Sun Young Park, "The Sequential Rise of Political Animosity in Economically Declining and Prospering Places: Evidence from 3 Billion Geo-located Tweets"
Political animosity has become a central feature of contemporary democratic politics. Existing narratives often interpret this as either a ‘bottom-up socioeconomic phenomenon’ focusing on voters’ economic discontent, or a more ‘top-down political phenomenon’ driven by partisan political conflict or populist rhetoric. I adjudicate between these views by proposing a place-based sequential theory: Economic discontent fueled political animosity in relatively declining places before the rise of populists, while the consequent rise of populists provoked political animosity particularly in prospering places. To test this theory, I apply deep learning models to 3 billion geo-located tweets, offering a novel measure of political animosity that is geographically fine-grained and spanning a decade (2013-2022) in the U.S., France, and Korea. In all three countries, declining places displayed higher animosity prior to salient populist campaigns. These places include not only areas with industrial decline, but also areas with high concentrations of ethnic minorities or long-distance commuters. In contrast, it was prosperous places that experienced the sharpest increases in animosity with the rise of populists, ultimately closing the gap with declining areas.
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LOCATION:CGIS Knafel room K354 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20250909T160000Z DTEND:20250909T180000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR