The Dynamics of Antagonism in Controversial Online Discourse

The next speaker in this session at IAMCR 2023 is Svetlana Bodrunova, whose interest is in dynamic polarisation in online discussions. She notes that polarisation has often be confused with the idea of echo chambers, but that our methods have generally overlooked the dynamics of polarisation. A better approach to understanding the idea is to use the concept of cumulative deliberation, which recognises that opinions form online through the gradual accumulation of posts and engagement.

Time and dynamics are dimensions with their own logics here, and lead to a divergence of discourses within online talk. What emerges here (and Svetlana calls this echo chambers, but really these are simply communities) is not necessarily polarised, politicised, or radical, and these communities have their own dynamics of relating to and engaging with one another.

The present project draws on Twitter datasets of ethno-political conflicts in 2013 and 2015/16, in Russia and Germany; these earlier datasets are also preferable because they are less likely to be affected by a substantial presence of bots. In each case, the project analysed the datasets and identified the major influencers, and coded their tweets for their attitudes to political leaders, local authorities, and the different stakeholder groups in the conflict.

For the Russian case, this shows a very strong interweaving of the different participants in the conflict; in Germany, there was some more distinct structuration between the different antagonistic groups in the discussion. Looking at the evolution of these networks over time, in the Russian case there is a temporal dynamic which sees some groups in the debate emerge just hours before their antagonists – with radical participants often being the first to drive the Twitter debate. As part of this, people also shift their discursive positions, and there is a cross-influence between the different antagonistic groups. And over time, news discourse gradually replaces radical discourses.