Work

Why Online does not Equal Offline: Comparing Online and Real-World Political Support Among Politicians.

Year: 2021

Type: preprint

Abstract: Are offline political relations and endorsements established or maintained with online interactions?We examine the external validity of data on political behavior exhibited online and compare it to offline behavior. We overlay two data sets on political support among members of the Swiss parliament to estimate the explanatory power of online endorsements on offline cosponsorship signatures among members, using a gHypEG network regression model.Whereas offline support behavior is driven by a broad range of factors, such as network and homophily effects, online endorsement is less diverse.Our findings show that online endorsement is predominantly driven by partisanship, calling into question the use of online political behavior data to study real-world politics.

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/j4fp6

Authors: Laurence Brandenberger, Giona Casiraghi, Georges Andres, Simon Schweighofer, Frank Schweitzer

Institutions: ETH Zurich, Complexity Science Hub

Language: English

Topic: Social Media and Politics

Subfield: Communication

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

Award: Analyzing Co-Sponsorship Networks from 127 Years of the Swiss Federal Assembly

OpenAlex ID: W4248595293

Cites: 43

Cited by: 1

Related to: 10