Reuters/Robert Galbraith
People often comment that Brexit and the US presidential election have proved so divisive that it feels as if smart and civil political debate has taken a hit. Now a study looking at the quality of discourse in online political discussion groups over the last 10 years shows that conversations have indeed become both less sophisticated and more offensive than ever.
In the US, critics have drawn attention to what they call the “Trump effect”: a shift in norms since Donald Trump became a serious presidential candidate. But these accounts are mostly anecdotal. Rishab Nithyanand at Data & Society, a research institute in New York, and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts wanted to see if they could find evidence that discourse had worsened.
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They looked at Reddit, a social network built around discussion groups with specific topics, known as subreddits. More