Unmasking Trolls: Political Discussion on Twitter During the Parliamentary Election in Catalonia
Abstract
In recent years, Twitter has become a popular online platform where citizens can discuss politics. However, these conversations may take an uncivil turn, and the consequences could be damaging to democracy. One such uncivil behavior on Twitter is trolling, a disruptive online activity geared toward luring others into pointless and time-consuming discussion. Disruptive messages can have severe consequences for the deliberative system in democratic societies and could frustrate the development of a public sphere. This study explores Twitter trolls during the contentious 2012 Parliamentary election in Catalonia, an autonomous region in Spain. Using Gnip’s firehose, all tweets containing the word “independence” or the hashtag “#25N” from the four weeks preceding the election were captured for analysis, which generated a corpus of 325,888 tweets. Results based on automated and manual content analysis show that the prevalence of successful trolls was at 0.01%, thus indicating that they were scant despite the controversy surrounding the issue of independence. The study also contributes to the identification of successful Twitter trolls and discusses the democratic implications of trolling on Twitter. En els últims anys, Twitter s’ha convertit en una plataforma popular en la qual els ciutadans poden parlar de política. No obstant això, les converses a Twitter poden tornar-se incivils, amb conseqüències que podrien ser perjudicials per a la democràcia. Una d’aquestes conductes incivils a Twitter es l’anomenat troling, una activitat disruptiva dirigida a atraure altres en una discussió llarga i sense sentit en el marc d’internet. Aquests missatges pertorbadors poden tenir greus conseqüències per al sistema deliberatiu en les societats democràtiques i podrien frustrar el desenvolupament d’una esfera pública. Aquest estudi explora els trols de Twitter durant les polèmiques eleccions al Parlament de Catalunya el 2012. A través de Gnip, totes les piulades que contenen la paraula “independència” o el hashtag “# 25N” durant les quatre setmanes anteriors a les eleccions van ser capturades per a l’anàlisi, la qual cosa va generar un cos de 325.888 piulades. Els resultats basats en anàlisi de contingut automàtic i manual mostren que la presència de trols exitosos va ser del 0,01%, cosa que indica que els trols van ésser escassos tot i la controvèrsia de la qüestió independentista. L’estudi també contribueix a la identificació de trols exitosos a Twitter i discuteix les implicacions democràtiques del troling a Twitter.Downloads
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