Political Discussion Groups Research Articles

Explicit civility (Online Discussions/Discussion Quality)

Explicit civility (Online Discussions/Discussion Quality)

The Reddit Politosphere: A Large-Scale Text and Network Resource of Online Political Discourse

We introduce the Reddit Politosphere, a large-scale resource of online political discourse covering more than 600 political discussion groups over a period of 12 years. It is to the best of our knowledge the largest and ideologically most comprehensive dataset of its type now available. One key feature of the Reddit Politosphere is that it consists of both text and network data, allowing for methodologically-diverse analyses. We describe in detail how we create the Reddit Politosphere, present descriptive statistics, and sketch potential directions for future research based on the resource.

The owners of information: Content curation practices of middle-level gatekeepers in political Facebook groups

Volunteer moderators play a key role when making judgements about which online content should be accepted and which should be removed. As such, their work fundamentally shapes the digital social and political spheres. Using the data obtained from 15 Facebook group moderator interviews as research data, this study focused on the content curation work by the middle-level gatekeepers of Finnish political discussion groups on Facebook. The findings show that the moderators feel strong ownership of the groups they moderate and of the information such groups provide, and as a result, they strongly shape the groups’ discussion and governing policy. Facebook’s governing policy for groups is vague, which gives space for group norms and identities to develop. The stakeholder groups (i.e. the platform administration, moderators and users) do not attend to the governance process all together, so negotiations among them are almost non-existent.

The Gender Gap in Political Discussion Group Attendance

AbstractAlthough women and men enjoy formally equal political rights in today's democracies, there are ongoing gaps in the extent to which they make use of these rights, with women underrepresented in many political practices. The gender gap in democratic participation is problematic because gendered asymmetries in participation entail collective outcomes that are less attentive to women's needs, interests, and preferences. Existing studies consider gender gaps in voting behavior and in certain forms of nonelectoral politics such as boycotting, signings a petition, or joining a protest. However, almost no work considers gendered variation in discursive politics. Do women participate in small, face-to-face political discussion groups at the same rate as men? And does gender intersect with other identities—such as ethnicity—to impact attendance at political discussion groups? I use data from the Canadian Election Study 2015 Web Survey to answer these questions. I find that women are significantly less likely to attend small-group discussions than men and that ethnicity intersects with gender in some important ways. However, I find no evidence that other social attributes—poverty or the presence of young children in the home—suppress women's participation in political discussion groups more than men's.

Political chat really has got dumber

In the US, critics have drawn attention to what they call the effect: a shift in norms since Donald Trump became a serious presidential candidate. Anecdotal reports say it has made racism and sexism more acceptable in public conversation. Now a study of online political discussion groups over the past 10 years shows that conversations have indeed become less sophisticated and more offensive. The team analyzed 3.5 billion comments from 25.3 million people between 2007 and 2017. They sorted the comments into two groups: one non-political, the other comprised of things posted to politics subreddits. Noting the frequency of offensive words and phrases gave a measure of how civil the discussions were. The non-political comments were fairly civil. The political comments were not. People were 35 per cent more likely on average to use offensive language in political than nonpolitical discussions. Political discourse was more offensive between May 2016 and May 2017 than in any other 12-month period in Reddit's history

La Tertulia política del Ateneo de Madrid de Agustín García Calvo

Agustin Garcia Calvo thought that Ateneo’s Political Discussion Group was an unusually unique case in the world. In the same way, it could be said that it is unusually unique the inexistence of academic research about an author of his intellectual stature and with so vast works. In this article, I state that, besides being the best way of getting closer to his thinking, the Ateneo’s Political Discussion Group was the nucleus of his life and works. It was also the alternative that he was asked so many times. He preferred offering, instead with words, with facts, in act. Finally, this article also mentions the relationship between the Ateneo’s Political Discussion Group and the 15M Movement’s Free Assembly in the Puerta del Sol and the assemblies of 1965.

Dealing with Internet Trolling in Political Online Communities

Internet trolling has become a popularly used term to describe the posting of any content on the Internet which is provocative or offensive. This is different from the original meaning online in the 1990s, which referred to the posting of provocative messages for humourous effect. Those systems operators (sysops) who run online communities are finding they are being targeted because of abuse posted on their platforms. Political discussion groups are some of the most prone to trolling, whether consensual or unwanted. Many such websites ara open for anyone to join, meaning when some members post messages they know are offensive but legal, others might find grossly offensive, meaning these messages could be illegal. This paper develops a questionnaire called the This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Scale (TIWWCHNT-20), which aims to help sysops better plan the development of online communities to take account of different users' capacity to be offended, and for users to self-assess whether they will be suited to an online community. The scale is discussed in relation to different Internet posting techniques where different users will act differently.

