We would be excited to apply, calibrate and validate the measure using other data sets in which researchers have measured both individuals’ attitudes towards multiple policy items and interpersonal sentiments. If you know of such data, please get in touch!

We measure change in network polarization in a community of undergraduate students. It is significantly present but rather low. However, relational polarization tends to increase over time. Homophily and social influence appear to be among the network mechanisms explaining these trajectories.

Relational polarization relates to the degree to which individuals are preferentially socially tied to other with whom they agree. For example, to what degree does the level of agreement on climate change issues or private weapon use affect individuals' tendency to interact and socialize?

Ideological polarization refers to the degree to which individuals generally tend to agree or disagree with others on multiple issues simultaneously. For example, to what degree do individuals’ attitudes towards renewable energy predict their attitudes towards wealth tax?

For example, in our study Rock and Dubstep are close in terms of social ties even though they are rarely listened to by the same person.

Social ties shorten relational distances between cultural genres—connected individuals make distant genre pairs more proximate.

Analyzing a large online network, we find that musical genre boundaries blur when considering social ties. Even if people do not listen to a specific musical genre themselves, they might be socially close to someone who does, bringing those genres closer in the social space.