Causal Effects of Trigger Words in Social Media Discussions: A Large-Scale Case Study about UK Politics on Reddit
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2024
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| _version_ | 1866911479898308608 |
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| author | Antypas, Dimosthenis Arnold, Christian Ousidhoum, Nedjma Almendros, Carla Perez Camacho-Collados, Jose |
| author_facet | Antypas, Dimosthenis Arnold, Christian Ousidhoum, Nedjma Almendros, Carla Perez Camacho-Collados, Jose |
| contents | Political debates on social media often escalate quickly, leading to increased engagement as well as more emotional and polarised exchanges. Trigger points (Mau, Lux, and Westheuser 2023) represent moments when individuals feel that their understanding of what is fair, normal, or appropriate in society is being questioned. Analysing Reddit discussions, we examine how trigger points shape online debates and assess their impact on engagement and affect. Our analysis is based on over 100 million comments from subreddits centred on a predefined set of terms identified as trigger words in UK politics. We find that mentions of these terms are associated with higher engagement and increased animosity, including more controversial, negative, angry, and hateful responses. These results position trigger words as a useful concept for modelling and analysing online polarisation. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_10213 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Causal Effects of Trigger Words in Social Media Discussions: A Large-Scale Case Study about UK Politics on Reddit Antypas, Dimosthenis Arnold, Christian Ousidhoum, Nedjma Almendros, Carla Perez Camacho-Collados, Jose Social and Information Networks Computation and Language Computers and Society Political debates on social media often escalate quickly, leading to increased engagement as well as more emotional and polarised exchanges. Trigger points (Mau, Lux, and Westheuser 2023) represent moments when individuals feel that their understanding of what is fair, normal, or appropriate in society is being questioned. Analysing Reddit discussions, we examine how trigger points shape online debates and assess their impact on engagement and affect. Our analysis is based on over 100 million comments from subreddits centred on a predefined set of terms identified as trigger words in UK politics. We find that mentions of these terms are associated with higher engagement and increased animosity, including more controversial, negative, angry, and hateful responses. These results position trigger words as a useful concept for modelling and analysing online polarisation. |
| title | Causal Effects of Trigger Words in Social Media Discussions: A Large-Scale Case Study about UK Politics on Reddit |
| topic | Social and Information Networks Computation and Language Computers and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10213 |