A political cartography of news sharing: Capturing story, outlet and content level of news circulation on Twitter

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for analyzing news sharing on Twitter, capturing source, content, and political dimensions to reveal nuanced circulation patterns beyond traditional partisan distinctions.

Contribution

It presents a systematic pipeline for mapping news sharing at source and content levels, addressing limitations of previous methods that oversimplify political leanings.

Findings

Diversification of news sharing along a second political dimension

Topic-dependent sharing of outlets

Outlets catering different content to different audiences

Abstract

News sharing on digital platforms shapes the digital spaces millions of users navigate. Trace data from these platforms also enables researchers to study online news circulation. In this context, research on the types of news shared by users of differential political leaning has received considerable attention. We argue that most existing approaches (i) rely on an overly simplified measurement of political leaning, (ii) consider only the outlet level in their analyses, and/or (iii) study news circulation among partisans by making ex-ante distinctions between partisan and non-partisan news. In this methodological contribution, we introduce a research pipeline that allows a systematic mapping of news sharing both with respect to source and content. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate insights that otherwise remain unnoticed: Diversification of news sharing along the second political dimension; topic-dependent sharing of outlets; some outlets catering different items to different audiences.