Dice Question Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com

Generalizability of U.S. Twitter engagement and homophily findings to other countries

Establish whether the findings that most Twitter users are not politically engaged and that politically engaged users display strong political homophily, as reported for the United States, extend to other countries.

Information Square Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com

Background

Prior work in the United States found that most Twitter users are not politically engaged and that engaged users exhibit strong homophily. The authors analyze the Polish Twitter debate and note uncertainty about whether U.S. observations generalize to other national contexts.

This uncertainty affects interpretations of structural polarization across countries and motivates cross-country validation of engagement and homophily patterns.

References

In the United States, Wojcieszak et al. show that most Twitter users are not politically engaged, but those that are show strong patterns of political homophily. However, whether these observations extend to other countries is not clear.

— Sampled Datasets Risk Substantial Bias in the Identification of Political Polarization on Social Media (2406.19867 - Bona et al., 28 Jun 2024) in Section 4.1 (Results: The role of the political debate in Twitter discussion)