—that is, the perceived prevalence of emotions felt toward the opponent group among one’s group members—and how these emotion norms relate to policy attitudes. We measured the perception of emotion norms in two reference groups, that is, one’s national (Israeli Jews) and political (left/center/right) group, for six emotions felt toward the opponent group (i.e., Palestinians): hate, anger, fear, empathy, hope, and guilt. Our results show that emotion norms are related to policy attitudes directly and indirectly via personal emotions. However, they show that the impact of emotion norms depends on the reference group, where the emotion norms in one’s political group are more strongly and consistently related to policy support than emotion norms in one’s nation. Overall, this study demonstrates the important role of emotion norms in shaping conflict-related attitudes and suggests that we need to move beyond the predominant focus on personally experienced emotions in the literature on conflict resolution.
... In this context, social media has been described as giving rise to new centers of power (Curran, 2002;Papacharissi, 2009) that provide new resources through which social situations and conflicts can be represented and perceived (Castells, 2013;Ron et al., 2020). Within this framework, increased attention has been paid to the role of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to create "echo chambers" in which users "meet" others who share similar opinions, goals, and emotions, thus strengthening their collective identity (Castells, 2013;John & Dvir, 2015). At the same time, online discussions can play an important role in constructing a public sphere in which differing narratives and worldviews can find expression, confront one another and where transformation of attitudes and practices can occur (Ellis & Maoz, 2007;Hasler & Amichai-Hamburger, 2013;Maoz & Ellis, 2006;Walther et al., 2014). ...
This chapter describes how psychological intergroup interventions, specifically intergroup contact and perspective taking, can be implemented using interactive media, including social media, interactive multimedia applications, and virtual reality. We begin by identifying challenges associated with traditional forms of these interventions. Then we describe how interactive media can help to overcome some of these challenges and consider how new challenges may emerge from using technology in intergroup interventions. We illustrate potential benefits and risks based on example projects and findings from empirical studies of technology-based interventions in different contexts, with a focus on intergroup conflicts. The chapter ends with recommendations on how to integrate interactive media in existing intergroup intervention practices.
... Los principales hallazgos de este estudio evidencian los rasgos sociales de los entrevistados, identificando una ideología política marcada por el rechazo hacia la autoridad representada en la policía colombiana estudiantes de universidades públicas. En contrastante a los estudiantes de las universidades privadas, quienes, a pesar de expresar diferencias frente a los hechos de protesta social, identifican a la PONAL y su grupo ESMAD como una autoridad competente encargada de repeler las formas de protesta violenta, concordante a otros estudios basados en encuestas donde se ha demostrado la existencia del extremismo ideológico tanto de derecha como de izquierda (John y Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Bode, 2016). Lo anterior, representa implicaciones mediáticas en las redes sociales conociéndose como bloqueo partidista, donde los usuarios de izquierda tienden a ser los que más utilizan esta forma de aislar la confrontación en redes sociales. ...
Para la Policía Nacional, es de interés analizar las transformaciones que se es-tán forjando en la protesta social; por ello, esta investigación se propone como objetivo plantear una acción institucional de respuesta a las nuevas manifestaciones del fenómeno del vandalismo, durante las protestas sociales, mediante la evaluación de los impactos en la convivencia ciudadana y la identificación de nuevos desafíos en la actividad y el servicio de policía, para fortalecer las capacidades institucionales. El método empleado fue cualitativo-descriptivo. Los hallazgos de la investigación están relacionados con la naturaleza híbrida y compleja del vandalismo, sus causas diversas que abarcan elementos de influencia internacional, las conflictividades sociales, la polarización y el empleo de las vías de hecho por grupos radicales anarquistas. Asimismo, se realiza una caracterización del vandalismo a nivel de su estructura, método, actores, intereses y el impacto negativo en la seguridad y convivencia, que permite establecer como conclusión que no se está ante un fenómeno espontáneo, sino ante un comportamiento colectivo cada vez más organizado y con una intencionalidad de generar caos y miedo. Finalmente, se presentan los desafíos para la Institución y propuestas para afrontar escenarios de alta con-flictividad social y violencia.
... Los principales hallazgos de este estudio evidencian los rasgos sociales de los entrevistados, identificando una ideología política marcada por el rechazo hacia la autoridad representada en la policía colombiana estudiantes de universidades públicas. En contrastante a los estudiantes de las universidades privadas, quienes, a pesar de expresar diferencias frente a los hechos de protesta social, identifican a la PONAL y su grupo ESMAD como una autoridad competente encargada de repeler las formas de protesta violenta, concordante a otros estudios basados en encuestas donde se ha demostrado la existencia del extremismo ideológico tanto de derecha como de izquierda (John y Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Bode, 2016). Lo anterior, representa implicaciones mediáticas en las redes sociales conociéndose como bloqueo partidista, donde los usuarios de izquierda tienden a ser los que más utilizan esta forma de aislar la confrontación en redes sociales. ...
Durante las protestas sociales en Colombia, en los últimos años, se han pre-sentado comportamientos e incidentes de violencia como expresión de desacuerdo e indignación ante la defensa y protección de derechos e intereses que, a consideración de parte de la población colombiana, habían sido vulnerados con las políticas de Gobierno. Este contexto motivó el estudio sobre dicho fenómeno social, resultados que se materializaron en el libro; el cual describe categorías, dinámicas y expresiones, sustentadas y circunscritas en dos capítulos: el primero “Manifestaciones de violencia en las protestas sociales en Bogotá. D.C.: una lectura desde la convivencia”, refiere acciones de respuesta frente al vandalismo durante la protesta social como desafíos en la actividad y el servicio de policía. El segundo capítulo “Percepción seguridad ciudadana en Colombia: ¿la protesta social, manifestación de partidos políticos o descontento social?”, analiza la imagen de la Policía Nacional frente a los delitos producto de la protesta social y el sesgo informativo por parte de los medios de comunicación. Como conclusión, se plantea la necesidad de fortalecer las capacidades institucionales ante comportamientos colectivos cada vez más organizados y con la intencionalidad de generar caos y miedo.
