Rooting for the Same Team: On the Interplay between Political and Social Identities in the Formation of Social Ties

Nicolás Ajzenman, Bruno Ferman and Pedro C. Sant’Anna
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Nicolás Ajzenman: McGill University
Pedro C. Sant’Anna: São Paulo School of Economics - FGV

No 231, Working Papers from Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE)

Abstract: We study the interplay between political and other social identities in the formation of social ties in a setting of intense affective polarization. We created fictional accounts on Twitter that signaled their political preference for one of the two leading candidates in the Brazilian 2022 Presidential election, their preference for a Brazilian football club, or both. We interpret preference for a football club as an affective dimension of identity. The bots randomly followed Twitter accounts with congruent and incongruent identities across these two dimensions, and we computed the proportion of follow-backs and blocks they received. Both dimensions of identity are relevant in forming ties, but the effect of sharing a political identity is significantly greater. Moreover, affective identity becomes substantially less relevant when information about political identity is available, indicating that political identity can overshadow other dimensions of identity. Still, shared affective identity has a positive effect in fostering ties even among politically opposite individuals. This result suggests that shared identities such as preference for a football club have the potential to reduce politically induced societal divides, despite the evidence that affective polarization may diminish this effect.

Keywords: Social Identity; Affective Polarization; Brazilian Elections; Social Media. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D72 D91 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 70 pages
Date: 2023-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-lam, nep-mac, nep-net, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-spo
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aoz:wpaper:231

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