The linkages between intensity and topicality of online discussions, on one hand, and those of offline on-street political activity, on the other hand, have recently become a subject of studies around the world. But the results of quantitative assessment of causal relations between onsite and online activities of citizens are contradictory. In our research, we use conflicts with violent trig-gers and the subsequent lines of events that include street rallies, political manifestations, and/or peaceful mourning, as well as public political talk, to trace the pivotal points in the conflict via measuring Twitter content. We show that in some cases Granger test does not work well, like in the case of Cologne mass harassment, for detecting the causality between online and onsite activities. In order to suggest a way to qualitatively assess the linkages between online and offline activities of users, we deploy topic modeling and further qualitative assessment of the changes in the topicality to link the topic saliency to the time of offline events. We detect several periods with varying topicality and link them to what was going on in the offline conflict.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternet Science - INSCI 2018 International Workshops
Subtitle of host publicationConference proceedings
EditorsS. S. Bodrunova, et al.
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages61-71
ISBN (Print)9783030177041
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event5th International Conference on Internet Science, INSCI 2018: Internet in World Regions: Digital Freedoms and Citizen Empowerment - СПбГУ, Институт "Высшая школа журналистики и массовых коммуникаций", St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
Duration: 24 Oct 201826 Oct 2018
Conference number: 5th
http://insci2018.org/
http://insci2018.org

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume11551
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference5th International Conference on Internet Science, INSCI 2018
Abbreviated title INSCI 2018
Country/TerritoryRussian Federation
CitySt. Petersburg
Period24/10/1826/10/18
Internet address

    Research areas

  • Granger test, Social conflicts, Spillover, Topic modeling, Twitter

    Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

ID: 42547895