... Los principales hallazgos de este estudio evidencian los rasgos sociales de los entrevistados, identificando una ideología política marcada por el rechazo hacia la autoridad representada en la policía colombiana estudiantes de universidades públicas. En contrastante a los estudiantes de las universidades privadas, quienes, a pesar de expresar diferencias frente a los hechos de protesta social, identifican a la PONAL y su grupo ESMAD como una autoridad competente encargada de repeler las formas de protesta violenta, concordante a otros estudios basados en encuestas donde se ha demostrado la existencia del extremismo ideológico tanto de derecha como de izquierda (John y Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015;Bode, 2016). Lo anterior, representa implicaciones mediáticas en las redes sociales conociéndose como bloqueo partidista, donde los usuarios de izquierda tienden a ser los que más utilizan esta forma de aislar la confrontación en redes sociales. ...
La violencia ha sido protagonista infortunada de la protesta social, alentada
por las redes sociales. Objetivos: 1) analizar la percepción de estudiantes universitarios de la imagen de la Policía Nacional de Colombia en convivencia y
seguridad, el Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios con relación a la protesta social.
Método: encuestas ponderadas: empleando 80 preguntas, además, se correlacionaron los datos anteriormente obtenidos que midieron la participación en
la acción colectiva y si está influenciada por las tres orientaciones del sistema
político (reglas, roles y valores), correlacionando con un modelo de regresión
logística del alfa de Cronbach. Resultados: El 90,75 % de ellos consideran que no
debería existir el ESMAD, ni acudir ninguna forma de autoridad. Las variables
que influyen en el poder político estadísticamente significativas (p < .001) se
encuentran la seguridad, el uso de la fuerza y los derechos humanos. Asimismo,
los valores y roles, tanto para los estudiantes de instituciones privadas y públicas, también fueron estadísticamente significativos. Discusión: existe un sesgo
informativo en la protesta social, con operación de justicia precaria y sin apoyo
ciudadano. Conclusiones: el sesgo informativo alimentado por algunos grupos
políticos que emplean las redes sociales para ganar adeptos, necesitando otros
estudios asociados con la cultura, los valores y el fortalecimiento del aparato judicial, aumentando las penas, el rechazo social y la garantía de la protesta
Digital media allow users the ability to engage in and be exposed to trolling. Although many people may enjoy the occasional opportunity to witness others being trolled, a relative minority directly troll others, those whom we can label overt trolls. Nevertheless, features afforded on social media and online communities (e.g., likes, upvotes) make it accessible for people to positively react to and support trolling, becoming supportive trolls, a potential steppingstone into overt trolling. In the theoretical contexts of social cognitive theory and the bystander effect, we advance a model in which enjoyment of observing trolling prompts supportive trolling, which could then lead to overt trolling. Analyses of data from an online survey conducted in the United States ( N = 604) show the positive link between enjoyment of observing trolling and supportive trolling is stronger among individuals with higher fear of punishment, while the subsequent link between supportive and overt trolling is stronger among those with higher online disinhibition. Our findings hold implications in understanding the effects of trolling on social media audiences and how trolling can be performed in nuanced ways.
This research examines the concept of "disconnective action" during crises, positing it as a necessary counterpart to "connective action" (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012). While digital media is typically lauded for fostering connectivity during socio-political controversies, it also presents affordances for disconnectivity, such as unfriending, unfollowing, and banning. This project aims to understand the dynamics and implications of digital disconnection, particularly during crises that serve as catalysts for revealing divergent opinions among social network users (Sibona, 2014; John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015; John & Gal, 2018). The theoretical backdrop of this study involves "disconnective power" (Light & Cassidy, 2014), which refers to the ability of dominant actors to employ digital media as tools for political, cultural, and social fragmentation. The research proposes that this form of power is particularly evident in the strategic use of digital technologies to isolate political systems and promote societal disintegration. Accordingly, the new forms of propaganda utilize disconnective affordances to undermine cross-conflict horizontal networks. By framing disconnection as a performative "speech act" (Austin,1962; Butler, 1990) and examining the role of social media as both a unifying and divisive force, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of digital interaction in times of socio-political unrest. Over five years, data on public unfriending announcements were collected, particularly from Russian-speaking Facebook users during the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The research reveals the dominant logics behind publicized disconnective actions and the influence of individual users in initiating broader disconnective trends.
Numerous studies have been conducted over the past few decades to understand how social and political values contribute to political polarization. In modern society, where social divisions are rampant, it is crucial to reveal the psychological underpinnings of political polarization, its negative impact on democracy, and how it can be mitigated. Values concerning socio-political issues are often linked to moral judgments, which can frame one’s attitudes toward the issues as a matter of “right” versus “wrong.” Such framing significantly contributes to political polarization because different viewpoints are, by definition, mutually exclusive for moralized values (A “right” attitude must be accepted, and a “wrong” attitude cannot be accepted). Research has consistently demonstrated that moral convictions can harm interpersonal and intergroup relations and lead to social network fragmentations. This paper reviews recent research on moral conviction, particularly emphasizing its impact on interpersonal and intergroup relations as well as social network compositions. We then highlight the roles of motivations to form a shared reality with communication partners as a potential psychological foundation of political polarization, especially concerning attitudes held with moral convictions. Finally, we discuss how fragmented social networks can recursively affect interpersonal and intergroup relations through obtained sense of shared reality.
