Partisanship

Partisanship refers to identification with a political party and preference for that party's policies, members, and viewpoints. In the US context, partisanship is a core aspect of political identity that correlates strongly with attitudes toward opposing party members and shapes social networks and media consumption.

Key aspects:

Partisan identity — Party identification is an expressive social identity, not merely a summary of policy preferences. Individuals report strong emotional attachment to their party and dislike for opposing parties.

Partisan homophily — People preferentially form social ties with copartisans both offline and on social media, contributing to the formation and persistence of echo chambers.

Partisan asymmetry debates — Open questions about whether Democrats and Republicans differ in the strength of their partisan preference and homophily behavior.

Key papers

• Shared partisanship dramatically increases social tie formation in a Twitter field experiment — Causal field evidence that shared partisanship tripled follow-back rates; symmetric across party (no partisan asymmetry)