Violent Political Rhetoric on Twitter

• In Event: Measurement Using Online Data

Abstract

Recently, concerns are raised about the violent nature of political communication on social media: many social media platforms are exploited by users who write posts threatening violence against political opponents as part of normalized expression of radical partisanship. Focusing on Twitter, I develop a method for automatic detection of violent political rhetoric. I apply the method to collect a data set of Tweets containing violent political rhetoric, spanning the 14-week period surrounding the 2020 Presidential Election. Using the data set, I investigate the characteristics and the spread of violent political rhetoric on Twitter. The key findings include a) users who write violent Tweets are on the fringe of the Twitter network, b) those users are ideologically more extreme, c) spread of violent Tweets exhibit strong ideological homophily, and d) violent Tweets spread through multiple chains on following ties.

Author

• Tae Gyoon Kim, Penn State University