This study examines the phenomena of political unfriending and content removal on social media in three Western democracies—France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We seek to understand the role of crosscutting discussion, confrontational discussion style, and ideological extremity in triggering unfriending and content removal on social media, while shedding light on cross-country differences. The findings show that selective avoidance behaviors are much more common in the United States than either in France or the United Kingdom. They also show that crosscutting discussion and confrontational style are the predictors of selective avoidance across all the above countries, while ideological extremity plays a role in the United States only. We suggest that while social media provide opportunities for citizens to engage in discussions with people with dissimilar political views and socioeconomic backgrounds, they also allow them to easily reestablish more homophilous environments via content removal and tie dissolution.

这项研究考察了法国，英国和美国这三个西方民主国家中社交媒体上政治上不友善和内容删除的现象。我们试图了解横切讨论，对抗性讨论风格和意识形态极端化在引发社交媒体上的不友善和内容删除的作用，同时阐明跨国差异时的作用。研究结果表明，选择性回避行为在美国比在法国或英国更为普遍。他们还表明，跨部门讨论和对抗风格是上述所有国家中选择性回避的预测因素，而意识形态极端只在美国发挥作用。