Tweeting on Catalonia’s independence : The dynamics of political discussion and group polarisation

Abstract

This article provides evidence in favour of social media serving as facilitators of public deliberation, in contrast with the hypothesis that emphasises the dominance of the “echo chamber” effect. It focuses on conversational interactions on Twitter between supporters from opposite sides in a potentially highly polarised political issue, i.e. the debate on the independence of Catalonia, which is used as a case study. Methodologically we rely on a random sample of communications on the Twitter reply network, involving for and against independence supporters. Remarkably, despite the tendency of forming homophilic networks, we find that communication across political lines is relatively frequent. Furthermore, heterogeneous conversations (where opposing sides are engaged in a dialogue) tend to be significantly longer than homogenous ones (where all participants share the same view), which can be seen as a sign of genuine deliberation based on reasonably exchanging arguments between competing viewpoints.