Seeking and sharing political information on Quora - the case of US presidential election 2024

Abstract

This study aims to elaborate the nature of political information seeking and sharing in social Q&A platforms in times of significant political events such as presidential election. The research framework draws on the Information Utility model and studies on partisan selective exposure to information. The empirical findings are based on the descriptive quantitative analysis and qualitative content analysis of 25 discussion threads with 1909 posts submitted to Quora within the period of 21 July – 14 September 2024 – an initial stage of the US presidential campaign of Kamala Harris. The analysis focuses on the opening questions indicative of information seeking and answers to them, indicative of information sharing. The participants sought information mainly dealing with the reasons for voting and the competence of the presidential candidates, i.e. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. While sharing information, the participants primarily offered opinion answers dealing with the candidates’ political agendas and their competence, reasons for voting and opportunities and threats arising from the expected election result. To a lesser extent, the answers also included the provision of facts, comparison, explanation, prediction and action directives. The findings highlight that in social Q&A forums, political information sharing is strongly based on the description of people´s opinions, rather than the employment of analytical strategies drawing on comparison, explanation and prediction. As the study concentrated on Quora discussion threads dealing with the US presidential election 2024, the findings cannot be extended to concern political information seeking and sharing in other contexts. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is among the first to characterize the role social Q&A platforms as sites of political information seeking and sharing in times of significant political events.