The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage communities across the US. Opinion surveys identified importance of political ideology in shaping perceptions of the pandemic and compliance with preventive measures. Here, we use social media data to study complexity of polarization. We analyze a large dataset of tweets related to the pandemic collected between January and May of 2020, and develop methods to classify the ideological alignment of users along the moderacy (hardline vs moderate), political (liberal vs conservative) and science (anti-science vs pro-science) dimensions. While polarization along the science and political dimensions are correlated, politically moderate users are more likely to be aligned with the pro-science views, and politically hardline users with anti-science views. Contrary to expectations, we do not find that polarization grows over time; instead, we see increasing activity by moderate pro-science users. We also show that anti-science conservatives tend to tweet from the Southern US, while anti-science moderates from the Western states. Our findings shed light on the multi-dimensional nature of polarization, and the feasibility of tracking polarized opinions about the pandemic across time and space through social media data.

中文翻译：

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关于 Covid-19 的在线讨论中的政治党派偏见和反科学态度

新型冠状病毒大流行继续肆虐美国各地的社区。意见调查确定了政治意识形态在塑造对大流行的看法和遵守预防措施方面的重要性。在这里，我们使用社交媒体数据来研究极化的复杂性。我们分析了 2020 年 1 月至 5 月期间收集的与大流行相关的大型推文数据集，并开发了方法，将用户的意识形态按照温和派（强硬派与温和派）、政治派（自由派与保守派）和科学派（反科学派）进行分类vs 亲科学）维度。虽然科学和政治维度上的两极分化是相关的，但政治温和的用户更有可能与亲科学的观点保持一致，而政治强硬的用户则更可能与反科学的观点保持一致。与预期相反，我们没有发现极化会随着时间的推移而增长；相反，我们看到温和的亲科学用户的活动越来越多。我们还表明，反科学的保守派倾向于在美国南部发推文，而反科学的保守派则来自西部各州。我们的研究结果阐明了两极分化的多维性质，以及通过社交媒体数据跨时空追踪有关大流行的两极分化观点的可行性。