Partisan selective following on twitter over time: polarization or depolarization?

Abstract

In this study, we track the severity of partisan polarization in the following of legislators on Twitter during the initial two years of Twitter’s introduction to South Korea. We examine the pattern of co-following among Twitter users following members of the 18th Korean National Assembly at three time points. We collected a complete list of all followers for each legislator and constructed their co-following network. We also supplemented our following data with survey data. This allowed us to match the same Twitter user’s following behavior with their individual level attributes. Our aggregate level analysis showed that the severity of polarization in Twitter following of National Assembly members lessened from Time 1 to Time 3. We also discovered that, even when tracking only the ‘original’ followers, cross-party following has increased over time. The survey-based results reaffirm our conclusion based on the aggregate data.