This paper claims that Israeli web content creators are less politically engaged and overtly critical in comparison to local filmmakers who have been creating for cinema and television. Their comedy leans towards lighthearted nonsense and avoids taking a stand on controversial topics. It is argued that this can be explained by both universal and uniquely local reasons. In general, web creators are not judged by the same standards of artistic quality that is attributed to films and TV shows. Therefore, they choose different topics and aesthetics, which might appear less “substantial” or “artistic” by traditional perceptions. Also, Millennials are often considered by critics to be less rebellious and more self-centered. In addition, Israeli society has become more right-wing, nationalist, and religious. Contemporary culture therefore favors crowd-pleasing optimism over critique or complaints that ‘spoil the party’. Furthermore, artists’ self-censorship is affected by a growing lack of tolerance, which is sometimes expressed through social media outrage, and might cause severe damage to their careers. Based on these explanations, this paper then analyzes three independent web comedies which touch upon the debatable topic of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and the national-religious community, yet do it with varying degrees of criticism.
Due to limitations in data and methodologies, few quantitative analyses have been conducted on large-scale personal narratives. This paper addresses this gap by quantifying the semantic progression of personal narratives on Twitter and examining its relationship with narrative success. Our findings reveal significant variations in the factors influencing the success of personal narratives in politics, entertainment, and sports categories. This study deepens our understanding of the semantic characteristics and success of personal narratives, inspiring further exploration into the influence of the characteristics and success of personal narratives on self-identity.
Relationships are perhaps the single greatest source of human happiness, and as part of building strong relationships, conflict and hard conversations are unavoidable. As people increasingly rely on digital communication to initiate and resolve conflicts, we examine how design can improve the experience of working through hard conversations within close relationships. We interviewed six psychotherapists and twenty-one social media users to understand both theoretical best practices for navigating conflict and users' experiences with hard conversations online, particularly on text-based messaging platforms. We used our findings to create a temporal model of how digital design could intervene to support users and their relationships during these conversations. Specifically, we find that design can help to facilitate more mutually consensual difficult conversations, support emotional regulation during the conversation, and help facilitate pauses when necessary. We explore the tensions between balancing the needs of relationships and the individuals in them in digital design, and how to center relationships in digital design.
Many social media affordances can affect the quality of online discourse, but such an effect remains understudied for the visibility of geolocation, which is available on most social media platforms. We looked at the event in which Weibo started to display users’ IP locations on 28 April 2022, which was supposed to reduce incivility as the deindividuation hypothesis predicted. Leveraging a natural experiment, we examined the effect of IP location visibility, with special attention to COVID-19-related news posts and location-based, uncivil name-calling. We found that displaying the IP location in the comments section increased location-based incivility, as geolocation can function as an effective cue that signals ideological affiliation and fuels conflicts between users holding different political positions on the Chinese Internet. Meanwhile, we characterized a moderating effect of audience size on this decivilizing effect. Our study suggests that diverse social media affordances can fuel group identification and facilitate intergroup behaviors.
While social media creates the opportunity for exposure and engagement with cross-cutting political views, they may not always be well-received. Drawing on research related to tie strength, the need to belong, and affective intelligence theory, the present study examined how a combination of social and emotional factors informed how social media users respond to exposure to cross-cutting political views. Survey participants ( N = 288) were presented with scenarios where they were exposed to cross-cutting views on a self-identified important political topic with a close friend and an acquaintance. Social media response strategies assessed included public (comment), private (messaging), ignoring (scrolling past), hiding (muting), and unfriending–unfollowing. The tie strength of the person posting and emotions toward a political topic were identified as salient factors. Results indicated that if the cross-cutting view was shared by a strong tie, participants were more likely to respond by engaging publicly or private messaging, while cross-cutting views shared by weak ties were more likely to lead to ignoring the post as well as the decision to hide or unfriend. Participants also identified how they felt about the political topic selected (enthusiasm, aversion, or anxiety). Anxiety was largely unrelated to the identified response strategies, while aversion predicted the same responses regardless of tie strength. Enthusiasm predicted public and private response for both ties, and predicted ignoring (negative), hiding, and unfriending for close friends.
This article explores the phenomenon of block talk among Germanspeaking Twitter users, based on a subsample of 1700 tweets from a larger corpus of 380,000 block-related tweets collected between February and December 2021. Block talk refers to users publicly mentioning and conversing about the disconnective practice of blocking, which sometimes stimulates a debate about the legitimate use of blocking while at other times providing an outgroup marker for collective positioning. Through the example of block talk we demonstrate that the platform’s curatorial infrastructure for drawing boundaries between public and private is continuously negotiated, and that this negotiation transforms the meaning of some of the default communicative affordances of the platform but also creates its own routines of making public. On the one hand, we show how users adapt conversational devices such as hashtags, screenshots, and @-mentions in the context of block talk. On the other hand, we present examples of Twitter users’ normative reflections about blocking and discuss them as processes of metapragmatic enregisterment. In the final discussion, we propose to integrate processes of routinized adaptation as well as reflexive enregisterment into a joint process of ‘communicative infrastructuring’.
The extensive use of social media has sparked a controversial debate regarding interactions on social media platforms and their influence on network polarization, a phenomenon that still misses conceptual clarity and consensus. By conducting a systematic literature review on empirical findings concerning network polarization, we take first steps to a more systematic conceptualization of polarization. We do this by identifying (a) the different dimensions on which polarization manifests itself, and (b) the relevant influence factors associated with the emergence of polarization phenomena in online social networks. We identified Attitude Extremity, Topic Diversity, Social Fragmentation, and Linguistic Usage as the dimensions on which polarization can be observed. Furthermore, we derive an integrated research framework covering a comprehensive set of mechanisms associated with polarization on social media, hence serving as a useful starting point for further investigation of polarization phenomena in IS research and the unintended consequences of ICT usage.
In 2019–2020, Israel went through three consecutive elections in less than a year on grounds of alleged corruption by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and his lack of ability to form a coalition. This study aims to contribute to analyses of the media mobilization/malaise effect by examining the impact of such a prolonged period of campaigning on citizens’ political behavior. Thus, we conducted six online surveys using a longitudinal sample of Israeli society before and after each election. The analysis found that, despite participants’ testimonies that they were increasingly “tired of dealing with elections,” there was a significant increase in participants’ reported certainty in their vote, news consumption, participation in online political discussions, and level of political efficacy between the elections. Next, a multivariate analysis aiming to explain variations in voters’ political efficacy found that political trust, participants’ reported certainty about their vote, and political interest all explained high levels of political efficacy. The analysis provides one of the strongest reinforcements to date regarding the validity of political mobilization theory, demonstrating its relevance under challenging conditions. We discuss further implications and generalizability of our findings.
