Attraction to politically extreme users on social media

Federico Zimmerman; David D Bailey; Goran Muric; Emilio Ferrara; Jonas Schöne; Robb Willer; Eran Halperin; Joaquín Navajas; James J Gross; Amit Goldenberg

doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae395

Attraction to politically extreme users on social media

PNAS Nexus. 2024 Oct 15;3(10):pgae395. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae395. eCollection 2024 Oct.

Authors

Federico Zimmerman^{1

2}, David D Bailey^{1

2}, Goran Muric³, Emilio Ferrara^{3

4

5}, Jonas Schöne⁶, Robb Willer⁶, Eran Halperin⁷, Joaquín Navajas^{8

9

10}, James J Gross¹¹, Amit Goldenberg^{1

2

12}

Affiliations

¹ Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02163, USA.
² Digital, Data, & Design Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02163, USA.
³ Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
⁴ Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
⁵ Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
⁶ Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 9190501, Jerusalem, Israel.
⁸ Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, C1428BCW, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁹ Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, C1428BCW, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
¹⁰ National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), C1425FQB, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
¹¹ Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
¹² Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Abstract

Political segregation is a pressing issue, particularly on social media platforms. Recent research suggests that one driver of segregation is political acrophily-people's preference for others in their political group who have more extreme (rather than more moderate) political views. However, acrophily has been found in lab experiments, where people choose to interact with others based on little information. Furthermore, these studies have not examined whether acrophily is associated with animosity toward one's political out-group. Using a combination of a survey experiment (N = 388) and an analysis of the retweet network on Twitter (3,898,327 unique ties), we find evidence for users' tendency for acrophily in the context of social media. We observe that this tendency is more pronounced among conservatives on Twitter and that acrophily is associated with higher levels of out-group animosity. These findings provide important in- and out-of-the-lab evidence for understanding acrophily on social media.