Social media and democratic deliberation

Have social media changed the language we use to talk about politics, made particular voices more prominent in online discussions, or even led people to turn away from democratic deliberation entirely? My thesis explores each of these questions in turn.

My first paper highlights how politicians have used increasingly emotive rhetoric over time on Twitter. Paper two links a survey of the UK population with Twitter accounts, to show that people who discuss politics online tend to be more politically extreme. Finally, a Facebook experiment demonstrates that people disengage from discussing contentious issues in groups of people with contrasting opinions.

Opting out of political discussion on Facebook

On our most sensitive political topics, social media sites often represent centres of conflict rather than consensus. Do online platforms facilitate engagement with these issues - and why might people opt out of discussing them? In a pre-registered lab-in-the-field experiment on Facebook, I assign political partisans in the United States to groups containing news coverage of either divisive or unifying political issues, comprised of either all like-minded partisans or a mixture of Democrats and Republicans. I show that the combination of exposure to contentious political topics and mixed partisan groups causes people to disengage. These findings have important implications for our understanding of online democratic debate.

• GV101: Introduction to Political Science
• PP478E: Political Science and Public Policy
• PP4J1E: Public Opinion and Public Policy