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Abstract
This study examines the relationship between political discussion on Facebook and social network location. It uses a survey name generator to map friendship ties between students at a university and to calculate their centralities in that network. Social connectedness in the university network positively predicts more frequent political discussion on Facebook. But in political discussions, better connected individuals do not capitalize equally on the potential influence that stems from their more central network locations. Popular individuals who have more direct connections to other network members discuss politics more often but in politically safer interactions that minimize social risk, preferring more engaged discussion with like-minded others and editing their privacy settings to guard their political disclosures. Gatekeepers who facilitate connections between more pairs of otherwise disconnected network members also discuss politics more frequently, but are more likely to engage in risk-tolerant discussion practices such as posting political updates or attempting political persuasion. These novel findings on social connectedness extend research on offline political discussion into the social media sphere, and suggest that as social network research proliferates, analysts should consider how various types of network location shape political behavior.
Keywords
online engagement, social media, social networks, political discussion, U.S. politics
Informal political discussion is central to the marketplace of ideas and the democratic process (Mutz 2006). A growing literature examines the role of social networks in political discussion (e.g., Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, and Valenzuela 2012; Morey, Eveland, and Hutchens 2012; Moy and Gastil 2006; Valenzuela, Kim, and Gil de Zúñiga 2012), but questions about how network roles and context affect those discussions remain unaddressed. That research shows, for example, that individuals with more social connections discuss politics more often, but it is unclear whether this is equally true of different types of network locations, and how those relationships between network location and political discussion might manifest in various discussion venues. It is also understood that individuals who are located more centrally in a social network can influence more network members while those who are not as central have less structural influence (Borgatti, Everett, and Johnson 2013; Prell 2012). It is not clear, however, whether or not individuals discuss politics in ways that capitalize on their network-based potential to influence others.
This study examines...