Unveiling Affective Polarization Trends in Parliamentary Proceedings
This addresses the problem of understanding political polarization trends for researchers and policymakers, though it is incremental as it applies an existing emotional analysis framework to a new domain.
The authors tackled the problem of quantifying polarization in political discourse by proposing a novel method based on emotional style rather than ideology, using Valence, Arousal, and Dominance measures, and found that affective polarization is significantly increasing over time in the Israeli parliament.
Recent years have seen an increase in polarized discourse worldwide, on various platforms. We propose a novel method for quantifying polarization, based on the emotional style of the discourse rather than on differences in ideological stands. Using measures of Valence, Arousal and Dominance, we detect signals of emotional discourse and use them to operationalize the concept of affective polarization. Applying this method to a recently released corpus of proceedings of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament (in Hebrew), we find that the emotional style of members of government differs from that of opposition members; and that the level of affective polarization, as reflected by this style, is significantly increasing with time.