#IStandWithDan versus #DictatorDan: the polarised dynamics of Twitter discussions about Victoria’s COVID-19 restrictions (original) (raw)
Related papers
How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: 'Highjacking' Hashtags in Times of COVID-19
Social Science Research Network, 2020
Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of 'hashjacking'; the use of someone else’s hashtag in order to promote one's own social media agenda. For the example of COVID-19 related hashtags and their retweet networks, we examine the case of partisan accounts of the German far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of 'hashjacking' in May 2020. Our findings indicate that polarisation of political party hashtags has not changed significantly in the last two years. We see that right-wing partisans are actively and effectively polarising the discourse by 'hashjacking' COVID-19 related hashtags, like #CoronaVirusDE or #FlattenTheCurve. T...
How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: ‘Hashjacking’ as a Disinformation Strategy in Times of COVID-19
Springer eBooks, 2022
Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of 'hashjacking' 4. For the example of COVID-19 related hashtags and their retweet networks, we examine the case of partisan accounts of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of 'hashjacking' in May 2020. Our findings indicate that polarisation of political party hashtags has not changed significantly in the last two years. We see that right-wing partisans are actively and effectively polarising the discourse by 'hashjacking' COVID-19 related hashtags, like #CoronaVirusDE or #FlattenTheCurve. This polarisation strategy is dominated by the activity of a limited set of heavy users. The results underline the necessity to understand the dynamics of discourse polarisation, as an active political communication strategy of the far-right, by only a handful of very active accounts.
Did COVID Infect Twitter? An analysis of campaign Tweets in 2020
2021
The study investigated the presence of issue-related statements within tweets on a candidate's Twitter feed (N = 20). The study finds that the coronavirus outbreak had a significant influence on the social media behavior —pushing campaign efforts almost entirely onto the internet. It also took up a significant amount of social media discussion. While there was no significant relationship between social media output regarding the topic and electoral results, it still served a predictive function. The fact that the frequency in which the coronavirus outbreak was mentioned serves as a solid predictor of partisanship speaks to the polarization of this era. Issues rooted in observable phenomena and scientific evidence have become indistinguishable from partisan issues and ideological debate —as it is the norm to run a campaign as a party opposed to the other's stance rather than a party of stances.
MedieKultur. Journal of Media and Communication Research 30 (56) - http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur/article/view/8951/15174
Published version available free at http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur/article/view/8951/15174 "As research has indicated that what is sometimes described as traditional forms of politicalparliamentary participation are dwindling in most western democracies, the role of the Internet has often been pointed to as harboring the means to hinder these developments. While empirical studies on these matters have at best provided mixed results, social media services, like Twitter, has yet again fanned the flames of the most enthusiastic debaters. This paper moves beyond the often-studied context of parliamentary elections and instead offers a structural study of everyday political discussions on Twitter. Specifically, tweets from political contexts in Sweden and Norway are collected and analyzed with a specific focus on the top users and their activities. Results indicate that while thematic Twitter discussion can indeed serve as a potential channel for citizens, the influence of established as well as political extremist actors is also clearly discerned."
Twitter, Politics, and the Pandemic
European journal of health communication, 2024
This article examines the intersection of politics, government, and health communication in the Scottish Twittersphere during the Covid-19 outbreak. It captures two phases of the pandemic: the beginning of the health crisis, and the rollout of the vaccination programme, coinciding with the emergence of the Delta variant in Scotland. A combination of thematic, quantitative content and social network analyses is employed to identify key themes emerging from the tweets of selected government and politicians' accounts, and to explore the formation of social networks communities. The thematic analysis reveals that Twitter has primarily been used for disseminating information about the virus, preventative measures, and government interventions, with limited efforts towards public engagement. Twitter communications became increasingly partisan as the pandemic progressed, with users frequently using the crisis as a political proxy. Five major clusters were detected in the Twitter network: two highly partisan and polarised clusters; a group containing numerous news media accounts reporting on the pandemic, and two clusters focusing primarily on the vaccination programme and the provision of health information, where the First Minister and the Scottish Government operate. Implications of these findings for government and political communication in health crises are discussed.
