Drawing on theories of identity politics and partisan polarization, we explored the politicization of Google Play’s news app reviews—an explicitly non-political domain. Using a mixed-methods approach, Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMNs), combining topic modeling, network analysis, community detection, and theory-driven qualitative reading, we analyzed 759,143 reviews from 2009 to 2022 across 46 news apps. Three themes emerged: Technical, Content Quality, and Political. The political discourse in reviews has intensified over the years, with notable spikes around election periods. Accusations of bias were found to correlate most strongly with lower app ratings. The findings provide alarming empirical evidence for the politicization of non-political spaces, such as the app reviews section on app stores. With identity politics on the rise, this study sheds light on the importance of considering non-political online spaces for the study of political discourse.

中文翻译：

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非政治在线空间的党派政治化日益严重：对 2009 年至 2022 年 Google Play 上新闻应用评论的混合方法分析

借鉴身份政治和党派极化理论，我们探索了 Google Play 新闻应用评论的政治化——一个明确的非政治领域。我们使用混合方法——主题模型网络分析 (ANTMN)，结合主题建模、网络分析、社区检测和理论驱动的定性阅读，分析了 2009 年至 2022 年 46 个新闻应用程序中的 759,143 条评论。出现了三个主题：技术、内容质量和政治。多年来，评论中的政治话语不断加剧，尤其是在选举期间。研究发现，偏见指控与较低的应用评分相关性最强。这些发现为非政治空间的政治化提供了令人震惊的经验证据，例如应用商店的应用评论部分。随着身份政治的兴起，这项研究揭示了考虑非政治在线空间对政治话语研究的重要性。