https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819899879 new media & society 2021, Vol. 23(1) 175–192 © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1461444819899879 journals.sagepub.com/home/nms Determinants of cross-cutting discussion on Facebook: Political interest, news consumption, and strong-tie heterogeneity Yanqin Lu Bowling Green State University, USA Jae Kook Lee Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea Abstract Scholarly debate persists as to whether the use of social networking sites (SNSs) encourages or discourages political discussion with people holding different opinions. Drawing on a national survey, this study focuses on Facebook and explores the predictors of cross-cutting discussion on this platform. The results reveal that political interest is positively associated with cross-cutting discussion and this relationship is mediated by the frequency of news consumption on Facebook, suggesting that Facebook use has the potential of exposing the politically attentive to dissonant views. Furthermore, the level of heterogeneity of a person’s strong-tie network is found to accentuate the mediating effect of Facebook news consumption. Implications are discussed for the impacts of Facebook use on deliberative democracy. Keywords Facebook, political disagreement, political discussion, political interest, strong tie Corresponding author: Jae Kook Lee, Department of Media and Communication, Sungkyunkwan University, Faculty Hall 40306, 25-2 Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03063, Republic of Korea. Email: jklee0714@skku.edu 899879NMS 0 0 10.1177/1461444819899879new media & societyLu and Lee research-article 2020 Article