This paper examines social network size in contemporary Western society based on the exchange of Christmas cards. Maximum
network size averaged 153.5 individuals, with a mean network size of 124.9 for those individuals explicitly contacted; these
values are remarkably close to the group size of 150 predicted for humans on the basis of the size of their neocortex. Age,
household type, and the relationship to the individual influence network structure, although the proportion of kin remained
relatively constant at around 21%. Frequency of contact between network members was primarily determined by two classes of
variable: passive factors (distance, work colleague, overseas) and active factors (emotional closeness, genetic relatedness).
Controlling for the influence of passive factors on contact rates allowed the hierarchical structure of human social groups
to be delimited. These findings suggest that there may be cognitive constraints on network size.
The present contribution aims to advance discussion toward theoretical and methodological shifts in the field by tailoring a media-effects model to selective exposure research. The first section reviews earlier theorizing and highlights media exposure motivations, conceptualizations of media user characteristics, and methodology with an emphasis on exposure measures. The second section develops the Selective Exposure Self- and Affect-Management (SESAM) model, which is based on the selective exposure paradigm and addresses the roles of the self, affect, motivations, and time. The third section illustrates applications of the model with analyses involving messages about race, politics, and health.
This article attends to the idea of disconnection as a way of theorising people’s lived experience of social networking sites. Enrolling and extending a disconnective practice lens, we suggest that the disconnective strategies of suspension and prevention are operational necessities for those we might see as the users and owners of sites such as Facebook. Indeed, our work demonstrates that disconnection in these contexts need not be associated only with modes of resistance and departure, but can also act as socioeconomic lubricant.
How do persistent terrorist attacks influence political tolerance, a willingness to extend basic liberties to one’s enemies? Studies in the U.S. and elsewhere have produced a number of valuable insights into how citizens respond to singular, massive attacks like 9/11. But they are less useful for evaluating how chronic and persistent terrorist attacks erode support for democratic values over the long haul. Our study focuses on political tolerance levels in Israel across a turbulent thirty-year period, from 1980 to 2011, which allows us to distinguish the short-term impact of hundreds of terrorist attacks from the long-term influence of democratic longevity on political tolerance. We find that the corrosive influence of terrorism on political tolerance is much more powerful among Israelis who identify with the Right, who have also become much more sensitive to terrorism over time. We discuss the implications of our findings for other democracies under threat from terrorism.
This paper is a study of consumer resistance among active abstainers of the Facebook social network site. I analyze the discourses invoked by individuals who consciously choose to abstain from participation on the ubiquitous Facebook platform. This discourse analysis draws from approximately 100 web and print publications from 2006 to early 2012, as well as personal interviews conducted with 20 Facebook abstainers. I conceptualize Facebook abstention as a performative mode of resistance, which must be understood within the context of a neoliberal consumer culture, in which subjects are empowered to act through consumption choices – or in this case non-consumption choices – and through the public display of those choices. I argue that such public displays are always at risk of misinterpretation due to the dominant discursive frameworks through which abstention is given meaning. This paper gives particular attention to the ways in which connotations of taste and distinction are invoked by refusers through their conspicuous displays of non-consumption. This has the effect of framing refusal as a performance of elitism, which may work against observers interpreting conscientious refusal as a persuasive and emulable practice of critique. The implication of this is that refusal is a limited tactic of political engagement where media platforms are concerned.
Follower count is important to Twitter users: it can indicate popularity and prestige. Yet, holistically, little is understood about what factors -- like social behavior, message content, and network structure - lead to more followers. Such information could help technologists design and build tools that help users grow their audiences. In this paper, we study 507 Twitter users and a half-million of their tweets over 15 months. Marrying a longitudinal approach with a negative binomial auto-regression model, we find that variables for message content, social behavior, and network structure should be given equal consideration when predicting link formations on Twitter. To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study of follow predictors, and the first to show that the relative contributions of social behavior and mes-sage content are just as impactful as factors related to social network structure for predicting growth of online social networks. We conclude with practical and theoretical implications for designing social media technologies.
The American electorate is characterized by political polarization, and especially by increasingly negative affective responses toward opposing party members. To what extent might this be attributed to exposure to information reinforcing individuals' partisan identity versus information representing the views of partisan opponents? And is this a uniquely American phenomenon? This study uses survey data collected immediately following recent national elections in two countries, the United States and Israel, to address these questions. Results across the two nations are generally consistent, and indicate that pro- and counterattitudinal information exposure has distinct influences on perceptions of and attitudes toward members of opposing parties, despite numerous cross-cultural differences. We discuss implications in light of recent evidence about partisans' tendency to engage in selective exposure.
Social network sites (SNS) like Facebook allow users to add friends from a variety of contexts to a single general-purpose social network. The variety of friend types that gather on the site can lead to context collapse where connections from a variety of context are grouped in a single collection. This research examines the friend types who are commonly unfriended and examines two particular friend types in detail to determine differences between these types of friends and the general population. The most common type of friend who is unfriended is the high school friend (18.6%), followed by other (uncategorized), friend of a friend, and work friend. These four friend types account for the majority (53.7%) of unfriending decisions. High school friends are unfriended for making online posts that are polarizing and for posting too frequently about unimportant topics. Work-related friends are commonly unfriended for engaging in disliked offline behavior and are not typically unfriended for their posting behavior.
