Ideological differences in engagement in public debate on Twitter

TL;DR

This paper examines how different ideological groups engage on Twitter during public debates, revealing biases in visibility and interaction patterns that influence perceptions of public opinion.

Contribution

It introduces a network-based method to analyze ideological engagement and demonstrates its application on real-world political events.

Findings

Far-right users are more active and visible in debates.

Opposing users tend to be more confrontational in replies.

Different groups have unequal influence on perceived public opinion.

Abstract

This article analyses public debate on Twitter via network representations of retweets and replies. We argue that tweets observable on Twitter have both a direct and mediated effect on the perception of public opinion. Through the interplay of the two networks, it is possible to identify potentially misleading representations of public opinion on the platform. The method is employed to observe public debate about two events: The Saxon state elections and violent riots in the city of Leipzig in 2019. We show that in both cases, (i) different opinion groups exhibit different propensities to get involved in debate, and therefore have unequal impact on public opinion. Users retweeting far-right parties and politicians are significantly more active, hence their positions are disproportionately visible. (ii) Said users act significantly more confrontational in the sense that they reply mostly to users from different groups, while the contrary is not the case.