Social Transmission of Polarizing Content

This study consists of two parts.

Part I is designed to probe how and the extent to which fundamental agreement with satirical news content propels a willingness to share the content (both online and offline) with (a) like-minded others and (b) a more diverse social network. This research is designed to highlight the mechanisms that bridge the gap between agreement and sharing.

Part II examines what kind of opinion climates successfully mobilized people and created a worldwide sensation like #Me Too. The study is designed to investigate how social media users perceive the opinions of other people on political and social issues, and whether and how those perceptions influence their engagement in online political discussion. Particularly, we measure how those perceptions affect people’s willingness to speak out (like, share, comment and create a post) on social media and the extent to which they would set their privacy settings when joining in online discussions.