Political content as opinion leaders: The ideological catalysis of discourse on social networks

Abstract Social networks have become one of the primary sources of political information, partly due to the high circulation of information that is produced and shared. The distribution of this content is influenced by various factors. In this study, which includes a preliminary study and two experiments (n = 241; n = 391; n = 629), we examine the ability of issue ownership to act as an ideological catalyst of discourse on a social network like X. The results show that issue ownership can activate participants’ cognitive biases and influence the distribution of content. However, this mainly occurs when participants are unaware of the author of the political content. This finding suggests a hierarchy of informational factors that drive content propagation on social networks.