Toxicity Begets Toxicity: Unraveling Conversational Chains in Political Podcasts
This addresses the problem of toxic behavior in digital communication for researchers and industry professionals, but it is incremental as it extends existing research to an understudied domain.
The study tackled toxicity in political podcasts by analyzing conversational chains, finding that harmful language escalates organically across reply sequences, though no concrete numbers were provided.
Tackling toxic behavior in digital communication continues to be a pressing concern for both academics and industry professionals. While significant research has explored toxicity on platforms like social networks and discussion boards, podcasts despite their rapid rise in popularity remain relatively understudied in this context. This work seeks to fill that gap by curating a dataset of political podcast transcripts and analyzing them with a focus on conversational structure. Specifically, we investigate how toxicity surfaces and intensifies through sequences of replies within these dialogues, shedding light on the organic patterns by which harmful language can escalate across conversational turns. Warning: Contains potentially abusive/toxic contents.