We are living in complex media ­environments featuring diverse channels of political communication. But who is engaging with political content online and how do segments of the online public differ, e.g. between their primary arenas of engagement? The state of the online public discourse is a disputed issue. Against the notion of polarized, low-quality discussions, featuring misinformation and hate speech in online environments, the concept of deliberation represents an ideal form of political discussions and offers a constructive angle to examine online environments. Mapping the online public discourse is empirically challenging. Most previous research focused on specific aspects, such as news media diets (Guess, 2020) or online discussions in specific arenas (Esau et al., 2020).
Using digital trace data in combination with large­scale survey data from Germany, we map out who selects into engaging with political content on various types of sites, relevant for the online public discourse. We further construct a typology of users and compare characteristics and behaviors between profiles.
Overall, we do not find strong patterns of selective exposure and a large demographic and attitudinal overlap in the audiences of different segments of the online public sphere. However, especially people with high education and high political knowledge engage with political information online. When considering online forums and other platforms that enable political expression and discussion, we find that, in tendency, people with more extreme political views are particularly active. Our study contributes the first evidence from digital trace data to the empirical literature on online deliberative systems.