Sharing is the constitutive activity of Web 2.0. But when did ‘sharing’ become the term used to describe the activities that constitute participation in Web 2.0? What does sharing mean in this context? What is its rhetorical force? This paper argues that a new meaning of sharing has emerged in the context of Web 2.0 with three main features: fuzzy objects of sharing; the use of the word ‘share’ with no object at all; and presenting in terms of sharing functions of social network sites that used not to be so described. Following a critique of the use of the notion of sharing by social network sites, the article concludes by suggesting affinities between sharing in Web 2.0 and in other social spheres.
The principle of homophily says that people associate with other groups of people who are mostly like themselves. Many online communities are structured around groups of socially similar individuals. On Twitter, however, people are exposed to multiple, diverse points of view through the public timeline. The authors captured 30,000 tweets about the shooting of George Tiller, a late-term abortion doctor, and the subsequent conversations among pro-life and pro-choice advocates. They found that replies between like-minded individuals strengthen group identity, whereas replies between different-minded individuals reinforce in-group and out-group affiliation. Their results show that people are exposed to broader viewpoints than they were before but are limited in their ability to engage in meaningful discussion. They conclude with implications for different kinds of social participation on Twitter more generally.
Protracted, intractable conflicts mark a new research frontier in the field of conflict studies. These intense, inescapable conflicts over issues such as critical resources, identity, meaning, justice, and power are complex, traumatic, and often resist even the most serious attempts at resolution. But why are they intractable? What characteristics distinguish intractable conflicts from more tractable, resolvable conflicts? Scholars have begun to identify a diverse array of interrelated factors. This article is the first in a three-part series that presents a metaframework for protracted, intractable conflict: a broad conceptual framework for theory building and intervention. This article begins the series by outlining the unique characteristics and challenges posed by conflict in this domain.
This article contextualizes the special issue of the journal by discussing the importance of language variables in the study of communication technology. It asserts three reasons to study technology: to see how technology changes language use, to see how social actors adapt to technology limitations and thereby bring into sharp focus basic social processes in human interaction, and to inform the design of technologies based on theories of language and the requirements of communication dynamics. Computer-mediated communication offers special opportunities for examining language and communication theory, in that online discourse is immune to many nonverbal communication elements that may confound language effects in speech. The role of language in communication technology research has been cyclical, with recent research refocusing on language data as evidence of human-computer interaction effects. Future research directions are suggested.
Objectives: Determine the role of the friend request in unfriending decisions. Find factors in unfriending decisions and find differences in the perception of online and offline behaviors that vary depending on the unfriending decision. Method: Survey research conducted online. 690 surveys about unfriending were analyzed using exploratory statistical techniques. Results: The research results show that the initiator of the friend request has more than their expected share of unfriends compared to those who receive the friend request. There are online and offline factors for unfriending decisions; the research identified six constructs to evaluate unfriending decisions. There are 4 components for online behaviors (unimportant/frequent posts, polarizing posts, inappropriate posts and everyday life posts) and 2 offline components (disliked behavior and changes in the relationship). Survey respondents who said they unfriend for online reasons were more likely to agree that the person posted too frequently about unimportant topics, polarizing topics, and inappropriate topics compared to those who unfriended for offline reasons.
Empirical studies of citizen communication networks and participation go as far back as the 1940s, with a bolder focus in political—not civic—activities. A consistent finding reveals that individuals with larger networks are more engaged than those with smaller networks. This article expands this line of work with a number of novel tests. First, it compares the predictive power of online versus offline network size on civic engagement. It then explores the role of strong-tie versus weak-tie discussion frequency and participatory behaviors. Finally, it examines the extent to which the contribution of network size, both online and offline, on civic engagement is mediated by discussion with weak ties. Using original survey data from a large national sample of U.S. adults, results indicate that (1) the relationships between online and offline network size and civic engagement are positive and fairly similar in strength, (2) weak-tie discussion is the strongest predictor of civic behaviors, (3) weak-tie discussion largely mediates the association between participation and network size online and offline, and (4) online networks entail greater exposure to weak ties than offline networks.
Similarity breeds connection. This principle--the homophily principle--structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localized positions) within social space. We argue for more research on: (a) the basic ecological processes that link organizations, associations, cultural communities, social movements, and many other social forms; (b) the impact of multiplex ties on the patterns of homophily; and (c) the dynamics of network change over time through which networks and other social entities co-evolve.
Ben Light puts forward an alternative way of thinking about how we engage with social networking sites. He analyses our engagements social networking sites in public, at work, in our personal lives and as related to our health and wellbeing, emphasizing the importance of disconnection instead of connection.
Without the experience of disagreement, political communication among citizens loses value and meaning. At the same time, political disagreement and diversity do not always or inevitably survive. This book, accordingly, considers the compelling issue of the circumstances that sustain political diversity, even in politically high stimulus environments where individuals are attentive to politics and the frequency of communication among citizens is correspondingly high. © Robert Huckfeldt, Paul E. Johnson, John Sprague 2004 and Cambridge University Press, 2010.
We propose unsociability as a novel perspective to approach and support online social interactions. With examples taken from focus group discussions, we highlight the need of users to save face in their online interactions within social network sites. We claim that people follow a "social-over-technical" pattern on Facebook, as they base their interactions on their social understanding of this site instead of on its technical capabilities. These social norms and patterns challenge social translucence which has for more than a decade been recognized as one of the cornerstones of social computing systems.
The present study examines how exposure to uncivil online comments influences individuals' attitude polarization along political party lines, perceived political polarization of the public, and expectations about public deliberation. Findings show that exposure to uncivil online discussion does not affect attitude polarization, but it does significantly affect the perceived polarization of the public. In addition, exposure to uncivil online discussion leads to lower expectations about public deliberation and such effect of uncivil discussion on expectations of public deliberation was mediated by perceived public polarization but not by attitude polarization.
