Partisan selective news exposure and political polarization on Twitter networks in Turkey

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2018

Öğrenci: SEYİT GÖLCÜK

Danışman: NİLAY YAVUZ

Özet:

This thesis aims to investigate the degree of partisan selective exposure, political polarization and their statistical association by using a Twitter data derived from Turkish political Twitter networks. Analysis of a sample of 2.790.339 unique users who have a total of 48.316.548 following links to political news outlets and political entities on Twitter reveals that, Turkish Twitter audiences identified with a political party exercise very high levels of partisan selective exposure to like-minded news outlets and very low levels of cross-cutting exposure to politically discrepant outlets. In addition, they are found to be very polarized in terms of disproportionately following pro-party deputies and retweeting accounts that share their own political views. The regression analyses with interaction terms supported the main hypothesis of this study in that, irrespective of the political party that is being favored of, partisanship combined with higher levels of like-minded news exposure is significantly associated with political polarization, whereas more cross-cutting exposure among partisans is related with less polarized attitudes. Moreover, validation of the partisanship and polarization measures strengthens the findings of this study