Unpacking polarization: Antagonism and alignment in signed networks of online interaction.

ABSTRACT: Political conflict is an essential element of democratic systems, but can also threaten their existence if it becomes too intense. This happens particularly when most political issues become aligned along the same major fault line, splitting society into two antagonistic camps. In the 20th century, major fault lines were formed by structural conflicts, like owners vs. workers, center vs. periphery, etc. But these classical cleavages have since lost their explanatory power. Instead of theorizing new cleavages, we present the FAULTANA (FAULT-line Alignment Network Analysis) pipeline, a computational method to uncover major fault lines in data of signed online interactions. Our method makes it possible to quantify the degree of antagonism prevalent in different online debates, as well as how

SUBMITTER: Fraxanet E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11655294 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature