Upvote assortativity by ideology appeared in American Government but not Saving Schools, with sorting stronger among conservatives¶
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? American Government posters were more likely to gather upvotes from people with shared ideology, an effect not apparent in Saving Schools. → Yeomans 2018
q2 i? Ideological sorting in upvoting was stronger among conservatives, who upvoted conservative posts more than liberal posts. → 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
Rank-order correlation analysis of 400 reply-upvote pairs in course-team-generated content threads. "rank-order correlation: rτ = .121" significant in American Government (p < .05) but not in Saving Schools (rτ = −.019, p = .669), a non-replication across the two courses.
"American Government posters were more likely to gather upvotes from people with shared ideology than not (rank-order correlation: rτ = .121, z(213) = 2.0,p < .05), though this relationship was not apparent in Saving Schools (rτ = −.019, z(155) = 0.43, p = .669)."
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
- Structural topic models show partisan differences in topic use amount to less than 2% of all MOOC forum posts — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
upvote-assortativity-mixed-across-courses |
title |
Upvote assortativity by ideology appeared in American Government but not Saving Schools, with sorting stronger among conservatives |
description |
Upvote assortativity by ideology appeared in American Government but not Saving Schools, with sorting stronger among conservatives |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
mixed |
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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