Reddit上的阴谋论社群与环保社群沿不同人口统计学维度分化

中文摘要 AI 辅助

在线平台对政治动员的影响已被广泛记录，但尚不清楚其对不同人口群体的作用机制。为阐明这一现象，我们研究了两个形成对比的案例：一方是环保事业的参与，另一方是阴谋论的参与。两者在Reddit上均有大量呈现，使我们得以采用基于网络的方法研究这些群体的不同起源。通过推断Reddit用户的年龄、性别、富裕程度和党派倾向，我们构建了分层过渡网络，以比较不同人口群体进入这些社群的路径。我们发现，人口分化在这两个领域的运作方式不同。进入阴谋论社群的路径主要由性别和党派倾向构成：男性用户不成比例地通过公开的政治空间和另类右翼（alt-right）空间进入，并分享右翼媒体来源；而女性用户更常经过神秘主义和灵性相关的subreddit，最终汇聚到r/conspiracy。相比之下，环保社群主要按年龄和富裕程度分化。富裕用户倾向于通过个人能源管理、技术和金融相关讨论进入环保类subreddit，而较不富裕的用户则通过以抗议为导向的空间和气候运动空间进入。通过比较这两个议题领域，本研究表明，社会人口分层在极化议题中的运作并非统一的。相反，不同人口群体构建了各自的路径，既塑造了他们接触政治内容的渠道，也塑造了维持其参与的信息生态系统。我们基于注意力流图的方法，深化了对不同群体如何融入在线政治社群的理解。

英文摘要

The impact of online platforms in political mobilization is widely documented, yet it remains unclear how it affects different demographic groups. To shed light on this phenomenon, we examine two contrasting cases: engagement with environmental causes on one side, and with conspiracy theories on the other. Both are well represented on Reddit, allowing us to study the different origins of these groups using a network-based method. By inferring age, gender, affluence, and partisanship of Reddit users, we construct stratified transition networks to compare the entry pathways of different demographic groups toward these communities. We find that demographic differentiation operates differently in these two domains. Entry into conspiracy communities is primarily structured by gender and partisanship: masculine users disproportionately arrive through overtly political and alt-right spaces and share right-wing media sources, whereas feminine users more often pass through esoteric and spiritual subreddits before converging on r/conspiracy. In contrast, environmental communities are differentiated mainly by age and affluence. Affluent users tend to approach environmental subreddits via discussions of individual energy management, technology, and finance, while less affluent users arrive through protest-oriented and climate movement spaces. By comparing these two issue domains, the study shows that sociodemographic sorting does not operate uniformly across polarized topics. Instead, distinct demographic groups build their own paths, shaping both the routes through which they engage with political content and the informational ecosystems that sustain their engagement. Our approach, based on the attention-flow graph, refines our understanding of how different groups become embedded in online political communities.

发表机构

• Central European University（中欧大学）
• Sapienza University of Rome（罗马第一大学）
• University of Turin（都灵大学）
• CENTAI（CENTAI研究所）

机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。