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From Attention to Dialogue: Does Audience Engagement Reinforce Constructive Cross-Party Communication?

Ahana Biswas, Yu-Ru Lin

Abstract

While existing works have emphasized how elites shape mass opinion, we ask whether the reverse also holds: do audience reactions on social media actively shape elite behavior? We examine this question through the lens of cross-partisan interactions (CPIs), which can either foster deliberation or deepen polarization. Using a dataset of over 1.1 million cross-party retweets, replies, and mentions between U.S. state legislators and their audiences on Twitter/X (2020-2021), we first establish baseline patterns of engagement: Democrats gain modest engagement in replies and mentions, while Republicans often face penalties in direct cross-party interactions. Building on this, we show that audience engagement produces a feedback loop that conditions future elite behavior. Following highly visible CPIs, legislators are not only more likely to engage again in cross-talk, but also shift their rhetorical strategies. Engagement consistently promotes causal reasoning, subjective language, and positive-emotion framing in subsequent CPIs. These findings suggest a positive association between audience engagement and constructive cross-party discourse among elites, challenging overly simplified interpretations in the literature that emphasize social media as a primary driver of rising or falling polarization.

From Attention to Dialogue: Does Audience Engagement Reinforce Constructive Cross-Party Communication?

Abstract

While existing works have emphasized how elites shape mass opinion, we ask whether the reverse also holds: do audience reactions on social media actively shape elite behavior? We examine this question through the lens of cross-partisan interactions (CPIs), which can either foster deliberation or deepen polarization. Using a dataset of over 1.1 million cross-party retweets, replies, and mentions between U.S. state legislators and their audiences on Twitter/X (2020-2021), we first establish baseline patterns of engagement: Democrats gain modest engagement in replies and mentions, while Republicans often face penalties in direct cross-party interactions. Building on this, we show that audience engagement produces a feedback loop that conditions future elite behavior. Following highly visible CPIs, legislators are not only more likely to engage again in cross-talk, but also shift their rhetorical strategies. Engagement consistently promotes causal reasoning, subjective language, and positive-emotion framing in subsequent CPIs. These findings suggest a positive association between audience engagement and constructive cross-party discourse among elites, challenging overly simplified interpretations in the literature that emphasize social media as a primary driver of rising or falling polarization.
Paper Structure (60 sections, 5 equations, 15 figures, 7 tables)

This paper contains 60 sections, 5 equations, 15 figures, 7 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Findings.
  3. Implications.
  4. Related Work
  5. Exposure to Cross-Cutting Discussions
  6. Nature and Style of Political Cross-Talk
  7. Feedback Loops and Elite Adaptation
  8. Present Work.
  9. Study Design
  10. Dataset
  11. Cross-cutting interactions.
  12. Individuals’ attributes
  13. Central (C) vs. local (L).
  14. Audience Partisanship.
  15. Measuring Engagement
  16. ...and 45 more sections

Figures (15)

  • Figure 1: Study Design.We analyze how cross-party interactions (CPI) shape the online engagement of political elites and how engagement feeds back into future behavior. We test whether CPIs boost or reduce engagement, and which posting styles drive these effects (RQ1), and how engagement shapes both the frequency (RQ2) and style (RQ3) of future CPI.
  • Figure 2: Distribution of attention scores. Legislators from both parties primarily engage with users having the same political leaning across all interaction types. Republicans tend to engage in more cross-talks than Democrats.
  • Figure 3: Effect of CPIs on engagement.Engagement of legislators varies significantly in cross-talks, with asymmetric effects depending on party affiliation and the nature of interactions. Effect size sign: (+) Higher (outperforming) engagement in CPI; (-) Lower (underperforming) engagement in CPI. Significant effects are denoted by filled markers ($p<0.05$).
  • Figure 4: Effect of posting styles on engagement of CPIs. Posting styles are associated with the engagement garnered by CPIs and the associations differ across party and interaction types. The covariates are sorted based on effect sizes for Republicans.
  • Figure 5: Relationship between engagement and future CPIs. Engagement with cross-partisan posts through mentions is strongly linked to increased future CPIs for both parties.
  • ...and 10 more figures