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Online social networks have emerged as a significant platform for politicaldiscourse. In this paper we investigate what affects the level of participationof users in the political discussion. Specifically, are users more likely to beactive when they are surrounded by like-minded individuals, or, alternatively,when their environment is heterogeneous, and so their messages might be carriedto people with differing views. To answer this question, we analyzed theactivity of about 200K Twitter users who expressed explicit support for one ofthe candidates of the 2012 US presidential election. We quantified the level ofpolitical activity (PA) of users by the fraction of political tweets in theirposts, and analyzed the relationship between PA and measures of the users'political environment. These measures were designed to assess thelikemindedness, e.g., the fraction of users with similar political views, oftheir virtual and geographic environments. Our results showed that high PA isusually obtained by users in politically balanced virtual environment. This isin line with the disagreement theory of political science that states that auser's PA is invigorated by the disagreement with their peers. Our results alsoshow that users surrounded by politically like-minded virtual peers tend tohave low PA. This observation contradicts the echo chamber amplification theorythat states that a person tends to be more politically active when surroundedby like-minded people. Finally, we observe that the likemindedness of thegeographical environment does not affect PA. We thus conclude that PA of usersis independent of the likemindedness of their geographical environment and iscorrelated with likemindedness of their virtual environment. The exact form ofcorrelation manifests the phenomenon of disagreement and, in a majority ofsettings, contradicts the echo chamber amplification theory.

Echo chamber amplification and disagreement effects in the political activity of Twitter users