Polarization in social media: measuring segregation of political communities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v19i1p281-295Keywords:
Polarization, public segregation, social mediaAbstract
In social media studies, polarization has been generally understood as the segregation of the public into two homogeneous informational circuits. There is little debate, however, about how to measure this segregation in order to analyze its evolution over time. In this work, we review the two most influential measurement proposals in literature and argue why one of them is more appropriate. We show, with Facebook data, how Brazilian polarization was formed in 2014 in a process that is, simultaneously, of seclusion and fusion of political communities. Then, with data from Twitter, we show how the segregation of the digital public sphere was consolidated in 2018 and has remained polarized over time, with small statistical fluctuations.
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