2014/10/02 by Zhe Liu, Ingmar Weber, Liu, Zhe +1
Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social Media and Politics #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1410.0610
openalex publication_date 2014/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The rise in popularity of Twitter has led to a debate on its impact on public opinions. The optimists foresee an increase in online participation and democratization due to social media's personal and interactive nature. Cyber-pessimists, on the other hand, explain how social media can lead to selective exposure and can be used as a disguise for those in power to disseminate biased information. To investigate this debate empirically, we evaluate Twitter as a public sphere using four metrics: equality, diversity, reciprocity and quality. Using these measurements, we analyze the communication patterns between individuals of different hierarchical levels and ideologies. We do this within the context of three diverse conflicts: Israel-Palestine, US Democrats-Republicans, and FC Barcelona-Real Madrid. In all cases, we collect data around a central pair of Twitter accounts representing the two main parties. Our results show in a quantitative manner that Twitter is not an ideal public sphere for democratic conversations and that hierarchical effects are part of the reason why it is not.