Journal
POLITICAL ANALYSIS
Volume 29, Issue 4, Pages 522-540Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/pan.2020.46
Keywords
Bayesian statistics; latest variables; transnational diffusion
Categories
Funding
- University of Virginia's Quantitative Collaborative
- Social Sciences Division of New York University Abu Dhabi
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The study found that in Egypt, after the coup, the retweets among Egyptian ideological allies increased by 50% each day, while cross-ideological retweets decreased by 25%. Tunisian Twitter communities also exhibited stronger intragroup retweeting, although at lower levels than in Egypt. Counter-intuitively, the additional polarization in Tunisia after the coup seemed to dampen further polarization among Islamists in Egypt.
It is very difficult to know how international social linkages affect domestic ideological polarization because we can never observe polarization occurring both with and without international connections. To estimate this missing counterfactual, we employ a new statistical method based on Bayesian item-response theory that permits us to disaggregate polarization after the Arab Uprisings into domestic and transnational components. We collected a dataset of Twitter accounts in Egypt and Tunisia during the critical year of 2013, when the Egyptian military overthrew the Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. We find that the coup increased retweets among Egyptian ideological allies by 50% each day following the coup and decreased cross-ideological retweets by 25%. Tunisian Twitter communities also showed stronger intragroup retweeting although at lower levels than in Egypt. Counter-intuitively, our model shows that the additional polarization in Tunisia after the coup appears to have dampened further polarization among Islamists in Egypt.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available