Analyzing Political Polarization by Topic

The United States political climate is widely considered polarized and increasingly so since the 2016 presidential election where Donald Trump was elected for a 4-year term. Many consider social media to be a driving factor of this polarization, accelerating the process through platforming hate speech, misinformation, and other negative practices. While some of this may be true, social media can serve as a legitimate means of information transmission and provides data that can be used to analyze the opinions and sentiment of the general public. This study aims to use the data of Twitter, perhaps the most prominent media for news, to examine the perceived polarity of certain political topics using recent Tweets about each topic.