Online Political Discourse in the Trump Era

Rishab Nithyanand; Brian Schaffner; Phillipa Gill

doi:10.48550/arXiv.1711.05303

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Online Political Discourse in the Trump Era

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Online Political Discourse in the Trump Era

Rishab Nithyanand, Brian Schaffner and Phillipa Gill

ArXiv.org

11/14/2017

DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1711.05303

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Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

We identify general trends in the (in)civility and complexity of political discussions occurring on Reddit between January 2007 and May 2017 -- a period spanning both terms of Barack Obama's presidency and the first 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency. We then investigate four factors that are frequently hypothesized as having contributed to the declining quality of American political discourse -- (1) the rising popularity of Donald Trump, (2) increasing polarization and negative partisanship, (3) the democratization of news media and the rise of fake news, and (4) merging of fringe groups into mainstream political discussions.

Computer Science - Computers and Society

Details

Title: Subtitle: Online Political Discourse in the Trump Era
Creators: Rishab Nithyanand
Brian Schaffner
Phillipa Gill
Resource Type: Preprint
Publication Details: ArXiv.org
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1711.05303
ISSN: 2331-8422
Language: English
Date posted: 11/14/2017
Academic Unit: Center for Social Science Innovation; Computer Science; Public Policy Center (Archive)
Record Identifier: 9984285556102771

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