Abstract
This paper presents a study on the dynamics of sentiment polarisation in the active online discussion communities formed around a controversial topic—immigration. Using a collection of tweets in the Swedish language from 2012 to 2019, we track the development of the communities and their sentiment polarisation trajectories over time and in the context of an exogenous shock represented by the European refugee crisis in 2015. To achieve the goal of the study, we apply methods of network and sentiment analysis to map users’ interactions in the network communities and quantify users’ sentiment polarities. The results of the analysis give little evidence for users’ polarisation in the network and its communities, as well as suggest that the crisis had a limited effect on the polarisation dynamics on this social media platform. Yet, we notice a shift towards more negative tonality of users’ sentiments after the crisis and discuss possible explanations for the above-mentioned observations.
Highlights
With the rapid development of social media, modern societies are facing new challenges of the digital age
We focus on the immigration topic as a potentially polarising issue and on the European refugee crisis as a disruptive event that could intervene with the overall polarisation dynamics in online discussions
We contributed to a theoretical discussion on the mechanisms and dynamics of polarisation in social-media-driven networks
Summary
With the rapid development of social media, modern societies are facing new challenges of the digital age. Despite that the researchers have collected sufficient evidence for the particular conditions that cause polarisation among the social media users (see Related work section), we suggest that there is a need to go beyond the issue of social media users’ polarisation based on political party support or membership. In order to provide a more complex and nuanced picture of polarisation, it is essential to address a wider range of socially relevant issues, one example of which is the immigration topic.
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