Forum comments show little evidence of ideology-based sorting, indicating engagement across political difference¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr1·q2
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Most reply-comment ideology correlations were not significantly different from zero, indicating no aggregate partisan sorting among commenters. → Yeomans 2018
Evidence¶
Yeomans 2018¶
Yeomans, M., Stewart, B. M., Mavon, K., Kindel, A., Tingley, D., & Reich, J. (2018). The Civic Mission of MOOCs: Engagement across Political Differences in Online Forums. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 28, 553–589. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-017-0161-0
q2 · i? · associational · r1
Non-parametric correlation analysis of 2,587 reply-comment pairs in course-created content threads (Table 6), split by substantive vs. short-yes comments and high vs. low partisan salience. "little evidence for ideology-based sorting in the forum comments"; most correlations were not significantly different from zero.
"In general, we find little evidence for ideology-based sorting in the forum comments. That is, most of these correlations are not significantly different from zero, which indicates that partisanship is having no aggregate effect on how commenters sort themselves among various replies."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Political ideology shows essentially no relationship with total forum activity in politically-themed MOOCs — related
- Structural topic models show partisan differences in topic use amount to less than 2% of all MOOC forum posts — related
- Upvote assortativity by ideology appeared in American Government but not Saving Schools, with sorting stronger among conservatives — related
- Partisan language is only weakly predictive of ideology in MOOC forum posts, suggesting linguistic convergence — related
- Course-created forum threads in these MOOCs showed balanced ideological contribution, with only small conservative-leaning exceptions — related
- Politically-themed MOOCs attract U.S. students representing a diverse range of political beliefs across the ideological spectrum — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
little-ideological-sorting-in-comments |
title |
Forum comments show little evidence of ideology-based sorting, indicating engagement across political difference |
description |
Forum comments show little evidence of ideology-based sorting, indicating engagement across political difference |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2018 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-27 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — yeomans-2018 |
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