Understanding Users Across Parler and Twitter

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Understanding Users Across Parler and Twitter

Primary Research Question Understanding What were the social-media behavior Users Across and content patterns of users across Parler and Twitter that engaged in Parler and conversations leading up to the January 6th insurrection? Twitter Digital Disinformation Extending to the Physical World The social platform Parler was heavily utilized to communicate prior to the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 after being endorsed by President Trump and other conservative influencers. The platform provides a unique, primarily uncensored look at rhetoric around the 2020 election, including narratives culminated in many people taking part in the riots of January 6th. Contrasting Parler and Twitter use provides an educational look at the competing, highly- politicized use cases of two social media platforms that have increasingly become part of identity-based, politically conservative rhetoric. Methodology Tracked 44 users from Parler to Twitter based on: Profile bios Profile pictures Post content URLs included in bios and posts Location data Dates active After identifying users and preparing corpus of data, participants' posts and profiles on both Parler and Twitter were qualitatively coded, explored, and analyzed. Particular attention was given to posting around the 2020 election, BLM protests from the summer of 2020, and the weeks around January 6th. Analysis on Parler primarily ended January 11th, the date Parler was taken offline, but anyone active on Twitter was analyzed until the end of Janurary. Findings Users believed heavily in election fraud claims on the surface, but these beliefs were preceded and supported by an intense distrust of established systems. The main targets of extreme distrust were: a.The media, primarily "mainstream media" loosely defined, but increasingly Fox (with the exception of influencers like Tucker Carlson) and other conservative sources that didn't fall in line b."Big tech", primarily represented by Twitter and Facebook c.Government writ large, usually spoken about as democratic politicians but in truth represented by any governmental system that did not support their current beliefs - including any Republicans that broke from Trump. Q influence: the overlap between Qanon rhetoric and more mainstream conservative rhetoric is substantial, making it difficult to tell who is a Q supported and who is not. Even amongst those who claim Q is not to be believed, their views adopted QAnon rhetoric and in some cases they became Q supporters..

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Proceedings of the Fifteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2021) A Large Open Dataset from the Parler Social Network Max Aliapoulios1, Emmi Bevensee2, Jeremy Blackburn3, Barry Bradlyn4, Emiliano De Cristofaro5, Gianluca Stringhini6, Savvas Zannettou7 1New York University, 2SMAT, 3Binghamton University, 4University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 5University College London, 6Boston University, 7Max Planck Institute for Informatics [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract feasible in technical terms to create a new social media plat- Parler is as an “alternative” social network promoting itself form, but marketing the platform towards speciﬁc polarized as a service that allows to “speak freely and express yourself communities is an extremely successful strategy to bootstrap openly, without fear of being deplatformed for your views.” a user base. In other words, there is a subset of users on Twit- Because of this promise, the platform become popular among ter, Facebook, Reddit, etc., that will happily migrate to a new users who were suspended on mainstream social networks platform, especially if it advertises moderation policies that for violating their terms of service, as well as those fearing do not restrict the growth and spread of political polariza- censorship. In particular, the service was endorsed by several tion, conspiracy theories, extremist ideology, hateful and vi- conservative public ﬁgures, encouraging people to migrate olent speech, and mis- and dis-information. from traditional social networks. After the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Parler has been progressively de- Parler.
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Riots: a Comparative Study of Twitter and Parler
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The Far Right and January 6, 2021: How Cyber and Real Life Spaces Became One and the Imagery That Facilitated the Process
California State University, San Bernardino CSUSB ScholarWorks Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations Office of aduateGr Studies 8-2021 THE FAR RIGHT AND JANUARY 6, 2021: HOW CYBER AND REAL LIFE SPACES BECAME ONE AND THE IMAGERY THAT FACILITATED THE PROCESS Dori LaMar Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation LaMar, Dori, "THE FAR RIGHT AND JANUARY 6, 2021: HOW CYBER AND REAL LIFE SPACES BECAME ONE AND THE IMAGERY THAT FACILITATED THE PROCESS" (2021). Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations. 1310. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/1310 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Office of aduateGr Studies at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE FAR RIGHT AND JANUARY 6, 2021: HOW CYBER AND REAL LIFE SPACES BECAME ONE AND THE IMAGERY THAT FACILITATED THE PROCESS A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Social Sciences and Globalization by Dori LaMar August 2021 THE FAR RIGHT AND JANUARY 6, 2021: HOW CYBER AND REAL LIFE SPACES BECAME ONE AND THE IMAGERY THAT FACILITATED THE PROCESS A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino by Dori LaMar August 2021 Approved by: Kevin Grisham, Committee Chair, Social Science and Globalization © 2021 Dori LaMar ABSTRACT The growing presence of the far right in both internet and physical spaces is of concern because of the associated violence and civil unrest.
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