ABSTRACT

In this hyperpartisan political landscape, scholars have emphasized the importance of examining how perceptions of political network homogeneity on social media affect political outcomes. However, little research has examined how perceived news credibility mediates the relationship between perceived political network homogeneity and political social media use. Social media platforms aggregate and display news items from many sources, enabling people to make generalized judgments about the overall credibility of news items. Research has suggested that perceived political network homogeneity can bias such collective news credibility judgments. In turn, such credibility perceptions can affect political social media use. Lagged and autoregressive analyses of panel survey data gathered in 2012 and 2016 consistently show that perceived news credibility mediates the positive relationship between perceived political network homogeneity and expressive but not informational political social media use. Perceived political network homogeneity positively predicted news credibility, which in turn increased expressive political social media use. Furthermore, I show that the indirect effects outlined above tend to be stronger among Democrats than Republicans.

摘要

在这种超党派政治格局中，学者们强调了研究社交媒体上对政治网络同质性的看法如何影响政治结果的重要性。然而，很少有研究调查感知的新闻可信度如何调节感知的政治网络同质性与政治社交媒体使用之间的关系。社交媒体平台汇总和展示来自多个来源的新闻，使人们能够对新闻的整体可信度做出概括判断。研究表明，感知到的政治网络同质性会使这种集体新闻可信度判断产生偏差。反过来，这种可信度认知会影响政治社交媒体的使用。对 2012 年和 2016 年收集的面板调查数据的滞后和自回归分析一致表明，感知新闻可信度在感知政治网络同质性与表达性而非信息性政治社交媒体使用之间存在正相关关系。感知到的政治网络同质性积极预测新闻可信度，这反过来又增加了表达性政治社交媒体的使用。此外，我表明上述间接影响在民主党人中往往比共和党人更强。