Subhayan Mukerjee
Biographic Data
| ID | 216702 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Subhayan Mukerjee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Subhayan |
| FAMILY NAME | Mukerjee |
| SIGNATURE | MUKERJEE S |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1885-5440 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
How Social Media Metrics Shape News Production: A Replication Study
Audience engagement signals on social media platforms have shaped how media outlets produce news. Mukerjee et al. examined this phenomenon empirically by estimating the extent to which media outlets respond to audience engagement signals on Facebook in deciding what news to publish on the platform. However, the extent to which their findings can be generalized to other social media platforms remains unknown. We replicate their study on Twitter us…
Are partisan, unreliable, digital-born, and mass-oriented media more likely to thrive on social media? Comparing four information ecosystems
Social media platforms form information ecosystems distinct from the Web and reconfigure power relationships, especially the distribution of visibilities, among news media. We developed a theoretical framework based on structuration theory to explain the differences between the Web and social media, and investigated four prominent factors: institutional legacy, information reliability, ideological differences, and news inequalities. This study co…
Online news in India: A quantitative appraisal of the digital news consumption landscape in the world’s largest democracy (2014–2018)
How do people in the world’s largest democracy consume news online? In this paper, I aim to answer this question by conducting a quantitative assessment of the online news consumption behavior of a large sample of Indian internet users (N≈50,000) over a period of 45 months. In doing so, I contribute to theoretical debates about global news media use, by systematically appraising the prominence and trends in audience share of different types of ne…
The Antecedents and Manifestations of Political Polarization in Visual Media: Key Questions and Future Directions
The Influence of Sexism and Incivility in WhatsApp Political Discussions on Affective Polarization: Evidence from a 2022 Multi-Party Election in India
In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded …
Metrics in action: How social media metrics shape news production on Facebook
Social media metrics allow media outlets to get a granular, real-time understanding of audience preferences, and may therefore be used to decide what content to prioritize in the future. We test this mechanism in the context of Facebook, by using topic modeling and longitudinal data analysis on a large dataset comprising all posts published by major media outlets used by American citizens (N≈2.23M, 2015–2019). We find that while the overall effec…
Silenced on social media: The gatekeeping functions of shadowbans in the American Twitterverse
Algorithms play a critical role in steering online attention on social media. Many have alleged that algorithms can perpetuate bias. This study audited shadowbanning, where a user or their content is temporarily hidden on Twitter. We repeatedly tested whether a stratified random sample of American Twitter accounts (n ≈ 25,000) had been subject to various forms of shadowbans. We then identified the type of user and tweet characteristics that predi…
Topics and Sentiments Influence Likes: A Study of Facebook Public Pages' Posts About Covid-19 Vaccination
In this study, we analyzed >200,000 posts collected from Facebook public pages that were published in December 2020 during the rollout of the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to the American public. We ran both topic modeling and sentiment analysis of the posts and found that first Facebook posts talked about not only treatment effectiveness such as trial results and testing approaches but also other issues that surround vaccines such as…
Rethinking Audience Fragmentation Using a Theory of News Reading Publics: Online India as a Case Study
Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into …
The Political Landscape of the U.S. Twitterverse
Prior research suggests that Twitter users in the United States are more politically engaged and more partisan than the American citizenry, who are generally characterized by low levels of political knowledge and disinterest in political affairs. This study seeks to understand this disconnect by conducting an observational analysis of the most popular accounts on American Twitter. We identify opinion leaders by drawing random samples of ordinary …
What counts as a weak tie? A comparison of filtering techniques to analyze co-exposure networks
Choosing to Avoid? A Conjoint Experimental Study to Understand Selective Exposure and Avoidance on Social Media
Social media platforms provide multiple affordances, which convey several cues to guide users in making decisions about which news to consume. Traditional factorial designs have failed to experimentally study the effects of multiple, simultaneous cues operating on social media. As a result, there is little consensus in the literature about their exact effects on news choice. In this study, we use a conjoint experimental design to examine how sour…
Response to Webster and Taneja’s Response to “Networks of Audience Overlap in the Consumption of Digital News”
