A study conducted with data from nine countries, including Spain, reveals that "political abuse" on the social network X is a global and widespread phenomenon. The research, published in the journal Nature Communications and based on information from the year 2022, highlights that both left and right-wing users tend to abuse their political opponents to a similar extent, showing little room for moderate positions.
The analysis, carried out by researchers from City St George's University of London in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, examined data from X users (formerly known as Twitter), encompassing 375 million tweets collected on a day in September 2022. The results demonstrate that individuals who do not follow the established norms of their party are quickly labeled as political enemies.
The behavior pattern identified in the research suggests that in the nine studied countries - Germany, Canada, Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Turkey - a friend-enemy dynamic prevails in online political communication. The report highlights that aggression is systematically directed at political adversaries, with messages towards them being significantly more toxic than those directed at political allies.
Furthermore, it reveals that political interactions on X generally present higher toxicity than non-political interactions, a pattern observed both globally and in the Spanish context. By linking user posts with profiles of over 1,800 active politicians on the platform, researchers were able to estimate users' political orientation, whether left or right, by observing who retweeted which political figures.
In summary, the study emphasizes the prevalence of "political abuse" on X worldwide, evidencing extreme polarization in online political communication and a tendency to treat those who diverge from party norms as enemies. The collected data supports the idea of a society where empathy and dialogue are limited to political allies, while aggression is constantly directed towards opponents.
