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In recent decades, disruptive media events, such as major terrorist attacks, have gained increasing relevance in news coverage around the world. Despite the growing importance of such globally broadcast media events, little research to date has examined cross-national variation in event coverage or the predictors of this variation. This study examines news coverage about the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States across 51 countries to analyze whether the topical focus and emotional tone of news coverage about the attacks varied according to a country's proximity to the United States and the dominant role perceptions of its journalistic culture. We show that these macro-level predictors are associated in varying degrees with the country-level topical focus and emotional tone of reporting over the 30 days following this salient event. Moreover, our analysis also suggests that temporal developments may have uniformly structured much of this worldwide coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior literature on political filter bubbles suggests an overall positive association between social media use and political networks diversification. Sometimes, this might not be the case. This study argues that the News Finds Me perception (NFM) or the belief that "one" can be well-informed about public affairs without actively seeking information as news will find "me" through "my" networks, tend to nurture a positive attitude toward algorithmic news gatekeeping. Likewise, NFM's news over-reliance on one's social network support the development of homogeneous information and discussion political networks in social media (political homophily). Results based on a variety of ordinary least squares regression models (cross-sectional, lagged, and autoregressive) from a U.S. representative panel survey, as we all as autoregressive structural equation model tests, indicate that this is indeed the case. This study serves to specifically clarify when and how social media and the NFM facilitate politically homogeneous filter bubbles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While communication research on interorganizational homophily has grown, little is known about how issue homophily—defined here as the propensity to form ties based on shared issue priorities—influences interorganizational relationships in civil society. Our theoretical framework brings together homophily research and issue niche theory to explore the potential influence issues have on interorganizational network tie formation. Our empirical case is the network of civil society organizations focused on government reform in Malaysia. Using data gathered from a survey with organizational leaders (n = 90), exponential random graph models with binary and valued data explored how two types of homophily are associated with tie formation and cooperation in interorganizational relationships. Key findings from the study include that more important issues appear to drive tie formation and levels of cooperation in the network, only specific issues lead to homophilous ties, and issue homophily does not lead to greater levels of cooperation among civil society organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Facebook unfriending during the Israel-Gaza conflict of 2014. We suggest that politically motivated unfriending is a new kind of political gesture. We present an analysis of a survey of 1,013 Jewish Israeli Facebook users. A total of 16% of users unfriended or unfollowed a Facebook friend during the fighting. Unfriending was more prevalent among more ideologically extreme and more politically active Facebook users. Weak ties were most likely to be broken, and respondents mostly unfriended people because they took offense at what they had posted or disagreed with it. Although social network sites may expose people to diverse opinions, precisely by virtue of the many weak ties users have on them, our findings show these ties to be susceptible to dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates political homophily on Twitter. Using a combination of machine learning and social network analysis we classify users as Democrats or as Republicans based on the political content shared. We then investigate political homophily both in the network of reciprocated and nonreciprocated ties. We find that structures of political homophily differ strongly between Democrats and Republicans. In general, Democrats exhibit higher levels of political homophily. But Republicans who follow official Republican accounts exhibit higher levels of homophily than Democrats. In addition, levels of homophily are higher in the network of reciprocated followers than in the nonreciprocated network. We suggest that research on political homophily on the Internet should take the political culture and practices of users seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research seeks to explain the structure of the interorganizational network of international development organizations, including international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). The study uses a multitheoretical, multilevel model to examine the endogenous and exogenous influences on the international development organization network. Results indicate that homophily, mutuality, transitivity, and centralization influence the configuration of the international development organizational network. In particular, IGOs tended to collaborate with IGOs; both INGOs and IGOs were likely to seek joint dependencies over asymmetric dependencies; some organizations acted as intermediary coordinators; and organizations were more likely to form collaborations with partners of partners. Implications for executive directors of INGOs and policymakers are drawn from the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]