The Effect of Religious Identity on Intergroup Bias in Online Communications

• In Event: 4467 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtables (Cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 9: Religion

Abstract

Intergroup relations and the factors affecting them are a subject of recurring interest within the academic community. Social identity theory suggests that group membership and the value we assign to it drives the expression of in-group favoritism and outgroup prejudice. The present study examines how religious identities are related to topic-sentiment polarization in the form of positive in-group and negative outgroup bias during interreligious debates in YouTube commentaries. Drawing from the propositions of social identity theory, four hypotheses were tested. The data for the study, a product of a natural experiment, are comments posted on YouTube commentary sections featuring videos of interreligious debates between Christian and Muslim speakers. Using topic-sentiment analysis, a multistage method of topic modeling with latent semantic analysis (LSA) and sentiment analysis, 24,179 comments by 850 unique usernames were analyzed. The results offer support (or partial support) to the hypotheses demonstrating identity-specific instances of topic-sentiment polarization. The study offers valuable insights for the relevance of social identity theory in real-world interreligious interactions, while the successful application of topic-sentiment analysis lends support for the more systematic utilization of this method for the study of intergroup communications.

Author

• Nikolitsa Grigoropoulou, University of North Texas