Outgroup Animosity Has Risen for Politicians, Journalists, and a Sample of Partisan Users on Twitter and Reddit

TL;DR

This study analyzes 97 million social media comments to show that outgroup animosity has increased over time among users, with systematic differences across political orientations and platforms, highlighting the rise of polarization and influential communities.

Contribution

It provides a large-scale, longitudinal analysis of outgroup animosity dynamics across Twitter and Reddit, revealing systematic political and platform-specific differences in polarization.

Findings

Outgroup animosity has increased over time among social media users.

A small fraction of users generate a disproportionate share of negative content.

Right-leaning users show more animosity on immigration; left-leaning on healthcare.

Abstract

Using language models, we analyze a sample of 67 million tweets and 30 million Reddit comments referencing a set of 215 political entities from 2010-2023 from partisan users, journalists, and politicians. Our analysis indicates outgroup animosity has increased consistently in our sample, with newer cohorts of users expressing higher levels of animosity than previous ones. Moreover, a small fraction of users are responsible for a disproportionate share of this negative content. We observe systematic differences in topic-level outgroup affect across political orientations: right-leaning users are twice as likely to exhibit outgroup animosity when discussing immigration, while left-leaning users show heightened outgroup animosity when discussing healthcare. On Twitter, U.S. politicians on the left exhibit more outgroup animosity than partisan users in our sample, but in the past four years, politicians on the right have experienced the sharpest rise in outgroup animosity, surpassing journalists, media, and partisan users. On Reddit, a small number of communities account for a large share of polarizing rhetoric, with the rise and eventual ban of r/TheDonald significantly shaping polarizing discourse on the right.