This book studies the rise of social media in the first decade of the twenty-first century, up until 2012. It provides both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of networking services in the context of a changing ecosystem of connective media. Such history is needed to understand how the intricate constellation of platforms profoundly affects our experience of online sociality. In a short period of time, services like Facebook, YouTube and many others have come to deeply penetrate our daily habits of communication and creative production. While most sites started out as amateur-driven community platforms, half a decade later they have turned into large corporations that do not just facilitate user connectedness, but have become global information and data mining companies extracting and exploiting user connectivity. Offering a dual analytical prism to examine techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of social media, the author dissects five major platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia. Each of these microsystems occupies a distinct position in the larger ecosystem of connective media, and yet, their underlying mechanisms for coding interfaces, steering users, filtering content, governance and business models rely on shared ideological principles. Reconstructing the premises on which these platforms are built, this study highlights how norms for online interaction and communication gradually changed. "Sharing," "friending," "liking," "following," "trending," and "favoriting" have come to denote online practices imbued with specific technological and economic meanings. This process of normalization is part of a larger political and ideological battle over information control in an online world where everything is bound to become "social."
Today audiences can select content that is consonant with their political notions, and they take advantage of this opportunity. Such partisan selective exposure to media outlets has been identified as one of the reasons for attitude polarization. Little research attention, however, has been devoted to the processes underlying this phenomenon. This article advances the understanding of selective exposure by testing whether its effect on attitude polarization is attributable to people's familiarity with arguments that reinforce or challenge their own opinions. A sample of politically engaged extremists (N = 440) was subjected to a structured interview. As hypothesized, users of partisan media were more familiar with arguments reinforcing their views and, as a result, more prone to polarization. Knowledge of challenging arguments, however, was not affected by consumption of partisan media, nor did it promote depolarization. Results are discussed in light of two conflicting theories: the persuasion and the motivational-reasoning model.
Can partisan media (in particular, partisan TV news) polarize viewers? I outline a set of hypotheses to explain the conditions under which partisan media will increase attitudinal polarization. I use original experiments to test this theory, and find that like-minded messages do have a strong polarizing effect on viewers' attitudes. I also show that cross-cutting messages have, on average, little effect on attitudes, but that they can have strongly polarizing or moderating effects for voters with particular traits. I provide evidence supporting one of the primary hypothesized mechanisms, and also show their duration outside of the lab. I draw on experimental techniques from biomedical studies to show how viewer's preferences for watching partisan media shape these effects. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for both theories of media effects and political behavior more broadly. + The author thanks Daniella Lejitneker and the staff of the Wharton Behavioral Lab for help implementing experiment 1 in the paper. Thanks also to Pope, and participants at the MIT American Politics Conference for comments, and to the School of Arts and Sciences and the Vice-Provost for Research at the University of Pennsylvania for funding these experiments. Any remaining errors are my own. The supplemental data with details on the experiments is available upon request from the author.
Source: Democracy Now! JUAN GONZALEZ: When you follow your friends on Facebook or run a search on Google, what information comes up, and what gets left out? That's the subject of a new book by Eli Pariser called The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. According to Pariser, the internet is increasingly becoming an echo chamber in which websites tailor information according to the preferences they detect in each viewer. Yahoo! News tracks which articles we read. Zappos registers the type of shoes we wear, we prefer. And Netflix stores data on each movie we select. AMY GOODMAN: The top 50 websites collect an average of 64 bits of personal information each time we visit and then custom-designs their sites to conform to our perceived preferences. While these websites profit from tailoring their advertisements to specific visitors, users pay a big price for living in an information bubble outside of their control. Instead of gaining wide exposure to diverse information, we're subjected to narrow online filters. Eli Pariser is the author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. He is also the board president and former executive director of the group MoveOn.org. Eli joins us in the New York studio right now after a whirlwind tour through the United States.
Employing a national probability survey in 2012, this study tests relationships between social media, social network service (SNS) network heterogeneity, and opinion polarization. The results show that the use of social media is a positive predictor of the level of network heterogeneity on SNSs and that the relationship is mediated by several news-related activities, such as getting news, news posting, and talking about politics on SNSs. Testing the association between SNS network heterogeneity and polarization, this study considers 3 different dimensions of opinion polarization: partisan, ideological, and issue. The findings indicate that political discussion moderates the relationship between network heterogeneity and the level of partisan and ideological polarizations. The implications of this study are discussed.
Little is known about whether deliberative experiences are affected by participants' perceptions of disagreement or by what is expressed during deliberation. Drawing on participants in online deliberations, we find that (a) it is perceived disagreement that is strongly related to experiences such as interest/enjoyment, (b) medium levels of objective disagreement attenuate confusion, and (c) these associations depend on the topic discussed and are subject to some critical thresholds. These results have both theoretical and practical implications. They suggest that (a) perceptions of disagreement, although not clearly indicative of what transpires in deliberation, are consequential, (b) objective disagreement exerts nuanced effects that do not always parallel those of perceived disagreement, and (c) disagreement should be assessed in an issue-specific manner.
Most people associate with people like themselves, a process called homophily. Exposure to diversity, however, makes us more informed as individuals and as a society. In this paper, we investigate political disagreements on Facebook to explore the conditions under which diverse opinions can coexist online. Via a mixed methods approach comprising 103 survey responses and 13 interviews with politically engaged American social media users, we found that participants who perceived more differences with their friends engaged less on Facebook than those who perceived more homogeneity. Weak ties were particularly brittle to political disagreements, despite being the ties most likely to offer diversity. Finally, based on our findings we suggest potential design opportunities to bridge across ideological difference: 1) support exposure to weak ties; and 2) make common ground visible while friends converse.
Recent analyses of self-reported data (mainly survey data) seem to suggest that social rules for ending relationships are transformed on Facebook. There seem to be a radical difference between offline and online worlds: reasons for ending online relationships are different than those for ending offline ones. These preliminary findings are, however, not supported by any quantitative evidence, and that is why we put them to test. We consider a variety of factors (e.g., age, gender, personality traits) that studies in sociology have found to be associated with friendship dissolution in the real world and study whether these factors are still important in the context of Facebook. Upon analyzing 34,012 Facebook relationships, we found that, on average, a relationship is more likely to break if it is not embedded in the same social circle, if it is between two people whose ages differ, and if one of the two is neurotic or introvert. Interestingly, we also found that a relationship with a common female friend is more robust than that with a common male friend. These findings are in line with previous analyses of another popular social-networking platform, that of Twitter. All this goes to suggest that there is not much difference between offline and online worlds and, given this predictability, one could easily build tools for monitoring online relations.
