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Examining Polarization in Political Social Media: A Case of Twitter and the 2011 Canadian Federal Election
1. Examining Polarization in Political Social Media:
A Case of Twitter and the 2011 Canadian Federal Election
ANATOLIY GRUZD
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, NS
Email: gruzd@dal.ca Twitter: @dalprof
2. Outline
Background: 2011 Canadian Federal Election
2011 Election & Social Media
Political Polarization
Research Question & Study Design
Results
Conclusions & Future Work
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
3. Background: 2011 Canadian Federal Election
March 25-26
The three opposition parties rejected the government's
proposed budget
Governor General dissolved the 40th Parliament
May 2 - Election Day
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
4. Background: 2011 Canadian Federal Election
Combination of election period opinion polls
Attribution: Galneweinhaw at en.wikipedia
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
5. 2011 Election & Social Media
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
6. 2011 Election & Social Media:
Twitter accounts of Party Leaders
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
7. 2011 Election & Social Media:
Sample Twitter Communication Network on #elxn41
Top 10 most retweeted
users
1. wikileaks
2. acoyne
3. m_ignatieff
4. RosieBarton
5. JianGhomeshi
6. prjktdemocracy
7. democracycanada
8. can_ada
9. elizabethmay
10. wicary
Source: Twitter, #elxn41, Apr 27-30, 2011
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
8. 2011 Election & Social Media:
Political Topics Discussed in the Twitterverse
Source: Twitter, #cdnpoli, Mar 26 - Apr 3, 2011
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
9. 2011 Election & Social Media:
Humour in Canadian Politics
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
11. Political Polarization: Modern Examples
Cable news and radio talk shows (Dilliplane, 2011)
Political blogs (Adamic & Glance, 2005)
Facebook (Gilbert & Karahalios, 2009; Gaines & Mondak,
2009)
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
12. Research Question
Whether Canadian Twitter users are likely to cluster around
shared political interests?
Related work on Twitter (Yardi & boyd, 2010; Conover et.al.,
2011)
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
13. Study Design
Data Collection
http://Netlytic.org
A sample of 5,918 messages with
the â#elxn41â hashtag posted by
1,492 people between April 28-30
Social Network Analysis
ORA
UCINET
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
14. Study Design
Manual Classification of Twitter users in the dataset
Based on their self-declared political views and affiliations
- 256 supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC)
- 221 - New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP)
- 83 - Conservative Party of Canada (CPC)
- 48 - Green Party of Canada (GPC)
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
15. Study Design
Manual Classification of Twitter users in the dataset
Conservative
Spam
Left
Unknown &
Green Undecided
Bloc Liberal
NDP
Other
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
16. Results
Supporters of the four parties had more connections to people in other
parties than to supporters of their own party
Conservative
Liberal
NDP
Green
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
17. Results
Comparison with 10,000 randomly generated networks
Ratio of Observed/Expected connections among political partiesâ
supporters on Twitter
Conservative Liberal NDP Green
Conservative 3.71 0.79 0.34 0.79
Liberal 0.40 3.43 0.52 1.71
NDP 0.40 1.47 1.60 0.69
Green 0.26 1.71 0.40 6.99
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
18. Conclusions
There are some pockets of political polarization on Twitter
homophily - when people in social networks tend to group around
similar backgrounds and interests, including shared political
views.
Twitter has potential for supporting open cross-ideological
discourse
43% of the accounts in the sample did not explicitly stated their
support for any party or stated support to more than one party
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
19. Future Work
âEven though people are likely to be exposed to a variety of
points of views on Twitter, it is not an effective platform to
carry on meaningful discussionsâ (Yardi & boyd, 2010)
Content analysis of messages that form across ideological
connections on Twitter
Twitter: @dalprof SocialMediaLab.ca
20. Examining Polarization in Political Social Media:
A Case of Twitter and the 2011 Canadian Federal Election
ANATOLIY GRUZD
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, NS
Email: gruzd@dal.ca Twitter: @dalprof