Relationship between ideology and language in the Catalan independence context

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Computational Social Science
• Political Science

Background:

• Political polarization profoundly affects societal dynamics, fueling contentious debates and influencing institutional behavior.
• Territorial disputes are a significant area of polarization, often intertwined with language use and identity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze opinion and language distributions within the Catalan independence territorial dispute using Twitter data.
• To model continuous opinion distribution and identify user influence on polarization.

Main Methods:

• Applied a model based on retweet interactions to infer continuous opinion distribution.
• Detected elite users with fixed and antagonistic opinions to understand polarization dynamics.
• Analyzed language use (Spanish and Catalan) in relation to political stances on Twitter.

Main Results:

• The opinion distribution exhibited a predominantly bimodal behavior with a notable intermediate third pole.
• More active, engaged, and influential users were found to hold more extreme political positions.
• A clear relationship was established between political stances and language use: anti-independence users primarily used Spanish, while pro-independence users used both Catalan and Spanish.

Conclusions:

• The Catalan independence debate on Twitter shows a polarized landscape with a less extreme intermediate group.
• User activity and influence correlate with extremity of opinion, highlighting the role of key actors in polarization.
• Language use serves as a marker of political alignment, though the intermediate group's linguistic behavior mirrors the anti-independence faction.