Structural topic models show partisan differences in topic use amount to less than 2% of all MOOC forum posts¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? All partisan differences in topic prevalence were under 2% of posts, indicating convergence on shared topics. → Yeomans 2018 q2 i? Some topics did diverge by ideology, e.g. teacher certification and time (left) versus compensation and school board governance (right) in Saving Schools. → Yeomans 2018 (2)

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 · r2

Unsupervised Structural Topic Model analysis (30 topics per course, spectral initialization, FREX word extraction) of course-generated non-administrative thread posts. "all partisan differences in topic use amount to less than 2% of all posts"; politically divisive topics like the Supreme Court and national security were discussed at essentially equal rates.

"These estimates are plotted in Fig. 9, and suggest that all partisan differences in topic use amount to less than 2% of all posts. Consistent with the classifier results, the topic model estimates suggest that for the most part, students with conflicting ideology still converge around similar topics."

Yeomans 2018 (2)¶

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 · r2

Topic-level estimates from the Saving Schools 30-topic model show genuine divergences on teacher-related topics: left-leaning writers emphasized "the teachers'certifications" and time commitments, while right-leaning writers focused on compensation and school board governance. Similar liberal emphases on trade and lobbying appeared in American Government.

"In Saving Schools, one large ideological division was among the topics that focused on the teachers. Left-leaning writers focused more often on the teachers'certifications (Saving Schools #3), and time commitments (Saving Schools #1)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Political ideology shows essentially no relationship with total forum activity in politically-themed MOOCs — related
• Forum comments show little evidence of ideology-based sorting, indicating engagement across political difference — related
• Politically-themed MOOCs attract U.S. students representing a diverse range of political beliefs across the ideological spectrum — related
• Course-created forum threads in these MOOCs showed balanced ideological contribution, with only small conservative-leaning exceptions — related
• Partisan language is only weakly predictive of ideology in MOOC forum posts, suggesting linguistic convergence — related
• Upvote assortativity by ideology appeared in American Government but not Saving Schools, with sorting stronger among conservatives — related