We appreciate the chance to respond to Webster and Taneja’s comments to our article (Mukerjee, Majó-Vázquez, & González-Bailón, 2018). We take this as a welcome opportunity to engage in the always-pertinent discussion on why measurement and methods are so important to reach meaningful theoretical conclusions from empirical work. For the sake of transparency, we would like to begin by stating that we sent the manuscript of our article to Webster a…
Networks of Audience Overlap in the Consumption of Digital News
How do people consume news online? Here, we propose a novel way to answer this question using the browsing behavior of web users and the networks they form while navigating news content. In these networks, two news outlets are connected if they share a fraction of their audiences. We propose two crucial improvements to the methodology employed in previous research: a statistical test to filter out non-significant overlap between sites; and a thre…
Net neutrality, Facebook, and India’s battle to #SaveTheInternet
In August 2013, Facebook, in a partnership with a few other companies, launched Internet.org —a new service that aimed to bring low cost and subsidized access to a few selected Internet services to developing countries in Asia and Africa. Ever since its announcement, and subsequent roll-out in India in 2015, activists around the world, and particularly in India, have decried the service on grounds of it violating net neutrality. This article trac…
Networks of Audience Overlap in the Consumption of Digital News
How do people consume news online? Here, we propose a novel way to answer this question using the browsing behavior of web users and the networks they form while navigating news content. In these networks, two news outlets are connected if they share a fraction of their audiences. We propose two crucial improvements to the methodology employed in previous research: a statistical test to filter out non-significant overlap between sites; and a thre…
The Political Landscape of the U.S. Twitterverse
Prior research suggests that Twitter users in the United States are more politically engaged and more partisan than the American citizenry, who are generally characterized by low levels of political knowledge and disinterest in political affairs. This study seeks to understand this disconnect by conducting an observational analysis of the most popular accounts on American Twitter. We identify opinion leaders by drawing random samples of ordinary …
Choosing to Avoid? A Conjoint Experimental Study to Understand Selective Exposure and Avoidance on Social Media
Social media platforms provide multiple affordances, which convey several cues to guide users in making decisions about which news to consume. Traditional factorial designs have failed to experimentally study the effects of multiple, simultaneous cues operating on social media. As a result, there is little consensus in the literature about their exact effects on news choice. In this study, we use a conjoint experimental design to examine how sour…
The Influence of Sexism and Incivility in WhatsApp Political Discussions on Affective Polarization: Evidence from a 2022 Multi-Party Election in India
In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded …
Rethinking Audience Fragmentation Using a Theory of News Reading Publics: Online India as a Case Study
Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into …
What counts as a weak tie? A comparison of filtering techniques to analyze co-exposure networks
Net neutrality, Facebook, and India’s battle to #SaveTheInternet
In August 2013, Facebook, in a partnership with a few other companies, launched Internet.org —a new service that aimed to bring low cost and subsidized access to a few selected Internet services to developing countries in Asia and Africa. Ever since its announcement, and subsequent roll-out in India in 2015, activists around the world, and particularly in India, have decried the service on grounds of it violating net neutrality. This article trac…
Net neutrality, Facebook, and India’s battle to #SaveTheInternet
In August 2013, Facebook, in a partnership with a few other companies, launched Internet.org —a new service that aimed to bring low cost and subsidized access to a few selected Internet services to developing countries in Asia and Africa. Ever since its announcement, and subsequent roll-out in India in 2015, activists around the world, and particularly in India, have decried the service on grounds of it violating net neutrality. This article trac…
Response to Webster and Taneja’s Response to “Networks of Audience Overlap in the Consumption of Digital News”
We appreciate the chance to respond to Webster and Taneja’s comments to our article (Mukerjee, Majó-Vázquez, & González-Bailón, 2018). We take this as a welcome opportunity to engage in the always-pertinent discussion on why measurement and methods are so important to reach meaningful theoretical conclusions from empirical work. For the sake of transparency, we would like to begin by stating that we sent the manuscript of our article to Webster a…
Networks of Audience Overlap in the Consumption of Digital News
How do people consume news online? Here, we propose a novel way to answer this question using the browsing behavior of web users and the networks they form while navigating news content. In these networks, two news outlets are connected if they share a fraction of their audiences. We propose two crucial improvements to the methodology employed in previous research: a statistical test to filter out non-significant overlap between sites; and a thre…
