Soros, Sentiment, and Polarisation: Illuminating Confirmation Bias in Conspiracy Theory Belief
(2019) STVK02 20191Department of Political Science
- Abstract
- Recently, conspiracy theories have gotten more attention for their potential role in the political arena. Although some claim that conspiracy theories serve important functions, they have been found to be connected to lower intents of political participation. With the rise of the internet they have also been connected to polarisation of attitudes. This paper makes use of the finding that conspiracy theorists tend to polarise in their attitudes and looks at whether or not this is reflected in the sentiment of their online communication. To do this, tools for quantitative sentiment analysis are employed and discrete time-series regression models are estimated using communication about conspiracy theories connected to George Soros on Twitter.... (More)
- Recently, conspiracy theories have gotten more attention for their potential role in the political arena. Although some claim that conspiracy theories serve important functions, they have been found to be connected to lower intents of political participation. With the rise of the internet they have also been connected to polarisation of attitudes. This paper makes use of the finding that conspiracy theorists tend to polarise in their attitudes and looks at whether or not this is reflected in the sentiment of their online communication. To do this, tools for quantitative sentiment analysis are employed and discrete time-series regression models are estimated using communication about conspiracy theories connected to George Soros on Twitter. The paper also tries to distinguish which of the explanations for attitude polarisation proposed in contemporary literature are at play in this specific context. The results indicate that there is a strong tendency of sentiment polarisation among conspiracy theorists as they interact with conspiracy theories. Contemporary literature suggests that the explanation for such a relationship could be either confirmation bias in evaluating information or social dynamics making individuals conform towards the extremes. This paper finds only limited indications for the social dynamics proposed. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8975979
- author
- Straihamer Klingborg, Leon LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- STVK02 20191
- year
- 2019
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- conspiracy theories, attitude polarisation, sentiment analysis, George Soros, biased assimilation, Twitter API
- language
- English
- id
- 8975979
- date added to LUP
- 2019-09-06 09:57:40
- date last changed
- 2019-09-06 09:57:40
@misc{8975979,
abstract = {{Recently, conspiracy theories have gotten more attention for their potential role in the political arena. Although some claim that conspiracy theories serve important functions, they have been found to be connected to lower intents of political participation. With the rise of the internet they have also been connected to polarisation of attitudes. This paper makes use of the finding that conspiracy theorists tend to polarise in their attitudes and looks at whether or not this is reflected in the sentiment of their online communication. To do this, tools for quantitative sentiment analysis are employed and discrete time-series regression models are estimated using communication about conspiracy theories connected to George Soros on Twitter. The paper also tries to distinguish which of the explanations for attitude polarisation proposed in contemporary literature are at play in this specific context. The results indicate that there is a strong tendency of sentiment polarisation among conspiracy theorists as they interact with conspiracy theories. Contemporary literature suggests that the explanation for such a relationship could be either confirmation bias in evaluating information or social dynamics making individuals conform towards the extremes. This paper finds only limited indications for the social dynamics proposed.}},
author = {{Straihamer Klingborg, Leon}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Soros, Sentiment, and Polarisation: Illuminating Confirmation Bias in Conspiracy Theory Belief}},
year = {{2019}},
}