This study considered being unfriended on Facebook as an expectancy violation that could vary in valence, importance, and expectedness according to a number of relationship and Facebook involvement characteristics. Facebook users who had been unfriended responded to a variety of quantitative scales via an online survey. Being unfriended constituted a moderately expected and negative, and moderately-to-highly important, expectancy violation. Whether ties with the unfriender were close versus weak best predicted valence and importance and the extent to which the unfriended individual used Facebook to connect with existing contacts best explained violation expectedness. Violation importance also predicted whether or not the unfriended individual contacted the former friend about being unfriended. Results supported Expectancy Violation Theory and extended knowledge about Facebook unfriending.
We employed social network data from 25 randomly sampled voluntary associations to understand the factors associated with accurate perceptions of candidate preferences of group members. We analyzed relationships at the dyadic level, but also considered the overall accuracy of perceptions by each ego of all alters ("perceptiveness") and the overall accuracy of perception by all alters of each ego ("explicitness") regarding candidate preferences using multilevel modeling techniques. We found low levels of accuracy on average, but high variability and differential patterns of prediction of perceptiveness and explicitness. There was a strong, consistent link between the frequency of communication and accuracy both at the dyadic and aggregate levels which was moderated by the homophily of political preferences within the group.
This study integrates network and content analyses to examine exposure to cross-ideological political views on Twitter. We mapped the Twitter networks of 10 controversial political topics, discovered clusters subgroups of highly self-connected users and coded messages and links in them for political orientation. We found that Twitter users are unlikely to be exposed to cross-ideological content from the clusters of users they followed, as these were usually politically homogeneous. Links pointed at grassroots web pages (e.g.: blogs) more frequently than traditional media websites. Liberal messages, however, were more likely to link to traditional media. Last, we found that more specific topics of controversy had both conservative and liberal clusters, while in broader topics, dominant clusters reflected conservative sentiment.
Although economists have long recognized the importance of a critical mass in growing a community, we know little about how it is achieved. This paper examines how initial topical focus influences communities' ability to attract a critical mass. When starting an online community, organizers need to define its initial scope. Topically narrow communities will probably attract a homogeneous group of interested in its content and compatible with each other. However, they are likely to attract fewer members than a diverse one because they offer only a subset of the topics. This paper reports an empirical analysis of longitudinal data collected from Twitter, where each new Twitter poster is considered the seed of a potential social collection. Users who focus the topics of their early tweets more narrowly ultimately attract more followers with more ties among them. Our results shed light on the development of online social networking structures.
This essay examines if the emergence of more partisan media has contributed to political polarization and led Americans to support more partisan policies and candidates. Congress and some newer media outlets have added more partisan messages to a continuing supply of mostly balanced news. Although political attitudes of most Americans have remained fairly centrist, evidence points to some polarization among the politically involved. Proliferation of media choices lowered the share of less interested, less partisan voters and thereby made elections more partisan. But evidence for a causal link between more partisan messages and changing attitudes or behaviors is mixed at best. Measurement problems hold back research on partisan selective exposure and its consequences. Ideologically one-sided news exposure may be largely confined to a small, but highly involved and influential segment of the population. There is no firm evidence that partisan media are making ordinary Americans more partisan. Expected final...
Similarity breeds connection. This principle - the homophily principle - structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localized positions) within social space. We argue for more research on: (a) the basic ecological processes that link organizations, associations, cultural communities, social movements, and many other social forms; (b) the impact of multiplex ties on the patterns of homophily; and (c) the dynamics of network change over time through which networks and other social entities co-evolve.
Scholars studying the effects of political disagreement on participation have advanced competing propositions and mixed evidence to bear on whether disagreement in discussion networks either mobilizes or demobilizes voters. This article proposes that the seeming contradiction is due to different conceptual definitions of disagreement. Briefly, researchers have implicitly defined and measured disagreement in the respondents' political discussion network as either: (a) competition between points of view; or (b) opposition to a person's view. This article clarifies a distinction between two forms of disagreement, integrates past insights on its effects on turnout and tests the hypothesized effects of network composition on voting, in a nationally representative sample of US adults. Results demonstrate the differential effects of supportive, mixed and oppositional discussion networks on the likelihood of participation. Implications for future research are discussed in conclusion.
In this paper, we study the linking patterns and discussion topics of political bloggers. Our aim is to measure the degree of interaction between liberal and conservative blogs, and to uncover any differences in the structure of the two communities. Specifically, we analyze the posts of 40 "A-list" blogs over the period of two months preceding the U.S. Presidential Election of 2004, to study how often they referred to one another and to quantify the overlap in the topics they discussed, both within the liberal and conservative communities, and also across communities. We also study a single day snapshot of over 1,000 political blogs. This snapshot captures blogrolls (the list of links to other blogs frequently found in sidebars), and presents a more static picture of a broader blogosphere. Most significantly, we find differences in the behavior of liberal and conservative blogs, with conservative blogs linking to each other more frequently and in a denser pattern.
The chapters in this book suggest that scholars are nowhere near a consensus on whether the mass public is more polarized than it has been in the past and, if it is, relative to precisely when. Nonetheless, among those who believe the mass public has, indeed, become increasingly polarized in its views, mass media are very likely to be invoked as a cause. Perhaps this should come as no surprise - throughout American history, mass media have been blamed for just about every social ill that has befallen the country.
