Ideological discrepancy between publishers and news content is linked with audience engagement and consensus on Facebook

TL;DR

This study examines how ideological differences between publishers and political news content on Facebook influence audience engagement, emotional responses, toxicity, and consensus during a Brazilian election.

Contribution

It reveals nonlinear relationships between ideological discrepancy and engagement metrics, highlighting the complex dynamics of online political discourse.

Findings

High ideological mismatch reduces audience consensus and increases toxicity.

Emotional valence and toxicity are strongly linked to audience consensus.

Partisan publishers with high toxicity see increased audience agreement.

Abstract

Political news on social media rarely circulates in isolation: audiences actively engage, react, and clash. Whether these interactions reflect agreement or conflict may depend on the ideological discrepancy between publishers and the news content they share. This study investigates this relationship using Facebook posts linking to political news during a Brazilian presidential election. We analyze five dimensions of engagement: ideological discrepancy between publishers and content, emotional responses, audience consensus, toxicity in posts, and content topics. Our results show that ideological discrepancy is associated with differences in engagement, exhibiting a nonlinear pattern: consensus declines under conditions of very high ideological mismatch and, in our data, also under very high alignment, while toxicity increases primarily under extreme mismatch. A statistical model indicates that emotional valence, toxicity, and ideological discrepancy are the factors most strongly associated with consensus. Among highly partisan publishers, higher toxicity is associated with increased audience consensus, suggesting that hostile discourse may co-occur with in-group agreement in strongly ideological contexts. Overall, these findings highlight how ideological discrepancy, emotional reactions, and interaction dynamics are associated with consensus and polarization in online political engagement.