Human Communication Research
Social bots, or algorithmic agents that amplify certain viewpoints and interact with selected actors on social media, may influence online discussion, news attention, or even public opinion through coordinated action. Previous research has documented the presence of bot activities and developed detection algorithms. Yet, how social bots influence attention dynamics of the hybrid media system remains understudied. Leveraging a large collection of both tweets (N = 1,657,551) and news stories (N = 50,356) about the early COVID-19 pandemic, we employed bot detection techniques, structural topic modeling, and time series analysis to characterize the temporal associations between the topics Twitter bots tend to amplify and subsequent news coverage across the partisan spectrum. We found that bots represented 8.98% of total accounts, selectively promoted certain topics and predicted coverage aligned with partisan narratives. Our macro-level longitudinal description highlights the role of bo...
Media and Communication, 2022
Literature on influence operations highlights the coordinated actions of digital activists aimed at persuading audiences. Scholars have discussed many angles of this behavior and emphasized repertoires based on specific contentious actions. However, little is discussed about how these disputes allow us to apprehend different models of political action in polarized contexts. On a whole, studies have not considered a broader understanding of digital activism performed by supporters of far-right governments. How does the far-right spread its agenda and support the government in "hashtag wars"? What kind of strategies are employed? This study seeks to compare patterns of coordinated behavior in hashtags created by supporters and detractors of the Bolsonaro government in Brazil that occupied the trending topics on Twitter. The statistical analysis is based on 6.1 million tweets taken from 20 political hashtags collected over a three-month period from May to July 2020. Data was scraped using Twitter's Search API v3.0 for academic use. We analyzed the overall volume and peaks of tweets, the users they engaged with, and their network of influence, as well as the length of each hashtag. The results show an intense use of hashtag activism by Bolsonaro supporters, with users struggling for greater prominence in social media in the face of political events in Brazil. This article sheds light on how the far-right appropriates digital platforms to promote the government's public image in times of political tension and how it promotes coordinated actions aimed at framing social media audiences.
Twitter, Hashtags and Political Polarization
This study examines Twitter's role as a public sphere to endorse the deliberative democracy model, where contending ideas were competing to instill public discourse. Two hashtags are exemplified #IranDeal and #GunControl to measure the debate among public of international and domestic issues. The findings indicate that the international issue clusters were based on ideological differences, while for domestic subject elite-public distinction is more prominent. The lack of data may affect the final results and initial hypotheses, however, as preliminary research, this study partially corroborates the polarization thesis that the public become more partisan due to ideological differences, while simultaneously endorse a deliberative model of democracy. Future study suggests bigger data will generate more valid findings and the examination Twitter contents give more nuance in understanding the social and political context.
The Use of Twitter Hashtags in the Formation of Ad Hoc Publics
As the use of Twitter has become more commonplace throughout many nations, its role in political discussion has also increased. This has been evident in contexts ranging from general political discussion through local, state, and national elections (such as in the 2010 Australian elections) to protests and other activist mobilisation (for example in the current uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, as well as in the controversy around Wikileaks).
Characterizing Communication Networks Associated with Political Hashtags
2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2014
Among the diverse forms of communication and information networks found in the Web 2.0 environment, "social" and "informational" communication networks have been characterized in terms of their network metrics. Although Twitter is partly based on relationships between actors, activity has been shown to reflect characteristics of information networks. This study examines activity in Twitter within spaces defined by hashtags on political topics. We gathered our own data on a hashtag associated with the 2012 Hawaii senatorial race and compared our results to those from other political hashtag networks, and to typical social and information networks as well as random graphs. Results show that hashtag-centered reply and retweet networks in this domain do not fall clearly into the social or informational categories. There appears to be a third kind of network associated with political debate. More generally, it may be productive to conceive of communication networks in terms of multidimensional characteristics rather than categories.