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Start Over Descriptor "Facebook likes" Topic ideology
2 results on '"Facebook likes"'

1. What's Not to Like? Facebook Page Likes Reveal Limited Polarization in Lifestyle Preferences.

Author

Praet, Stiene, Guess, Andrew M., Tucker, Joshua A., Bonneau, Richard, and Nagler, Jonathan

Subjects
*IDEOLOGY, *POLARIZATION (Social sciences), *LIFESTYLES, *INDIVIDUALS' preferences, *SEXUAL animosity, *EVERYDAY life, *TREND setters
Abstract

Increasing levels of political animosity in the United States invite speculation about whether polarization extends to aspects of daily life. However, empirical study about the relationship between political ideologies and lifestyle choices is limited by a lack of comprehensive data. In this research, we combine survey and Facebook Page "likes" data from more than 1,200 respondents to investigate the extent of polarization in lifestyle domains. Our results indicate that polarization is present in page categories that are somewhat related to politics – such as opinion leaders, partisan news sources, and topics related to identity and religion – but, perhaps surprisingly, it is mostly not evident in other domains, including sports, food, and music. On the individual level, we find that people who are higher in political news interest and have stronger ideological predispositions have a greater tendency to "like" ideologically homogeneous pages across categories. Our evidence, drawn from rare digital trace data covering more than 5,000 pages, adds nuance to the narrative of widespread polarization across lifestyle sectors and it suggests domains in which cross-cutting preferences are still observed in American life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2022
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2. Predictive modeling to study lifestyle politics with Facebook likes

Author

Peter Van Aelst, David Martens, Patrick van Erkel, Stephan Van der Veeken, and Stiene Praet

Subjects
Value (ethics), Operationalization, Facebook likes, media_common.quotation_subject, Taste (sociology), Politics, Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics, R858-859.7, Advertising, Political preference, Preference, Predictive modeling, Computer Science Applications, Data science, Computational Mathematics, Empirical research, Sociology, Modeling and Simulation, Survey data collection, Social media, Ideology, Engineering sciences. Technology, Mathematics, media_common
Abstract

“Lifestyle politics” suggests that political and ideological opinions are strongly connected to our consumption choices, music and food taste, cultural preferences, and other aspects of our daily lives. With the growing political polarization this idea has become all the more relevant to a wide range of social scientists. Empirical research in this domain, however, is confronted with an impractical challenge; this type of detailed information on people’s lifestyle is very difficult to operationalize, and extremely time consuming and costly to query in a survey. A potential valuable alternative data source to capture these values and lifestyle choices is social media data. In this study, we explore the value of Facebook “like” data to complement traditional survey data to study lifestyle politics. We collect a unique dataset of Facebook likes and survey data of more than 6500 participants in Belgium, a fragmented multi-party system. Based on both types of data, we infer the political and ideological preference of our respondents. The results indicate that non-political Facebook likes are indicative of political preference and are useful to describe voters in terms of common interests, cultural preferences, and lifestyle features. This shows that social media data can be a valuable complement to traditional survey data to study lifestyle politics.

Published
2021

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