Choosing to Avoid? A Conjoint Experimental Study to Understand Selective Exposure and Avoidance on Social Media
Social media platforms provide multiple affordances, which convey several cues to guide users in making decisions about which news to consume. Traditional factorial designs have failed to experimentally study the effects of multiple, simultaneous cues operating on social media. As a result, there is little consensus in the literature about their exact effects on news choice. In this study, we use a conjoint experimental design to examine how sour…
Topics and Sentiments Influence Likes: A Study of Facebook Public Pages' Posts About Covid-19 Vaccination
In this study, we analyzed >200,000 posts collected from Facebook public pages that were published in December 2020 during the rollout of the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to the American public. We ran both topic modeling and sentiment analysis of the posts and found that first Facebook posts talked about not only treatment effectiveness such as trial results and testing approaches but also other issues that surround vaccines such as…
Rethinking Audience Fragmentation Using a Theory of News Reading Publics: Online India as a Case Study
Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into …
The Political Landscape of the U.S. Twitterverse
Prior research suggests that Twitter users in the United States are more politically engaged and more partisan than the American citizenry, who are generally characterized by low levels of political knowledge and disinterest in political affairs. This study seeks to understand this disconnect by conducting an observational analysis of the most popular accounts on American Twitter. We identify opinion leaders by drawing random samples of ordinary …
What counts as a weak tie? A comparison of filtering techniques to analyze co-exposure networks
Metrics in action: How social media metrics shape news production on Facebook
Social media metrics allow media outlets to get a granular, real-time understanding of audience preferences, and may therefore be used to decide what content to prioritize in the future. We test this mechanism in the context of Facebook, by using topic modeling and longitudinal data analysis on a large dataset comprising all posts published by major media outlets used by American citizens (N≈2.23M, 2015–2019). We find that while the overall effec…
Silenced on social media: The gatekeeping functions of shadowbans in the American Twitterverse
Algorithms play a critical role in steering online attention on social media. Many have alleged that algorithms can perpetuate bias. This study audited shadowbanning, where a user or their content is temporarily hidden on Twitter. We repeatedly tested whether a stratified random sample of American Twitter accounts (n ≈ 25,000) had been subject to various forms of shadowbans. We then identified the type of user and tweet characteristics that predi…
Online news in India: A quantitative appraisal of the digital news consumption landscape in the world’s largest democracy (2014–2018)
How do people in the world’s largest democracy consume news online? In this paper, I aim to answer this question by conducting a quantitative assessment of the online news consumption behavior of a large sample of Indian internet users (N≈50,000) over a period of 45 months. In doing so, I contribute to theoretical debates about global news media use, by systematically appraising the prominence and trends in audience share of different types of ne…
The Antecedents and Manifestations of Political Polarization in Visual Media: Key Questions and Future Directions
The Influence of Sexism and Incivility in WhatsApp Political Discussions on Affective Polarization: Evidence from a 2022 Multi-Party Election in India
In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded …
Are partisan, unreliable, digital-born, and mass-oriented media more likely to thrive on social media? Comparing four information ecosystems
Social media platforms form information ecosystems distinct from the Web and reconfigure power relationships, especially the distribution of visibilities, among news media. We developed a theoretical framework based on structuration theory to explain the differences between the Web and social media, and investigated four prominent factors: institutional legacy, information reliability, ideological differences, and news inequalities. This study co…
How Social Media Metrics Shape News Production: A Replication Study
Audience engagement signals on social media platforms have shaped how media outlets produce news. Mukerjee et al. examined this phenomenon empirically by estimating the extent to which media outlets respond to audience engagement signals on Facebook in deciding what news to publish on the platform. However, the extent to which their findings can be generalized to other social media platforms remains unknown. We replicate their study on Twitter us…
Social Media and Politics (12 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Advertising (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Media Studies and Communication (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Social media (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · World Wide Web (7 works)