Second, the top two users most-appearing in the For You feed are Elon Musk, who supports AfD, and Alex Jones, an American far-right radio show host. Neither of them is followed by our sock puppet accounts – they follow (roughly) the same number of German parliamentarians from each party.🧵2/5 - ThreadSky

przemyslslaw.bsky.social • 8 days ago

Second, the top two users most-appearing in the For You feed are Elon Musk, who supports AfD, and Alex Jones, an American far-right radio show host. Neither of them is followed by our sock puppet accounts – they follow (roughly) the same number of German parliamentarians from each party.🧵2/5

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przemyslslaw.bsky.social•8 days ago

Third, an average post of AfD members tends to receive more likes and retweets (figure). However, the posts of SPD, CDU, and Greens tend to receive similar numbers of engagements as other non-AfD parties, yet they appear less often in the feed than they tweet.🧵3/5

przemyslslaw.bsky.social•8 days ago

Fourth, we regress the number of feed appearances against a range of factors. We find that engagement measures and unknown factors related to party affiliation significantly contribute to the overrepresentation of extremes of the German political party spectrum in the feed (figure).🧵4/5

fridanase.bsky.social•7 days ago

Very interesting results, thanks for your work! However, I was lacking some info on which politician accounts were followed & why. Relative importance and reinforcing "niche" behavior could play some role here, i.e. BSW only has 13 accounts out of which 7 were followed, CSU only 22 accounts

przemyslslaw.bsky.social•7 days ago

Great point! Our Supplementary Information (linked below) lists the followed politicians. These accounts were chosen by Paul Krauss. He aimed to follow users that are representative of each party.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Uk7SViGdQyo-SThdxM13F-kkqR4qaQF6-ffQfb8uE4/edit?gid=0#gid=0

przemyslslaw.bsky.social•8 days ago

To complete our understanding of differences in exposure and engagement between political parties, and to inform our societies, there is a need for further research.
This work wouldn't be possible without a fantastic team! Many thanks to @tabia-prema.bsky.social, @cbagchi.bsky.social others! 🧵5/5

aangespoeld.bsky.social•8 days ago

Who cares about that extinct platform nowadays? Just leave. The last dinosaurs already did. Nobody wants to know what happens there anymore.

It’s a sewer, it stinks, what did you expect?

przemyslslaw.bsky.social•8 days ago

It'd be great that Bsky matched in size X, but so far X remains important, because it still has ~10x more users than Bsky.

aangespoeld.bsky.social•8 days ago

Really. Przemek. Do the smart thing. Head for the exit on X if you haven’t already.

aangespoeld.bsky.social•8 days ago

Aaaand there’s a whole world of bots on X nowadays.

aangespoeld.bsky.social•8 days ago

No it isn’t. Really.

It’s not the size of the crowd, it’s their attention and their mood.

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