Emotional Commitment in Public Political Internet Message Boards

This study focuses on political discourse among laypersons in public Internet-based political discussion groups and analyzes emotive communication as a product, which is viewed as a continuum including both emotional attachment and emotional detachment. It analyzes 11,000 words of discussion in 180 contributions produced by a total of 65 participants of three political message boards with regard to a selected range of linguistic token features signaling emotional commitment. The results obtained are compared to their frequency in private conversation and newspaper registers to determine where the message boards range within the scale of related registers. The findings are discussed against the background of the framing conditions of political message board communication.

Analysing Online Political Discussions

Online political discussions are thought to lead to more political engagement and empowerment of peripheral groups in society and thereby contributing to deliberative citizenship. Because people have increased opportunities to voice their political opinions and publish these for a potentially large audience to read, the involved level of interactivity can mobilise people who would otherwise not have been in political life. Since Web 2.0 applications (i.e. blogs, social networking sites) have become popular, online discussions have taken a great flight on the web. This article discusses the advantages and difficulties of studying online discussions applying a mixed method approach of content analysis, social network analysis and longitudinal analysis. The additional value of using a combination of research methods simultaneously is that it does justice to the complex object of study because a more in-depth and triangulated measurement of political communications can be established. The methodological implications will be illustrated on data from the online political discussion group, nl.politiek, one of the most active discussion groups during the Dutch national elections in 2006.

Diversity of Political Conversation on the Internet: Users' Perspectives

This essay provides an account of the perspectives of users of online political discussion spaces. In-depth interviews with 69 people who participate in online political discussion groups were conducted. The interviews suggest that they perceive themselves to be interacting with persons who differ from them. They appreciate and enjoy the diversity of people and opinions they encounter online. Although some interview participants expressed dislike at encountering racist or xenophobic perspectives, others appreciated the broad range of opinions they encountered. These findings lend support to the view that people appreciate the diversity of persons and viewpoints they encounter in their chosen discussion spaces. Information provided by interviewees did not offer much support for the homophily perspective–that people seek out like-minded others online–which raises questions about the accuracy of that perspective in characterizing people's online communication behavior.

Linguistic Engineering: Language and Politics in Mao's China. By JI FENGYUAN. [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004. 351 pp. $50.00. ISBN 0-8248-2536-5.

Can the nightmare of language control in Orwell's 1984 work in reality? Linguistic Engineering offers a detailed look at Cultural Revolution slogans and draconian punishments for ‘incorrect’ speech, especially in schools and the workplace. Ji offers much-needed evidence from linguistics and psychology that, even for Red Guards, new vocabulary for ‘class struggle’ against ‘cow ghosts and snake gods’ could not produce a complete or permanent change in thought. Language control is fortunately impossible, however much intellectuals or propagandists may wish. Mere exposure to a phrase does not mean people will learn it, much less believe it. Humans inevitably interpret the world by experience, context and possible rewards, using humour, subversion, indifference, and simple daily routine to find ways to live around even the most oppressive propaganda.Linguistic Engineering focuses mainly on the spoken language of political discussion groups and propaganda between 1966 and 1972, with additional examples from school textbooks, and some model literature and operas. Once labels like ‘rightist,’ ‘bad element’ or ‘capitalist roader’ became linked with everything from ostracism to job loss to prison, passionate battles erupted. Traditional four character phrases such as “confess without being pressed” (bu da zi zhao) grew heavily politicized. Other new vocabulary, however, such as ‘tractor’ or ‘work unit’ was a more benign reflection of new technology and social systems, and remains part of everyday life.Lazy research mars what should have been a better book. Most of the Chinese examples are lifted from English language secondary sources by political scientists, then back-translated (well) into Chinese. Other examples come from English language memoirs of former Red Guards. They are rather unevenly chosen and cited, but most examples have already received meticulous discussion over the past 30 years. This book uses the term ‘Maoist worship,’ for example, very simplistically, ignoring the extensive literature on the distinctions between religious rites and political rallies. The term ‘linguistic engineering’ itself, comes not from Stalin, but from his propagandist, Zhadnov, who said writers are “engineers of human souls.” Other sections are original, but less compelling (e.g. the heroine of the model opera, “On the Docks,” gets 42 per cent of the dialogue).

