Narrative congruence between populist President Duterte and the Filipino public: Shifting global alliances from the United States to China

Carley

2021

Appl Netw Sci

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Hate speech has long posed a serious problem for the integrity of digital platforms. Although significant progress has been made in identifying hate speech in its various forms, prevailing computational approaches have tended to consider it in isolation from the community-based contexts in which it spreads. In this paper, we propose a dynamic network framework to characterize hate communities, focusing on Twitter conversations related to COVID-19 in the United States and the Philippines. While average hate scores remain fairly consistent over time, hate communities grow increasingly organized in March, then slowly disperse in the succeeding months. This pattern is robust to fluctuations in the number of network clusters and average cluster size. Infodemiological analysis demonstrates that in both countries, the spread of hate speech around COVID-19 features similar reproduction rates as other COVID-19 information on Twitter, with spikes in hate speech generation at time points with highest community-level organization of hate speech. Identity analysis further reveals that hate in the US initially targets political figures, then grows predominantly racially charged; in the Philippines, targets of hate consistently remain political over time. Finally, we demonstrate that higher levels of community hate are consistently associated with smaller, more isolated, and highly hierarchical network clusters across both contexts. This suggests potentially shared structural conditions for the effective spread of hate speech in online communities even when functionally targeting distinct identity groups. Our findings bear theoretical and methodological implications for the scientific study of hate speech and understanding the pandemic’s broader societal impacts both online and offline.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, the Philippines’ geographic proximity to China, and its recent history of territorial disputes with the Asian superpower, may also push particular forms of sinophobic discourse on digital platforms (Montiel et al. 2019 ; Ong et al. 2019 ).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing network dynamics of online hate communities around the COVID-19 pandemic

Carley

2021

Appl Netw Sci

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“…For instance, observing higher levels of racial hate in the US, but not in the Philippines, made sense in relation to known societal conditions delineating the two nations [ 20 , 37 , 58 ]. While political polarization does indeed represent a serious problem for both nations [ 1 , 8 , 81 ], the multicultural setting of the US points to a fertile ground for racialized hate in a way that may not be comparable in the Philippines [ 5 , 28 , 44 , 89 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Known operations, for example, have stoked online conflicts in relation to wider racial divisions [ 4 , 89 ]. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, international tensions with China may also play a role in shaping racially charged online hate [ 58 , 78 ]. However, in view of well-documented evidence that disinformation in the Philippines is primarily domestic and state-sponsored, information maneuvers may also play a role in primarily political conflicts [ 62 , 79 ].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bots and online hate during the COVID-19 pandemic: case studies in the United States and the Philippines

Carley

2020

J Comput Soc Sc

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Online hate speech represents a serious problem exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Although often anchored in real-world social divisions, hate speech in cyberspace may also be fueled inorganically by inauthentic actors like social bots. This work presents and employs a methodological pipeline for assessing the links between hate speech and bot-driven activity through the lens of social cybersecurity. Using a combination of machine learning and network science tools, we empirically characterize Twitter conversations about the pandemic in the United States and the Philippines. Our integrated analysis reveals idiosyncratic relationships between bots and hate speech across datasets, highlighting different network dynamics of racially charged toxicity in the US and political conflicts in the Philippines. Most crucially, we discover that bot activity is linked to higher hate in both countries, especially in communities which are denser and more isolated from others. We discuss several insights for probing issues of online hate speech and coordinated disinformation, especially through a global approach to computational social science.

“…Acknowledging the predominantly Western literature on populist support and opposition, we extend these insights to account for the unique postcolonial contexts of Global South democracies (Montiel, Boller, Uyheng, & Espina, 2019; Okazaki, David, & Abelmann, 2008). Postcolonial scholarship views psychological processes through the lens of the complex and enduring legacies of colonization (Macleod, Bhatia, & Kessi, 2017; Moghaddam, 1987).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Populist polarization in postcolonial Philippines: Sociolinguistic rifts in online drug war discourse

Montiel

2021

Euro J Social Psych

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Social psychological scholarship on populism explains polarization processes in terms of individual differences and group‐level divisions. However, predominant approaches often elide wider historical contexts, implicitly assuming the structural features of Western settings. Invoking insights from postcolonial psychology, we posit that populist polarization dynamics in the Global South are structurally shaped by colonial histories. Turning to the Philippines under populist President Rodrigo Duterte, we examine polarized online constructions of his controversial war on drugs. Employing a discourse‐historical approach, we uncover a structurally bifurcated view of populist polarization. We specifically unpack sociolinguistic rifts across vernacular discourses of community security uttered in Filipino versus cosmopolitan discourses of democratic integrity uttered in English. Our findings expand prevailing scholarship by illustrating postcolonial discursive possibilities of populism from above and resistance from below. We conclude with insights for studying populist polarization at the nexus of local and global inequalities.