Political Discussions in Homogeneous and Cross-Cutting Communication SpacesThis paper has been supported by funding of the VolkswagenStiftung. [Please cite the ICWSM’19 version of this paper]
Table 3: Contributions by active users in homogeneous and cross-cutting communication environments
['[EMPTY]', '[EMPTY]', 'Clinton Supporters', 'Trump Supporters']
In /r/politics, 77.9% of Clinton supporters are also active, contributing on average 299 comments. In total, they left 1.4M comments in /r/politics. Trump supporters are also active in /r/politics but to a lesser extent than Clinton supporters. Around 60.9% of Trump supporters post an average of 84 comments each in /r/politics. Given their overall stronger numbers, this runs at a total of 3.4M comments. This points to a first interesting difference between supporters of both candidates. Although Trump supporters dwarf Clinton supporters in raw numbers both in homogeneous and cross-cutting communication environments, they appear to be more comfortable interacting among like-minded users than are Clinton supporters. Even if they expose themselves to cross-cutting political talk, they do so much less actively than Clinton supporters.