Abstract
In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing consolidation of different realms where citizens can deliberate and discuss a variety of topics of general interest, including politics. The comments on news posts in online media are a good example. The first theoretical contributions called attention to the potential of those spaces to build a <em>healthy </em>(civic and participatory) public sphere, going much deeper in the process of political dialogue and deliberation (Fung, Gilman, &amp; Shkabatur, 2013; Lilleker &amp; Jackson, 2008; O’Reilly, 2005; Stromer-Galley &amp; Wichowski, 2011). Polarization has been configured as a constant feature of the quality of the mentioned dialogues, particularly in Mediterranean countries (polarized pluralists’ cases). One of the research challenges at the moment has to do with the scrutiny of polarization within the political deliberation provoked by news stories. The goal of this article is the analysis of political dialogue from the perspective of the polarization in the increasingly popular network YouTube, which is presenting very particular characteristics. Using a sample of almost 400,000 posted comments about diverse topics (climate change, the Catalonian crisis, and Political parties’ electoral ads) we propose an automated method in order to measure polarization. Our hypothesis is that the number of comments (quantitative variable) is positively related to their polarization (qualitative variable). We will also include in the examination information about the ideological editorial line of newspapers, the type of topic under discussion, the amount of traceable dialogue, etc. We propose an index to (1) measure the polarization of each comment and use it to show how this value has behaved over time; and (2) verify the hypothesis using the average polarization of comments for each video.
Highlights
Political interaction is essential for democratic societies
Some scholars have pointed out that conversations about topics of general interest are a requirement for the integral understanding of democratic life and, are fundamental in order to provide the meaning of effective political participation, reinforcing the legitimacy of democratic systems (Rubio, 2000; Scheufele, 2001)
The goal of this article is the analysis of political dialogue from the perspective of the polarization in YouTube, which presents very particular characteristics
Summary
Political interaction is essential for democratic societies. Through dialogue, citizens clarify their points of view, come into contact with the opinions of other parties, and shape the problems that people need to face (Stromer-Galley & Wichowski, 2011). Media and Communication, 2020, Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 63–72 media—understood as applications and websites employed to share information and build networks between people (Osborne-Gowey, 2014)—started to gain attention in detriment of other traditional 1.0 online platforms (online newspaper blogs), journalists, analysts, and scholars began to speculate about the real possibility to generate domains where regular citizens could find a space to share information, to portray social and political events, to exchange opinions, and to dialogue, far away (at least in theory) from the biased editorial alignment of international news corporations Those platforms create a networked sphere of political discussions that is structurally independent from the traditional arena of politics or news; yet, it connects with the two through official affiliations and real-life interactions (Lindgren, 2011). We have observed the transformation of the public sphere, from a traditional model based on a strongly hierarchical and mainly one-way mass communication, to a network-based multidirectional and horizontal communication (López García, 2006)
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