2020 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Investigating the mechanism political polarization on social media
| Project/Area Number |
20J11407
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
呂 沢宇 東北大学, 文学研究科, 特別研究員(DC2)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-24 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | 計算社会科学 / 政治分極化 |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
My research investigates interactional polarization by examining whether individuals tend to be segregated according to political orientations . More specifically, we leveraged a method developed by Barbera (2015) to estimate the ideological positions of Twitter users. This model inferred ideological positions by defining follow decision as an affiliative expression. Here, the Bayesian computing algorithm can be applied to estimate the ideological position of a large group of social media users. Then, I use network analysis to evaluate the extent of political homophily and examine whether such behavioral tendency systematically exists across different contexts and across varying individual characteristics.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
My research demonstrates how using digital trace data coupled with computational methods can provide informative implications and meaningful empirical evidence to improve our understanding of important social science research questions. Particularly, my research actively utilized the most advanced techniques in the field of computer science to tackle the methodological limitations in previous studies
Also, my research can add detail and refine existing theoretical knowledge by focusing on Japan as a comparative research object, which can contribute to broad generalizations of implications regarding political polarization in the digital environment.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Political polarization is a broad concept that covers almost all possible opposite or contradictory tendencies, attitudes, and behaviors. Although existing studies have empirically noted that the insular nature of social media interactions can contribute to increasing political polarization, it seems that such arguments are insufficient to completely explain the tendency of increasing polarization. The impact of ubiquitous cross-cutting interactions has not been fully investigated. Future studies would extend the scope of political polarization by emphasizing intergroup hostility and try to provide implications for understanding how political polarization is formed in cross-cutting interactions.
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Research Products
(1 results)
