City Research Online

Abstract

The abundance of information on social media has reshaped public discussions, shifting attention to the mechanisms that drive online discourse. This study analyzes large-scale Twitter (now X) data from three global debates-Climate Change, COVID-19, and the Russo-Ukrainian War-to investigate the structural dynamics of engagement. Our findings reveal that discussions are not primarily shaped by specific categories of actors, such as media or activists, but by shared ideological alignment. Users consistently form polarized communities, where their ideological stance in one debate predicts their positions in others. This polarization transcends individual topics, reflecting a broader pattern of ideological divides. Furthermore, the influence of individual actors within these communities appears secondary to the reinforcing effects of selective exposure and shared narratives. Overall, our results underscore that ideological alignment, rather than actor prominence, plays a central role in structuring online discourse and shaping the spread of information in polarized environments.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Publisher Keywords:	Social Media, Ideological Alignment, Polarization, Online Discourse, Online Engagement, Public Debates
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JA Political science (General) T Technology > T Technology (General)
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Department of Mathematics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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