Virtual versus reality: how online communication has impacted the way Americans discuss politics

Abstract

The ways in which people communicate about politics have been studied for years and examined through the lens of psychology, gender, and ideology. Political communication has become more prevalent on social media and a larger portion of the population can participate because of its rapid and instantaneous nature. This raises the question of whether the ways that people communicate about politics online is the same as the ways they communicate in person. This paper first reviews the current psychological literature about the different ways genders and people with different ideologies communicate. Then, 16.5 million tweets about the 2022 US Senate Election were collected and graded for sentiment and users were categorized by gender and ideology. By comparing the sentiments for each subgroup to their tendencies according to psychology, the degree to which the two environments for communication were similar could be measured. It was determined that while the majority of trends held true across the environment, there were examples where online communication differed. Specifically, Democrat females discussing republican candidates. This study concludes by calling for further research using more data from other sources in order to ensure that outside factors associated with this election did not skew the results.