Exposure to counter-attitudinal information on Twitter/X and political activity

Twitter/X, with its unique microblogging capabilities, has increasingly become a prominent platform for political information and engagement. Analyses of 2021 Pew Research Center American Trends Panel survey data show that the proportion of counter-attitudinal information encountered on Twitter/X was negatively associated with offline and Twitter/X-based political activity via perceived network homogeneity. Also, the proportion of Twitter/X-based counter-attitudinal information encountered was negatively associated with Twitter/X-based activity and the proportion of retweeted and “liked” political content via perceived repercussions of activity on Twitter/X. The negative indirect relationship between counter-attitudinal information exposure on Twitter/X-based political activity via perceived repercussions was stronger for Republicans than Democrats.