Temporal evolution of polarization patterns on Bluesky

Investigate whether the dominance of single-stance groups and the comparatively homogeneous political user base observed on Bluesky will change over time and converge toward the polarization patterns documented on established platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Background

The paper reports strong polarization on certain topics (e.g., Israel–Palestine, Russia–Ukraine) alongside pronounced group-size imbalance, with dominant stances far outweighing minority stances. In other topics, neutrality is prevalent, and overall cross-topic issue alignment tends to be low.

The authors suggest Bluesky may currently host a more politically homogeneous user base compared to older platforms, raising the question of whether this configuration is transient. Determining if Bluesky’s discourse will evolve to resemble the polarization observed on established platforms requires longitudinal analysis of stance distributions and interaction structures.