Two-Year Study of Emotion and Communication Patterns in a Highly Polarized Political Discussion Forum

Abstract

The article presents analysis of a Polish Internet political discussion forum, characterized by significant polarization and high levels of emotion. The study compares samples of discussions gathered at three periods during a 2-year time, during which events occurred that significantly increased the already strong political division of Polish society (the sudden death of the President in a plane crash, snap elections, accusations of assassination and treason). Despite these circumstances, we observe a remarkable stability of individual political support. Extensive discussions among the forum users did not lead to changes in their political affiliations or specific opinions. In contrast, emotions expressed by the forum users, mainly negative, were found to vary from post to post and between the discussion threads. An automatic emotion recognition algorithm is presented, giving results closely corresponding to human evaluations. The authors also show that differences in a user interface between the two alternative forum webpages, especially effects of features promoting direct one-to-one communication, have significant impact on message content and decrease negative emotions. Implications of such changes on promoting communication across a political divide are discussed.

Motives for Active Participation in Political Blogs

“…Moreover, in the analyzed political blog discussions, disagreement with the comment of another blogger is more frequent than agreement, and direct questions are very rarely asked. Therefore, we suppose that political blogs are used less as an information but more as a discussion platform for users with already formed opinions which corresponds with previous research (Sobkowicz & Sobkowicz, 2012). Furthermore, we can conclude that the concentration of political blog discussions is rather moderate because the 191 bloggers are distributed in five clusters (n ¼ 75, 17, 23, 26, and 50), so that not only one cluster represented by one or two individuals drives discussions by generating content but at least 40 (21%) of the 191 bloggers (Clusters 2 and 3, the political networkers, and the political campaigners).This is an interesting result because concentration could be assumed to be higher since the German political blogosphere is rather small compared to other countries, like the United States.…”

Suomi24-keskustelut kohtaamisten ja törmäysten tilana

“…Yhteiskunnallista keskustelua syntyy myös muille kuin poliittisten aiheiden käsittelyyn tarkoitetuille foorumeille, samoin kuin muihin sosiaalisen median verkostoihin, kuten Twitteriin ja Facebookiin, joissa ihmiset puivat arkeaan ja yksityiseen elämänpiiriinsä liittyviä aiheita (esim. Papacharissi 2004;Renninger 2015;Sobkowicz & Sobkowicz 2012;Svensson 2015;Graham ym. 2016;Freelon 2015;Graham & Harju 2011).…”

“…Keskustelusta tulee omanlaistaan erilaisissa verkkotiloissa, vaikka keskustelijat olisivatkin ainakin osittain samoja näillä eri foorumeilla (Renninger 2015(Renninger , 1514. Foorumien tekniset ominaisuudet, moderointi ja kirjoittajien tunnistautumiskäytännöt vaikuttavat myös käytyyn keskusteluun (McCluskey & Hmielowski 2011;Sobkowicz & Sobkowicz 2012). Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelun ulkopuolelle jäävät taloudellis-teknologiset valtasuhteet.…”

Emotional criticism as public engagement: How weibo users discuss “Peking University statues wear face-masks”

“…It is not surprising to find ''several culturally fragmented cyberspheres that occupy a common virtual space" (Papacharissi, 2002;Downey and Fenton, 2003). Scholars suggest that it is the uncontrollability, nonlinearity, and emotionality that make online political communication more valuable and more attractive to participants (Sobkovicz and Sobkovicz, 2012).…”