Abstract Book of the 9th International Academic Conference on Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2025
[PDF]
Youth Emancipation Policy and Elites’ Affective Polarization in Spain: A Case Study With X/Twitter Data
Athénaïs Sauvée, Santiago Porras Alfonso
ABSTRACT:
Affective polarization is a phenomenon that can be defined as an intensive sentiment of aversion and rejection between different political parties’ partisans. This has become a significant problem in advanced democracies. Considering that political elites are a pilar on the way these dynamics work, it is fundamental to understand how their discourses and strategies may affect citizens’ opinions about their fellows. In recent years, politicians’ communication has evolved towards a model in which the ability to give immediate answers or reactions to citizens are necessary political competences. Social networks allow elites to communicate permanently with their followers, but also with their peers. The debate area moved to a virtual arena constituted by networks such as X or Bluesky. As we already collected data from X about a rental subsidy implemented in Spain in 2022, and we identified the profiles of the people tweeting about it, this study aims to answer the following question: To what extent could we monitor the Spanish elite’s polarization through the analysis of what they tweet about a particular public policy? Through the example of Bono Alquiler Joven.
Keywords: algorithm, natural language processing, public policy, social network, transition to adulthood