Presentation at the Social Media and Society Conference, 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark #SMSociety

1. A Year of Discursive Struggle
over Freedom of Speech on Twitter:
What Can a Mixed-Methods Approach Tell Us?
Ehsan Dehghan
Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC)
Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
e.dehghan@qut.edu.au
@EssiDeh

2. Research Project
• Social media and democracy
• The dynamics of discursive struggle
• Intra-, inter-, and extra- community dynamics

3. Theoretical Framework
• Agonistic Pluralism(Mouffe, 2000)
• The Discourse Theory (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001)
• Antagonism and discursive struggle
• Aim: from antagonism to agonism

4. Inter-Community Dynamics
• Does information flow between (antagonistic) communities?
• Do the adversaries interact?
• Are there filter bubbles and/or echo chambers?

5. Working Definitions Bruns (2017)
• Echo Chamber:
• Where participants choose to preferentially connect with each
other, to the exclusion of outsiders
• Filter Bubble:
• Where participants, independent of the underlying network
structures of their connections with others, choose to
preferentially communicate with each other, to the exclusion of
outsiders

6. Other Possible Definitions
• Filter bubble:
• Conditions created as a result of the algorithmic settings and
design choices of platforms, where participants are exposed to
only information they are likely to agree with, to the exclusion of
diverse ideas and information
• Echo chamber:
• Conditions created as a result of the tendencies of participants to
only reinforce their group ideologies and ignore diverse ideas and
information

7. Methodology Social Media Analytics
Network Analysis
Corpus Analysis
(Critical) Discourse
Analysis
• TrISMA: Tracking Infrastructure
for Social Media Analysis (Bruns et
al., 2016)
• Data Collection:
• Topical keywords  Identify
Cases Snowball  More
keywords

8. Data Collection
• free speech
• freedom of speech
• freespeech
• freedomofspeech
• Keyword analysis
(log-likelihood)

9. Case Study
• Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act:
It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:
a) the act is reasonably likely, in all circumstances, to offend, insult,
humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and
b) the act is done because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin
of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.

10. Network Analysis
• Twitter Affordances
• Retweet Network
• @Mention Network
• Account–Hashtag Network
• The Big Picture
• Short-term ad-hoc publics, long-term discourse communities

11. Retweets
Hard-right
Progressive
General
Politics &
News
Indigenous-rights
Activists

12. @Mentions
Hard-right
Progressive
Indigenous-rights

13. Account–Hashtags
Anti-18C Hashtags

14. The Australian Twittersphere
Bruns et al. (2017)

16. Retweet Network

17. @Mentions Network

18. Filter Bubbles? Echo Chambers?
𝐾𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑘ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑡 𝐸– 𝐼 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑥 =
# 𝐸𝑥𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑠 − # 𝐼𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑠
# 𝐸𝑥𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑠 + # 𝐼𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑠
From –1.0 = completely internal to +1.0 = completely external
All Network Inter-community
Hard Right Progressive Hard Right Progressive
Retweets 0.375 0.395 – 0.470 – 0.865
@Mentions 0.493 0.472 – 0.214 – 0.608

19. Keyword Analysis
Hard Right Progressive
Petition Turnbull
Bill Leak LNP
QUT students IPA
Gillian Triggs Changes
Islam, Quran Right, RW, bigots, RWNJs
Must Andrew Bolt
Remove, sack, scrap Murdoch
Labor Hate
Left, Lefty, SJWs White

20. Conclusions
• Filter Bubbles/Echo chambers? No and Yes!
• Communities draw on, reproduce, and intensify their discourses and
ideologies, even when interacting with the adversary
• Interaction mostly reactive, confrontational, and non-productive
• Except when used for vertical antagonism (common enemy)
• Twitter affordances act as temporary bridges between the otherwise
disconnected antagonistic communities

21. Thank You!
Ehsan Dehghan
Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC)
Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
https://research.qut.edu.au/dmrc
e.dehghan@qut.edu.au
@EssiDeh