The "Oil Spill" as Dimensionality Reduction? Uncovering the Structural Consolidation of American Lifestyle (2011–2022)

• In Event: Structure and Meaning: Linking Social Networks and Cultural Life

Abstract

The "Oil Spill" thesis posits that partisanship is fundamentally reorganizing everyday American life. Yet, reliance on static or binary consumer data obscures the generative mechanisms and macro-structural consequences of this cultural polarization. This study bridges the micro-mechanism of "Identity Stacking" with the macro-sociology of "Structural Consolidation" to test whether previously orthogonal dimensions of American lifestyle are collapsing into a single partisan axis.

To operationalize this theoretical dimensionality reduction, we leverage a unique decade-long panel (2011–2022) of 1.5 million Twitter users linked to validated voter registration records. Applying Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) to group-domain sharing networks, we inductively extract 30 latent "lifestyle bundles" to map the cultural landscape.

Preliminary analysis of this longitudinal data reveals an asymmetric consolidation aligned with these structural theories. While partisanship drives identity alignment at the micro-level, the emergent macro-structure is uneven: Republican groups exhibit lower entropy around specific lifestyle enclaves, whereas Democratic consumption remains diffusely omnivorous. Ultimately, we demonstrate that while political identity is a powerful organizing force, this structural consolidation is bounded by persistently rigid demographic stratification, challenging the narrative of a totalizing cultural war.

Authors

• Hsiu-Chi Lu, Northeastern University

• Ichikawa Kei