Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-23-2018 9:00 AM Social Networks, Political Discourse and Polarization during the 2017 Catalan elections Rafael Monroig The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Suárez, Juan L. The University of Western Ontario Quan-Haase, Anabel The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Hispanic Studies A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Rafael Monroig 2018 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Digital Humanities Commons, Political Science Commons, and the Spanish Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Monroig, Rafael, "Social Networks, Political Discourse and Polarization during the 2017 Catalan elections" (2018). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5556. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5556 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This thesis investigates the political process in Spain and Catalonia during the Catalan election in December 2017. This regional election was unusual because of the independence process in Catalonia and its repression. Two parties, Ciudadanos (anti- independence) and Podemos (ambiguous position) and their leaders’ activity in Twitter was analyzed. It was explored from three perspectives: social networks, lexical and emotional discourse and ideological polarization. Firstly, social networks were used to see the properties of the support communities of both parties. Interestingly unlike Ps, Ciudadanos’ (Cs) metrics of cohesion showed that political communities of this party in Spain and Catalonia were remarkably well integrated. Secondly, using machine learning techniques, discourse cohesiveness of Ps and Cs’ politicians was analyzed regarding the lexical and emotional content of their messages. The results showed that even though Cs’ politicians were more lexically similar, Ps’ were more similar in terms of emotions. Specifically, the study of emotions in the discourse shed light on populist messages from Cs. This party used anger and disgust to take advantage the polarized political scenario. Lastly, with a sample of users (N=2000) in Twitter, the relationship between dispositional emotions and ideological polarization was investigated. Results showed that users predisposed to anger were significantly more polarized and those predisposed to fear were significantly less polarized. Interestingly, even though predisposition to fear decreased polarization, the interaction between fear and anger significantly increased it. These results have interesting implications regarding the increasing opportunities of politicians to target the electorate based on personality or other personal characteristics. Keywords: Catalonian independence, Twitter, social networks, emotions, political polarization, ideology, framing i Ackowledgments I am thankful for many people that offered their support and help. First, I would like to express my infinite gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Juan Luis Suárez. He was always available to discuss possible ways to strengthen the thesis, gave feedback and help me when I seemed to be stuck. I would also like to thank my other supervisor Dr. Anabel Quan-Haase for her support, enthusiasm and many comments that helped me to be more creative and to improve my work substantially. I would like to especially thank my family for the countless readings, hours of encouragement and immeasurable support. There are no words that would be a fair representation of what I owe to my mother, Julia for her patience and care, my brother, Javi for his intelligence and wit that helped me in the most doubtful moments and my father, Rafael for his passion and love. This thesis would not have been possible without them. Lastly, I would like to thank my peers, faculty and teachers at Western University for their kindness and for making the Master’s a much better experience. ii Table of Contents Abstract ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i Ackowledgments ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ii Table of Contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iii List of Tables ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- vi List of Figures -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- vii Table of appendices ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ix Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Chapter 1. Theoretical framework: Spanish politics, social networks and emotions ------------------------- 3 Spanish Politics --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 Catalan Elections --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 Ciudadanos ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8 Podemos ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12 Twitter as a Research Tool ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15 Language ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15 Social Networks --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Twitter in Politics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18 The Language of Politics in Twitter --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Political Networks in Twitter ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Spanish politics in Twitter --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Emotions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Dispositional emotions and Polarization -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Temporal emotions and Framing ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Twitter studies on Discrete Emotions: Beyond Valence ------------------------------------------------------- 29 Research questions --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 iii Chapter 2. Social Network analysis in Twitter during the 2017 Catalan elections ---------------------------- 32 Hypotheses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Data ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Methodology ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Results ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 General Analysis --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Network analysis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Discussion --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54 Chapter 3. Lexical and emotional analysis in Twitter ----------------------------------------------------------------- 56 Hypotheses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57 Lexical Analysis ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57 Emotional Analysis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 58 Data ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 60 Methodology ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61 Lexical analysis ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61 Emotion analysis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 62 Results ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 64 Lexical analysis ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 64 Emotion analysis --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------