Wars of Position: A Social Network Analysis of Political Podcasts

Ideological echo chambers on digital media platforms have been the subject of extensive research by computational social scientists. Current debates focus on the role of user choice and algorithmic recommendation feeds in creating these echo chambers. In this thesis, I argue that content creators can work to create echo chambers through collaborations with other ideologically aligned creators. Adopting a Gramscian theoretical framework, I argue that these homophilic collaborations are tools of hegemonic struggle, analogous to the "wars of position" described by the late political theorist Antonio Gramsci. To validate my claims, I perform a social network analysis of collaborations between the 250 most political podcasters in the United States. My network analysis reveals that collaborations are much likelier between podcasters of similar ideological alignments, and these probabilities are the largest for left-wing podcasters. My research also shows that collaborations are highly unequal, adhering to power law distributions observed commonly across a wide range of social phenomena. My results advocate for a renewed focus on engagement between content creators on social media platforms as a potential driver of political polarization.