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Increasingly, political tensions are seeping into everyday topics. This imposition of politics can change the flow of and dynamics within conversation. In this mixed-methods study, we address the act of politicizing science on YouTube. Using comment data from educational science videos, we identify the moment of explicit politicization and how this changes the subsequent conversation. Results show that politicization becomes more likely as the thread goes on and once a thread has been politicized, it remains that way. Furthermore, after politicization the toxicity of the subsequent comments increases, “tipping” the conversation about science toward personal accusations and attacks about political identity and partisanship. Qualitative insights reveal common “pathways” to politicization, which can be used to design mitigation strategies. 

Abstract This article introduces the concept of “topic territoriality,” a mechanism that governs participation in conversational spaces. When a discussion becomes prone to territorialization, individuals are more likely to claim topics (participating in discussions about topics they own as “stakeholders”) and defer (reducing participation in topics owned by others). They are also more likely to patrol topic boundaries (monitoring who is participating and confronting topic “intruders”). We document the operation of topic territoriality by analyzing 112,278 conversational turns on Weibo before and after a policy that reveals users’ broad geographic locations. We find that revealing these locations increased territorial behaviors, leading to more homogenous participation in conversations. Although the display of locations has improved the overall civility in language, the confrontations between stakeholders and intruders became more toxic. Our research emphasizes the impact of topic territoriality in online conversations and sheds light on the unintended consequences of social media policies. 

Abstract Problematic content on social media can be countered through objections raised by other community members. While intended to deter offenses, objections can influence the surrounding audience observing the interaction, leading to their collective approval or disapproval. The results of an experiment manipulating seven types of objections against common types of offenses indicate audiences’ support for objections that implore via appeals and disapproval of objections that threaten the offender, as they view the former as more moral, appropriate, and effective compared to the latter. Furthermore, audiences tend to prefer more benign and less threatening objections regardless of the offense severity (following the principle of “taking the high road”) instead of objections proportionate to the offense (“an eye for an eye”). Taken together, these results show how objections to offensive behaviors may impact collective perceptions on social media, paving the way for interventions to foster effective objection strategies in social media discussions. 

In studies of misinformation, the distinction between high- and low-credibility publishers is fundamental. However, there is much that we do not know about the relationship between the subject matter and timing of content produced by the two types of publishers. By analyzing the content of several million unique articles published over 28 months, we show that high- and low-credibility publishers operate in distinct news ecosystems. Bursts of news coverage generated by the two types of publishers tend to cover different subject matter at different times, even though fluctuations in their overall news production tend to be highly correlated. Regardless of the mechanism, temporally convergent coverage among low-credibility publishers has troubling implications for American news consumers. 

This study examines the organizational dynamics of social media crowds, in particular, the influence of a crowd’s emotional expression on its solidarity. To identify the relationship between emotions expressed and solidarity, marked by sustained participation in the crowd, the study uses tweets from a unique population of crowds—those tweeting about ongoing National Football League games. Observing this population permits the use of game results as quasi-random treatments on crowds, helping to reduce confounding factors. Results indicate that participation in these crowds is self-sustaining in the medium term (1 week) and can be stimulated or suppressed by emotional expression in a short term (1 hour), depending on the discrete emotion expressed. In particular, anger encourages participation while sadness discourages it. Positive emotions and anxiety have a more nuanced relationship with participation.