Abstract
Many papers have analyzed political discussions between liberals and conservatives on social media. However, only a few portions of users participate in their enthusiastic partisan clusters. The majority of users are in non-partisan clusters with little political interest. It is important to understand their roles and the differences in interest topics from those of the partisan cluster regarding the relative understanding of political discussions. However, few studies have focused on understanding non-partisan clusters, and they are mainly analyses of network structure. This study focuses on each cluster's interest topics, posting tendencies, and tweet reach, especially in political discussions about the discussion on Twitter of the National funeral of former PM Abe. We extracted a non-partisan cluster using clustering and ideological estimation. They had about the same users as the partisan cluster but fewer tweets. We found that while they were interested in events, they were less interested in high-context discussions. In addition, they were more likely to tweet and change their opinions when significant events occurred. They were also centrally located between partisan clusters and exchanged many neutral tweets, suggesting their contribution to stabilizing discussions. This study shows the importance of including non-partisan clusters in political discussions.
