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...A study by a joint research team from City St George's, University of London; the University of Venice; Central European University; Technical University of Munich; Sapienza University of Rome; and Alan Turing Institute suggests that despite their political views (left or right), X users engage equally in abusing their political opponents.
Individuals who stray from their party's norms are swiftly treated as political enemies on X. Based on the data from nine countries -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the USA -- the confrontation in the tweets followed a common ally-enemy structure.
Researchers analyzed data from 375 million tweets collected over a 24-hour period in September 2022. They mapped these users' posts to a separate sample of more than 1,800 politicians with active X accounts.
By tracking which users retweeted which politicians, researchers were able to estimate users' political leanings and categorize them as either left or right.
They also assessed the toxicity of political posts to measure political abuse on X. The study found that posts mentioning political opponents were consistently more toxic than those mentioning political allies. Political interactions were more toxic than non-political ones across all countries included in the data.
"Many of these trends may have worsened: Since Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and the restrictions on data introduced, we no longer have access to the high-quality data required to study these issues," said lead author of the study Dr. Max Falkenberg, currently at the Department of Network & Data Science, Central European University. ...
