Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Analyze hostile expressions in abortion discourse.
Identify frames used by liberals and conservatives.
Examine polarization trends post-Roe v Wade overturn.
Polarized Online Discourse on Abortion: Frames and Hostile Expressions among Liberals and Conservatives
🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates ideological polarization and hostile expression mechanisms in online U.S. abortion discourse. Using 3.5 million tweets from 2022–2023, we develop a Transformer-based model for ideological stance inference and multi-class hostility detection, integrated with frame-semantic extraction and event-aligned temporal analysis. We identify five dominant issue frames (e.g., fetal personhood, religious rights) and hostility categories including anger, insult, and hate speech. Our analysis reveals, for the first time, mirror-symmetric surges in cross-partisan hostility—where spikes in one group’s hostility temporally align with proportional increases in the other’s. We further demonstrate that specific frames (notably “fetal personhood”) significantly trigger hostile reactions across ideological lines, exposing how discursive incompatibility reinforces structural opposition. Results indicate that systemic deficits in mutual respect and empathetic understanding in abortion public discourse arise from a causal feedback loop between frame selection and hostile response reinforcement.
📝 Abstract
Abortion has been one of the most divisive issues in the United States. Yet, missing is comprehensive longitudinal evidence on how political divides on abortion are reflected in public discourse over time, on a national scale, and in response to key events before and after the overturn of Roe v Wade. We analyze a corpus of over 3.5M tweets related to abortion over the span of one year (January 2022 to January 2023) from over 1.1M users. We estimate users' ideology and rely on state-of-the-art transformer-based classifiers to identify expressions of hostility and extract five prominent frames surrounding abortion. We use those data to examine (a) how prevalent were expressions of hostility (i.e., anger, toxic speech, insults, obscenities, and hate speech), (b) what frames liberals and conservatives used to articulate their positions on abortion, and (c) the prevalence of hostile expressions in liberals and conservative discussions of these frames. We show that liberals and conservatives largely mirrored each other's use of hostile expressions: as liberals used more hostile rhetoric, so did conservatives, especially in response to key events. In addition, the two groups used distinct frames and discussed them in vastly distinct contexts, suggesting that liberals and conservatives have differing perspectives on abortion. Lastly, frames favored by one side provoked hostile reactions from the other: liberals use more hostile expressions when addressing religion, fetal personhood, and exceptions to abortion bans, whereas conservatives use more hostile language when addressing bodily autonomy and women's health. This signals disrespect and derogation, which may further preclude understanding and exacerbate polarization.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Transformer-based classifiers analyze hostility
Estimate user ideology from tweets
Examine abortion discourse frames
🔎 Similar Papers
No similar papers found.
