Liberals Less Friendly to Opposing Views on Facebook

A new study on politics and media – including social media – sheds some fresh light on how the political echo chamber is reverberating online.

As Facebook has become an increasingly popular forum for venting political views, expressions of partisanship have become a big factor in determining who gets “defriended.”

The Pew Research Center found that while conservatives are more likely than liberals to have like-minded friends on Facebook, liberals are not necessarily more likely to consider contrasting ideas. Pew defined conservatives and liberals by questioning respondents about government, the military, the environment, homosexuality, poverty and race.

According to the survey, 44 percent of “consistent” liberals have blocked or “defriended” someone on Facebook because they did not agree with their political views. By comparison, 31 percent of consistent conservatives had done so.

One reason for the gap could be that conservatives are more ensconced than liberals in the Facebook echo chamber and are coming across fewer opposing views.

Pew found that of “consistent” conservatives, 47 percent say they see political opinions that are mostly in line with their views, while about a third of liberals feel that way. With more exposure to ideas they find unappealing, liberals are more likely to filter out those so-called friends.