RT journal article
T1 Discovery and characterisation of socially polarised communities on social media
A1 Álvarez Gálvez, Javier
A1 Cruz, Fermin L.
A1 Troyano, Jose A.
A2 BiomedicinaBiotecnología y Salud Pública
K1 Abortion, Induced
K1 Climate Change
K1 Female
K1 Group Processes
K1 Humans
K1 Population Dynamics
K1 Pregnancy
K1 Social Media
AB Social polarisation processes have become a central phenomenon for the explanation of population behavioural dynamics in today's societies. Although recent works offer solutions for the detection of polarised political communities in social media, there is still a lack of works that allow an adequate characterization of the specific topics on which these divides between social groups are articulated. Our study aims to discover and characterise antagonistic communities on Twitter based on a method that combines the identification of authorities and textual classifiers around three public debates that have recently produced major controversies: (1) vaccination; (2) climate change; and (3) abortion. The proposed method allows the capture of polarised communities with little effort, requiring only the selection of some terms that characterise the topic and some initial authorities. Our findings show that the processes of social polarisation can vary considerably depending on the subject on which the debates are articulated. Specifically, polarisation manifests more prominently in the realms of vaccination and abortion, whereas this divide is less apparent in the context of climate change.
PB Scientifc Reports
SN 2045-2322
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/31576
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/31576
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 11-nov-2026