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This study introduces the concept of longitudinal relational publics to analyze how political discourse emerges in online spaces that are not explicitly political, focusing on the interplay between creators and their audiences over time. By examining 150 longitudinal publics derived from Twitter/X users matched to U.S. voter records, the authors reveal significant discursive overlaps with electoral politics and the Black Lives Matter movement during a pivotal period in 2020. The findings indicate that online spaces with politically diverse audiences facilitate greater cross-partisan dialogue, highlighting the importance of audience dynamics in shaping political conversations in everyday online contexts.
Online spaces with politically diverse audiences are hotspots for cross-partisan dialogue, revealing unexpected avenues for political engagement.
Online discussions of political issues do not always happen in places explicitly dedicated to political talk; they also arise in online spaces focused on at least nominally apolitical interests, identities, and/or places. Whatever one's normative view of politics entering these ``online third spaces,''understanding who brings political issues into them, and when, requires studying these spaces at scale. In turn, studying these spaces at scale requires a construct that captures both who is speaking and who is listening, and that holds up over time. Building on Bruns'distinction between participant-centered personal publics and post-centered issue publics, we introduce the longitudinal relational networked public (or, simply, the longitudinal public): the coupling of discourse produced by a socially connected set of creators with the durable attention their shared audience gives it. The longitudinal public departs from related relational constructs in three ways: it is anchored in the attention patterns of a non-elite, population-level audience; it treats within-public structure as an object of analysis rather than assuming homogeneity; and it incorporates the audience as a force that shapes creator discourse. In a case study, we identify 150 longitudinal publics from the following ties of a panel of Twitter/X users matched to U.S. voter records, then measure their discursive overlap with the electoral politics and Black Lives Matter issue publics across 2020, a period spanning the murder of George Floyd and the general election. We find that the spaces that best fit the idea of a third space have the most politically heterogeneous audiences, and thus the most potential room for cross-partisan talk. This result, among several others, shows how a relational, audience-aware construct can reveal where and through whom political talk enters everyday online life.
