Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Reilly, Jack

Area of Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

My research focuses on how heterogeneity of race in political discussion networks (also called social networks) affects the individual political identities of Black and White voters. There is much research to refer to for social networks, but very little of it deals with race. My research hopes to close this gap. Using data from the General Social Survey 2010 I run a series of multiple regressions to test the way racial identity and racial diversity in social networks combine to influence party identification and political opinions on a wide variety of issues. I find that white respondents’ party affiliations seem to be more affected by racial diversity in their networks than black respondents with racially diverse networks. I also find that racial diversity is far more salient with opinions on racial and race adjacent issues such as affirmative action, welfare, and immigration than non racially related issues like LGBTQ+ rights and abortion. I conclude by calling on political scientists to expand the literature on this topic and to more actively include people of color in their studies on political behavior, social influence and network heterogeneity.

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