But in the midst of so much disagreement about when and whether and among whom this phenomenon has occurred, why is there so much agreement that media must somehow be to blame? A consensus on this point exists not so much because the empirical evidence is overwhelming, but because there are multiple theories that predict and explain how media might logically influence levels of mass polarization. Furthermore, it is possible to view mass media as engines of polarization even if one believes the public in general has not become polarized to any significant degree. Mass media are, after all, only one influence in a much larger system of institutions and influences.
For purposes of this chapter, I set aside the question of whether and to what extent mass polarization has occurred, in favor of an exploration of ways in which media have been implicated in polarizing processes. How might mass media be contributing to this widely decried state of affairs? And even if the public has not polarized, how might mass media nonetheless be encouraging mass opinion in more extreme directions?
To what extent do online discussion spaces expose participants to political talk and to cross-cutting political views in particular? Drawing on a representative national sample of over 1000 Americans reporting participation in chat rooms or message boards, we examine the types of online discussion spaces that create opportunities for cross-cutting political exchanges. Our findings suggest that the potential for deliberation occurs primarily in online groups where politics comes up only incidentally, but is not the central purpose of the discussion space. We discuss the implications of our findings for the contributions of the Internet to cross-cutting political discourse.ResumenLos Grupos Online y el Discurso Político: ¿Facilitan los Espacios de Discusión online la Exposición a los Desacuerdos Políticos?¿Hasta qué punto los espacios de discusión online exponen a los participantes a hablar de política y sobre sus visiones en temas relevantes de política? Recurriendo a una muestra nacional representativa de más de 1000 Estadounidenses que reportaron haber participado en salones de conversación ó foros de mensajes, examinamos los tipos de espacios de discusión online que crearon oportunidades para intercambios de temas relevantes de política. Nuestros resultados sugieren que el potencial para la deliberación ocurre primariamente en los grupos online donde los temas políticos aparecen solo en forma incidental, pero no es el propósito central del espacio de discusión. Discutimos las implicancias de nuestros hallazgos para las contribuciones del Internet sobre los temas del discurso político relevante.ZhaiYaoYo yak
Today, people can easily select media outlets sharing their political predispositions, a behavior known as partisan selective exposure. Additional research is needed, however, to better understand the causes and consequences of partisan selective exposure. This study investigates the relationship between partisan selective exposure and political polarization using data from the National Annenberg Election Survey. Cross-sectional results show strong evidence that partisan selective exposure is related to polarization. Over-time analyses document that partisan selective exposure leads to polarization. Some evidence supports the reverse causal direction, namely that polarization leads to partisan selective exposure. Implications for the study of media effects and normative implications—both positive and negative—are discussed.
Clustering is a widely used technique in data mining applications to discover patterns in the underlying data. Most traditional clustering algorithms are limited to handling datasets that contain either continuous or categorical attributes. However, datasets with mixed types of attributes are common in real life data mining problems. In this paper, we propose a distance measure that enables clustering data with both continuous and categorical attributes. This distance measure is derived from a probabilistic model that the distance between two clusters is equivalent to the decrease in log-likelihood function as a result of merging. Calculation of this measure is memory efficient as it depends only on the merging cluster pair and not on all the other clusters. Zhang et al [8] proposed a clustering method named BIRCH that is especially suitable for very large datasets. We develop a clustering algorithm using our distance measure based on the framework of BIRCH. Similar to BIRCH, our algorithm first performs a pre-clustering step by scanning the entire dataset and storing the dense regions of data records in terms of summary statistics. A hierarchical clustering algorithm is then applied to cluster the dense regions. Apart from the ability of handling mixed type of attributes, our algorithm differs from BIRCH in that we add a procedure that enables the algorithm to automatically determine the appropriate number of clusters and a new strategy of assigning cluster membership to noisy data. For data with mixed type of attributes, our experimental results confirm that the algorithm not only generates better quality clusters than the traditional k-means algorithms, but also exhibits good scalability properties and is able to identify the underlying number of clusters in the data correctly. The algorithm is implemented in the commercial data mining tool Clementine 6.0 which supports the PMML standard of data mining model deployment.
An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data
to try to obtain estimates of peer or social influence effects. These data may
provide additional statistical leverage, but they can introduce new inferential
problems. In particular, while the confounding effects of homophily in
friendship formation are widely appreciated, homophily in friendship retention
may also confound causal estimates of social influence in longitudinal network
data. We provide evidence for this claim in a Monte Carlo analysis of the
statistical model used by Christakis, Fowler, and their colleagues in numerous
articles estimating "contagion" effects in social networks. Our results
indicate that homophily in friendship retention induces significant upward bias
and decreased coverage levels in the Christakis and Fowler model if there is
non-negligible friendship attrition over time.
How the mass media divide us Red and blue nation? Characteristics and causes of America's polarized politics
- D C Mutz
Mutz, D. C. (2006). How the mass media divide us. In P. S. Nivola & D. W. Brady (Eds.),
Red and blue nation? Characteristics and causes of America's polarized politics
(Vol. 1, pp. 223-263). Washington: Brookings Institution Press.
Why most Facebook users get more than they give
- K N Hampton
- Sessions
- L Goulet
- C Marlow
- L Rainie
Hampton, K. N., Sessions Goulet, L., Marlow, C., & Rainie, L. (2012). Why most Facebook
users get more than they give. Washington: Pew Research Center's Internet &
American Life Project.
The role of political ideology in dissociative behavior on social networking websites
- R Fix
Fix, R. (2013). The Role of Political Ideology in Dissociative Behavior on Social Networking
Websites. (Master of Arts), University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.
Twitter and the development of an audience
- Y.-C Wang
- R Kraut
Wang, Y.-C., & Kraut, R. (2012). Twitter and the development of an audience: those who
stay on topic thrive! Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Democratic Values and Political Tolerance
- S E Finkel
- L Sigelman
- S Humphries
Finkel, S. E., Sigelman, L., & Humphries, S. (1999). Democratic Values and Political
Tolerance. In J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. S. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of
political attitudes (pp. 203-291). San Diego: Academic Press.