ABSTRACT In this study, we track the severity of partisan polarization in the following of legislators on Twitter during the initial two years of Twitter's introduction to South Korea. We examine the pattern of co-following among Twitter users following members of the 18th Korean National Assembly at three time points. We collected a complete list of all followers for each legislator and constructed their co-following network. We also supplemented our following data with survey data. This allowed us to match the same Twitter user's following behavior with their individual level attributes. Our aggregate level analysis showed that the severity of polarization in Twitter following of National Assembly members lessened from Time 1 to Time 3. We also discovered that, even when tracking only the ‘original’ followers, cross-party following has increased over time. The survey-based results reaffirm our conclusion based on the aggregate data.

中文翻译：

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随着时间的推移，推特上的党派选择性关注：极化还是去极化？

摘要 在这项研究中，我们追踪了在 Twitter 引入韩国的最初两年期间，在 Twitter 上追随立法者的党派两极分化的严重程度。我们研究了 Twitter 用户在三个时间点关注第 18 届韩国国会议员的共同关注模式。我们收集了每位立法者的所有追随者的完整列表，并构建了他们的共同追随者网络。我们还用调查数据补充了我们的以下数据。这使我们能够将同一 Twitter 用户的关注行为与其个人级别属性相匹配。我们的总体水平分析表明，国民议会成员在 Twitter 上的两极分化严重程度从时间 1 到时间 3 有所减轻。我们还发现，即使仅跟踪“原始”追随者，随着时间的推移，跨党派追随者不断增加。基于调查的结果重申了我们基于汇总数据的结论。