Citation

Mejova Y, An J, Morales GDF, Kwak H. ACM Trans. Soc. Comput. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Association for Computing Machinery)

DOI

10.1145/3532102

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The United States have some of the highest rates of gun violence among developed countries. Yet, there is a disagreement about the extent to which firearms should be regulated. In this study, we employ social media signals to examine the predictors of offline political activism, at both population and individual level. We show that it is possible to classify the stance of users on the gun issue, especially accurately when network information is available. Alongside socioeconomic variables, network information such as the relative size of the two sides of the debate is also predictive of state-level gun policy. On individual level, we build a statistical model using network, content, and psycho-linguistic features that predicts real-life political action, and explore the most predictive linguistic features. Thus, we argue that, alongside demographics and socioeconomic indicators, social media provides useful signals in the holistic modeling of political engagement around the gun debate.

Language: en

Keywords

gun debate; opinion polarization; political activism; social media