Social Media and Digital Collaboration
Loading...
Paper Number
1274
Paper Type
Completed
Description
One culprit in the sharp increase in political polarization is social media use. We conduct two studies to explore this relationship. In Study 1, we explicate the mechanisms that link social media use to polarization—interpersonal political tension and political identity salience. We test this model with data from 2,820 Americans on two of the most popular platforms for political engagement: Facebook and Twitter. In Study 2, we drill into affordance use and ideological content on Facebook and Twitter to develop a theory of social media affordances and political polarization. Our theory explains the routes by which different ideological content are linked to a certain group of social media affordances and how this cultivates tension that activates political identities and thus polarization. We test our theory via a survey of 492 Facebook and Twitter users. We discuss the contributions and implications of our two studies for theory and practice.
Recommended Citation
Tanyel, Ilkay Nehir and Windeler, Jaime, "Divided We Stand: Polarization across Social Media Platforms and Affordances" (2021). ICIS 2021 Proceedings. 4.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2021/social_media/social_media/4
Divided We Stand: Polarization across Social Media Platforms and Affordances
One culprit in the sharp increase in political polarization is social media use. We conduct two studies to explore this relationship. In Study 1, we explicate the mechanisms that link social media use to polarization—interpersonal political tension and political identity salience. We test this model with data from 2,820 Americans on two of the most popular platforms for political engagement: Facebook and Twitter. In Study 2, we drill into affordance use and ideological content on Facebook and Twitter to develop a theory of social media affordances and political polarization. Our theory explains the routes by which different ideological content are linked to a certain group of social media affordances and how this cultivates tension that activates political identities and thus polarization. We test our theory via a survey of 492 Facebook and Twitter users. We discuss the contributions and implications of our two studies for theory and practice.
When commenting on articles, please be friendly, welcoming, respectful and abide by the AIS eLibrary Discussion Thread Code of Conduct posted here.
Comments
16-SocMedia