Publications | Digital Political Inequality Lab

The story of social media: Evolving news coverage of social media in American politics, 2006–2021

Daniel S Lane, Hannah Overbye-Thompson, & Emilija Gagrčin

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication | 2024

This article examines how American news media have framed social media as political technologies over time. To do so, we analyzed 16 years of political news stories focusing on social media, published by American newspapers (N = 8,218) and broadcasters (N = 6,064) (2006–2021). Using automated content analysis, we found that coverage of social media in political news stories: (a) increasingly uses anxious, angry, and moral language, (b) is consistently focused on national politicians (vs. non-elite actors), and (c) increasingly emphasizes normatively negative uses (e.g., misinformation) and their remedies (i.e., regulation).

Worn out & tuned out: does politics fatigue on social media foster participatory inequality among Americans?

Daniel Lane, Nancy Molina-Rogers, & Emilija Gagrčin

Mass Comm & Society | 2025

In this paper, we take seriously evidence of growing politics fatigue on social media among Americans and consider how this fatigue might ultimately foster participatory inequalities on these platforms. We test two theoretical accounts of how social media (SM) politics fatigue is produced among those who (a) are disinterested in politics altogether (interest-based fatigue) or (b) hold strong political identities (identity-based fatigue).

An “Identity Turn” in political communication?: testing the relationship between media use and identity alignment in the United States

Daniel Lane, Melody Chen, & Yifei Wang

Journal of Communication | 2025

Despite a rise in identity-centric communication scholarship, there is a lack of theory and evidence regarding how media use relates to the on-going alignment between political and social identities (i.e., identity alignment). We offer a framework for theorizing this dynamic and apply it to examine the relationship between Americans’ media diets and on-going psychological alignment between political and social identities in the United States (i.e., partisan social sorting).

Me against myself: How right-partisan media use predicts support for redistribution across class and partisan identities

Daniel Lane, Nancy Molina-Rogers, & Emilija Gagrčin

Mass Comm & Society | 2025

In this paper, we take seriously evidence of growing politics fatigue on social media among Americans and consider how this fatigue might ultimately foster participatory inequalities on these platforms. We test two theoretical accounts of how social media (SM) politics fatigue is produced among those who (a) are disinterested in politics altogether (interest-based fatigue) or (b) hold strong political identities (identity-based fatigue).

Introduction: Race and ethnicity as foundational forces in political communication

Stewart M. Coles & Daniel Lane

Book: Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication | 2024

Despite the centrality of race and ethnicity in social and political life, they are often absent from studies of the urgent questions in contemporary political communication research. In this essay introducing a special issue focused on “Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication,” we examine factors that may contribute to the relative absence of race/ethnicity in the political communication scholarship, including: 1) structural inequalities in the field, 2) contested conceptualizations of race, and 3) the domination of certain epistemological and methodological traditions.

The group roots of social media politics: Social sorting predicts perceptions of and engagement in politics on social media

Daniel S. Lane, Cassandra M. Moxley, & Cynthia McLeod

Communication Research | 2023

Research on political partisans suggests that social media offer ideal playing fields for the group game of politics. This study considers how political and social identities interact to influence political communication on social media. Using an original two-wave survey of Americans fielded during the 2020 election period, we analyzed how social media users’ levels of social sorting—the alignment between racial, religious, ideological, and political identities—related to perceptions of and engagement in politics on social media.

Uninterested and unequal?: examining SES-based gaps in youth political behavior on social media

Daniel S. Lane, Kjerstin Thorson, and Yu Xu

Information, Communication & Society | 2023

Despite evidence that social media are transforming American political life, fundamental questions remain about their influence on political inequality among the next generation of citizens. This study examines whether youth political behavior on social media is stratified by socioeconomic status (SES) and if political interest is the primary mechanism. Analyzing two nationally representative surveys of young Americans (18–34), we find youth political behavior on social media is less stratified by SES than voting or offline campaign participation. In one case, social media political expression is counter-stratified.

A repertoire approach to studying inequalities in political social media use

Daniel S. Lane, Brian E. Weeks & Nojin Kwak

Mass Communication & Society | 2023

This paper adopts a repertoire approach to studying inequalities in political use of social media, focusing on patterns of political behavior on Facebook. A Latent Class Analysis of a 2016 two-wave survey of Americans identified four distinct political repertoires on Facebook; 1) Disengaged, 2) All-engaged, 3) Expressers (only likely to do expressive behaviors) and 4) Likers (only likely to “like” content).

What is political expression on social media anyway?: A systematic review

Daniel S. Lane,Kevin Do, & Nancy Molina-Rogers

Journal of Information Technology & Politics | 2022

While a growing number of studies have examined political expression in the context of social media, fundamental questions remain about the communicative processes under study and the transformative role played by social media technologies. Accordingly, this paper undertakes a systematic review of quantitative studies that explicitly examine political expression on social media (N = 66) in order to clarify how past scholarship has conceptualized and measured political expression.

Testing inequality and identity accounts of racial gaps in political expression on social media

Daniel S. Lane, Kevin Do, and Nancy Molina-Rogers

Political Communication | 2022

Do social media simply reproduce political inequality between racial groups or are they powerful tools for marginalized racial groups to contest the status quo? This study examined resource-based and identity-based theoretical explanations for differences between White people and racial/ethnic minorities in political expression on social media. Across 4 nationally representative surveys collected in the United States (2016 & 2018), we found that White people (vs. Black, Asian, and sometimes Hispanic people) had a slightly higher probability of engaging in different forms of political expression on social media. However, Black people and people from some numerically smaller racial/ethnic groups were more likely than White people to engage in symbolic behaviors such as using hashtags and changing their profile picture.