Democracy online: civility, politeness, and the democratic potential of online political discussion groups

The proponents of cyberspace promise that online discourse will increase political participation and pave the road for a democratic utopia. This article explores the potential for civil discourse in cyberspace by examining the level of civility in 287 discussion threads in political newsgroups. While scholars often use civility and politeness interchangeably, this study argues that this conflation ignores the democratic merit of robust and heated discussion. Therefore, civility was defined in a broader sense, by identifying as civil behaviors that enhance democratic conversation. In support of this distinction, the study results revealed that most messages posted on political newsgroups were civil, and further suggested that because the absence of face-to-face communication fostered more heated discussion, cyberspace might actually promote Lyotard’s vision of democratic emancipation through disagreement and anarchy (Lyotard, 1984). Thus, this study supported the internet’s potential to revive the public sphere, provided that greater diversity and volume of discussion is present.

Syria: neither bread nor freedom

After the death of Syria's President Hafiz al-Asad in mid-2000, hopes were high that his son and successor, Bashar, might succeed in reforming a system that had become a byword for economic stagnation and the pitiless repression of dissent. For six months, and for the first time in decades, Syrians were able to speak freely, without fear of the hated secret police. Political discussion groups mushroomed. The press started carrying articles openly demanding democracy, and petitions were circulated insisting that democracy was essential not only for its own sake but as a condition for desperately needed investment and economic expansion. Based on the testimony of key players, Syria: Neither Bread Nor Freedom recounts the drama of the 'Damascus Spring' and its repression, and reveals what happens in a state like Syria to the institutions that occupy the political space between government and governed. From political parties to parliament, from the media to the judicial system and universities, this book lifts the veil of rhetoric and propaganda to reveal a system so demoralized and corrupt that power is wielded for no purpose but power itself. This is Bashar al-Asad's legacy and the system which, given time, he hopes to reform.

Cognitive Bases of Stereotyping

Subjects observed a slide and tape presentation of a political discussion group involving three men and three women. They then rated all speakers on measures of competence and completed a recall task matching up which speaker had said what. Subjects evidenced substantial prejudice toward female speakers relative to males. They also made substantial within-sex recall errors but relatively few cross-sex errors, indicating the u were organizing incoming information according to sex of the speaker; this strategy was more evident in sex-typed than androgynous individuals. However, recall errors and prejudice effects were uncorrelated, suggesting that the cognitive and affective components of stereotyping are relatively autonomous. A simple categorization model of stereotyping is challenged by these results.

Instrumental Values and the Popularity of Instrumental Leaders

Varying degrees of overlap between instrumental and expressive hierarchies have been reported. All hypothesis which accounts for such disparity is that degree of correspondence between leader status and popularity is associated with the extent to which the instrumental activities of a group are dominant values for the group. Primary and secondary analyses provide confirmation. T HE relationship between leadership and popularity hierarchies has received considerable discussion. Only recently, however, has attention shifted from simply reporting the degree of correspondence between status in the one hierarchy and status in the other to specifying the conditions associated with varying degrees of such correspondence. The present paper hypothesizes how one such condition variable operates and presents some supporting evidence gathered both from primary and secondary data. Theodorson' has written that leader status and popularity are more likely to be associated with one another under conditions of high group cohesiveness than under conditions of low group cohesiveness. However, the reasons he gave for variable cohesiveness in the groups he studied can give rise to an alternative explanation of his findings. Theodorson suggested that a pair of marital discussion groups differed in extent of mutual liking, enjoyment of meetings, and loyalty as a consequence of different rates of interest in the manifest purpose of such groups. He attributed differential cohesiveness in a pair of political discussion groups to differential opportunity to deviate from manifest purposes. This information can lead to the conclusion implied by Theodorson, that the popularity of instrumental leaders is a function of cohesiveness, which in turn is a function of the group's acceptance of the activity led. It can lead equally well, however, to an inference advanced by the present writer, that cohesiveness and the popularity of instrumental leaders may co-occur only insofar as both are consequences of the group's acceptance of the activity led. Slater and Bales and Slater2 report somewhat greater association between indices of instrumental leader status and accorded liking in groups where there is high consensus in the attribution of leader status than in groups where such consensus is low. They suggest that latent consensus in critical values may have existed in the groups which were high in status consensus. We might speculate whether such critical consensus may not have been with respect to the acceptability of the group's