Us Vs. Them – Understanding the Impact of Homophily in Political Discussions on Twitter

Abstract

Analysing homophily, i.e. people’s tendency to associate with others with similar social attributes, can help us unravel and better understand user behaviour in social media. In our work, we analyse the impact of homophily in discussions regarding the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on Twitter. The Indian Government enacted CAA to provide relaxation in the citizenship process to religious minorities in three neighbouring countries. While it was lauded by many, it also fuelled backlash amongst some Indian citizens, resulting in the emergence of two distinctive political dispositions regarding this matter. We collected 78,004 Tweets, including 11,794 original Tweets during a period of two week..