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What a Difference a Day Makes: Topics in Time-Aggregated User Comments on an Anti-Immigration Facebook Page

Fri, May 26, 8:00 to 9:15, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Floor: 3, Aqua 305

Abstract

Nativist political movements opposed to immigration and perceived Islamization thrive on polarized discourses that allow them to mobilize their supporters. Such movements find particularly fertile ground in social media such as Facebook (Ben-David & Matamoros-Fernández, 2016).
What issues do the members of such groups discuss and how do parameters such as the news cycle and length of engagement of users interact with the emergence and abating of topics? We explore these questions by presenting a correlated topic model (Blei & Lafferty, 2006) based on three million comments collected from the Facebook pages of an anti-immigration movement (Pegida) and four major German-language news organizations (FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Welt) between January 2015 and June 2016. We argue that purposeful aggregation, particularly by day or week, can result in a bird's eye view of issues over time and by user group.

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