Muhammad Umer Gurchani University of Montpellier Finding Evidence For
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Muhammad Umer Gurchani University of Montpellier Finding evidence for Partisan Reinforcement through graph analysis of political rivalries on twitter. Abstract The aim of this study is find out if Twitter users choose to expose themselves to diverse set of opinions on political matters or if they choose to listen to only one of the political adversaries, whom they already support in real life as proposed by theories of partisan reinforcement and the classic study of 1940-44 in Erie county [ CITATION Pau44 \l 1033 ]. This is a comparative study of two political rivalries on twitter; the first one is from USA and the other one from Pakistan. Network-Graphs are created from both rivalries to try to see if clusterization happens in a way that it will create an information bias in favor of one of the rivals. For the purpose of this study, I will only be focused on ‘follow’ relationship on twitter for the reason that it is an indicator of choice for twitter users who want to expose to themselves to ideas being promoted through Twitter accounts of these Politcians[ CITATION Mye14 \l 1033 ]. I further aspire to find out if the balkanization effect of internet is evident on twitter[ CITATION Als05 \l 1033 ]. Introduction Twitter is one of the main social media websites on internet with an active and a vibrant user- base of about 310 million users[ CITATION 1620 \l 1033 ]. It is quickly becoming one of mainstream information sources in both politics and entertainment industry. It is therefore hard to ignore the impact of twitter on political arenas all around the world. Since twitter is essentially a media-source, so a more direct approach to such an inquiry would be to ask oneself if twitter allows users to be exposed to all sides of arguments in a political debate or not. The possibility of ‘birds of feathers tweeting together’[ CITATION Him13 \l 1033 ] and polarization is very real as suggested by Sunstein [ CITATION Sun06 \l 1033 ]. The aim of this study is to inquire further into this area with a special focus towards ‘follow’ relationship among twitter users. Two political rivalries (one from a USA and the other one from Pakistan) will be used to get a clearer picture. The inquiry will look into the question, if political rivals have clusters of followers around them and thus preventing the followers from being exposed to the ideas of other political rival. The essence of the question could be stated by asking if twitter user allow themselves to engage in cross-political debate by following both politicians in a particular political rivalry. Literature review The arrival of age of internet carried with it a promise of a more democratic public sphere, with extended means to voice one’s political opinion and to know diverse set of opinions on otherwise taboo topics[ CITATION Pap08 \l 1033 ]. As time went on and we found out new dynamics of this technology and the means to control the internet became widely available (especially for the governments) , it became more and more relevant to ask the question, whether internet is adapting itself to tradition political culture or generating an entirely novel sphere of politics?. One might think that why it became so important to inquire into internet so much, as it is an extension of media technological advancements like TV or Radio. The main reason would be that internet allows the users to choose the content they want to be exposed to [ CITATION Sun06 \l 1033 ]. This matter of choice brings an entirely new angle to interaction of media and politics. Pessimists argued that this choice allowed the users to deliberately blindfold themselves to divergent political opinions and thus decreased the possibility of cross-political interaction (Sunstein, 2006). On the other hand, some scholars have shown another side of the picture where internet has provided voice to individuals who were at a disadvantage in the previously existing means of communication due to multiple factors and thus increased the cross-political communication[ CITATION McK14 \l 1033 ]. Shapiro went on to suggest that internet has helped in overcoming the traditional information gatekeepers in conventional media and allowed the conversational democracy to prevail in modern times [ CITATION Sha \l 1033 ] . The debate became interesting with the arrival of web 2.0, which completely eliminated the technical barriers for users and allowed everyone to express his opinion and comment on the material freely without any need for buying a server-space or domain name. Through this, the internet arguably achieved a maturity that it previously lacked and became a place for open debate for political thinkers. The ability to comment and counter-comment on a subject brought the internet world closer to the real world debate except that internet world had gotten rid of traditional information –gatekeepers. Anonymity allowed people to be more open to expressing ideas without caring for consequences and thus for the optimists it enriched the debates and allowed people to communicate the ideas that they would have been reluctant to say in traditional medias[ CITATION Utz15 \l 1033 ]. While the pessimists have considered it to be a means of communication which allowed people to express without any responsibility[ CITATION Ang14 \l 1033 ] Homophily is the principle that a contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people. In real world this phenomenon occurs quite frequently, people prefer to hangout, marry, socialize and interact with people from similar background, and who have similar opinion about the major political or social ideas[ CITATION McP01 \l 1033 ] . It was hard for social scientists and literary figures not to notice this phenomenon and its observation appears in many significant texts in the world. “Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . .” [ CITATION Lew71 \l 1033 ] “Similarity Begets Friendship”[ CITATION Pla12 \l 1033 ] While on one hand internet allowed people to be exposed to many people from different backgrounds and different socio-economic settings, it also gave them an option to be more efficiently in contact with people from similar backgrounds and thus create a reflection of the real world where people tend to be attracted towards people with similar social background. Alstyne has called this phenomenon “balkanization” [ CITATION Als05 \l 1033 ]. Diana C. Mutz has proved that individual choice is a key factor, which determines if an average person chooses to expose themselves to dissimilar political opinions using traditional mainstream information sources such as newspapers and TV [ CITATION Mut01 \l 1033 ]. Before internet, geographic proximity was one of the major defining factors in the choice regarding the people you meet. Thus, people had a limitation in their choice of interaction but with increasing developments in the Internet, this limitation is no longer there and people have more freedom in choosing their interactions. Thus, homogeneity of contact is more likely to happen in this age of internet than it was previously likely.[ CITATION Als05 \l 1033 ] One of the major developments in the field of artificial intelligence and computer science is advancement in machine learning. This allows a computer to adapt its algorithms as it knows more about the person using it[ CITATION Sim13 \l 1033 ] . This development has arguably furthered the gap between opposite poles in politics of today. For example, Valdis Kerbs has inquired the “suggested books” in Amazon.com when a user purchases a book and found out that in terms of books suggestions Amazon’s machine learning algorithm tries to find out about the person’s political orientation and recommends the books that will intensify his political opinion rather than diversifying it[ CITATION Val16 \l 1033 ]. Amazon.com’s aim behind the recommendations is most probably the likelihood of increasing the sales of books but the sheer ability of a computer to learn about a person and then manipulate his opinion by recommending books in itself a major change whose sociological and political ramifications need to be studied. Similar recommendations are also made in Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and other social networking sites suggesting whom you should follow or befriend, or what videos you should see, based on the data that these companies have gathered about users. Since increase in website- activity is the major aim behind these recommendations, so it is understandable that they use content that users already know about and will be more likely to buy or click-on. These recommendations are embedded in the idea of homophilia and thus unlikely to create the opportunity for cross-political debate between people with different views. Twitter and Facebook friends/follow suggestions are usually the people that are similar to the person who is being suggested. Although twitter is a relative late comer among major social networking websites, but it has gained a special position due to its short and precise messages to followers. It is almost as if it’s built with celebrities, politicians and famous people in mind. Due to twitter’s architecture, it is possible to navigate through it and gather data about who is following whom. It is also interesting to observe how many people are receiving and actively participating (retweeting) in the conversations of people they are following. “Mentions” is also another way in which twitter is useful for gathering data about online political activity. All these ways of gathering data can be utilized to find out if twitter is actually a place for cross-political debate or is it a website, which instigates the polarization among people and further strengthen the clusters of groups that are formed on twitter.