Publications | Digital Political Inequality Lab

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.

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.

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.