Opinion Dynamics of Online Social Network Users: A Micro-Level Analysis

In this paper, we present an empirical study of the opinion dynamics of a large-scale sample of online social network users. We estimate opinions of users as continuous scalars based on their subscriptions to information sources and analyze how friendship connections affect the dynamics of these estimations. Distinguishing between positive (toward opinions of friends) and negative (away from opinions of friends) opinion shifts, we find that the existence and magnitude of opinion shifts are positively related (largely through a linear form or an inverted U-shaped form) to the degree of divergence in opinions between user and their friends. Additionally, we moderate the balance between positive and negative shifts using opinion divergence: if the opinions of the focal user and their friends are too similar or dissimilar, there is a relatively low chance of a positive shift.