Networks of Agonism and Antagonism: Polarised Discourses about COP26 (and COP27) on Twitter (ICA 2023)

Snurb — Sunday 9 July 2023 05:14
Politics | Government | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | Twitter | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | ICA 2023 |

ICA 2023

Networks of Agonism and Antagonism: Polarised Discourses about COP26 (and COP27) on Twitter

Axel Bruns, Michelle Riedlinger, Carly Lubicz-Zaorski, Ehsan Dehghan, and Daniel Angus

  • 27 May 2023 – Paper presented at the ICA 2023 conference, Toronto

Presentation Slides

Abstract

Drawing on a dataset of tweets relating to the COP26 summit in Glasgow and COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, this paper investigates the networks of interaction between participants in the online debate. Distinguishing between @mentions, retweets, quote tweets, and other forms of interaction, it examines the agonistic alliances and antagonistic animosities between participating groups of Twitter users, and from this identifies patterns of polarisation within the climate change debate, and their evolution over the duration of the summits.

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