Heterogeneity of Facebook friend network facilitates political learning: Evidence from a panel survey during the 2016 US presidential campaign

ABSTRACT

This study examined the effects of Facebook network heterogeneity on campaign knowledge gain by looking at the process where heterogeneity facilitates exposure to information about elections. Findings suggested that Facebook network heterogeneity promoted exposure to campaign information that, in turn, predicted knowledge about candidate issue positions. This indirect effect of network heterogeneity was conditioned by the level of campaign interest. To elaborate, a more heterogeneous Facebook network was positively associated with campaign knowledge for people with lower levels of campaign interest, suggesting that Facebook has the potential to narrow the knowledge gap between the politically attentive and the politically inattentive. Implications of the findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Political learning
• Facebook
• network heterogeneity
• knowledge gap
• panel survey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A total of 44,859 individuals were invited to participate in the first wave of the survey. About 5.6% of respondents responded to the first survey (n = 6955) and about 23.4% of respondents completed the survey (n = 1624). A total of 768 out of 1624 respondents who were invited to the follow-up survey initiated the second wave of the survey, resulting in a completion rate of 82.9% (637/768).

2 Appendix A presents the exact wording of questions used for each measure. See Supplemental Tables B1 and B2 for the results of preliminary analyses.

3 Although the low internal reliability of the campaign knowledge index (KR20 = .52) and that of the pre-existing political knowledge index (KR20 = .53) were not ideal, they were in line with previous studies that employed a similar measure (see Eveland & Hively, 2009; Valentino et al., 2004 for campaign knowledge index; see Carr et al., 2017 for pre-existing political knowledge index). This is not surprising since each of the indices was made of items with varying levels of difficulty.

4 Although a multi-item measure of campaign interest would have been ideal, a single-item measure of individual motivations to learn about politics and campaign has been widely used in previous studies (e.g., Elenbaas et al., 2014; Hutchens et al., 2019). Moreover, a measure similar to that of our study was found to have the convergent validity (Shani, 2011).

5 Additional analyses suggest that the extent to which Facebook users use traditional news media did influence knowledge about presidential candidates (see Supplemental Table C1). For example, watching network TV news (b* = .103, p < .05) and reading online newspapers (b* = .121, p < .05) predicted campaign knowledge gain. However, statistically significant effects of traditional news media use disappeared once individual motivations to engage in politics (i.e., campaign interest at W1 and W2) were controlled for. This is reasonable because people highly interested in politics are more likely to use news media to learn about politics.

6 Although additional analyses showed that some types of network heterogeneity were more effective than others in promoting campaign knowledge gain (see Supplemental Table D1), our data did not allow us to further investigate the reason for this. Future studies could investigate whether and, if so, why different types of network heterogeneity may promote exposure to different types of information.

7 Of note, we conducted additional analyses to test whether changes in network heterogeneity influence how Facebook promotes political learning. The results of additional analyses using network heterogeneity captured at the second wave yielded essentially the same results reported here (see Supplemental Table E1). This is not surprising since the between-wave correlation of network heterogeneity was high and statistically significant (r = .66, p < .01).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Sungkyun Research Fund, Sungkyunkwan University.

Notes on contributors

Minchul Kim

Minchul Kim (Ph.D., Indiana University) is a research fellow in the Institute for Convergence at Sungkyunkwan University. He is interested in political communication and public opinion. His research investigates how digital media platforms influence political communication processes.

Yanqin Lu

Yanqin Lu (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an assistant professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. His research examines political communication and public opinion in the digital media environment, with an emphasis on selective exposure and incidental exposure.

Jae Kook Lee

Jae Kook Lee (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is a professor in the Department of Media & Communication at Sungkyunkwan University. His research focuses on a wide range of issues concerning public opinion and media effects. His latest question is about how the changing media environment influences public opinion and the political communication process.