Analyzing Political Rhetoric in Conservative and Liberal Weblogs Related to the Construction of the “Ground Zero Mosque”

We use different text-processing algorithms to gain insight into the political rhetoric used in conservative and liberal weblogs. We specifically focus on the online debate regarding the issue of the “Ground Zero Mosque,” which has been one of the most controversial political issues in U.S. politics in the last several years. Overall, our results show that there are significant differences in the use of various linguistic features related to sentiments of collective identity, moral concerns, and emotional dynamics between liberals and conservatives, thus highlighting the differences between the ideological and moral frameworks of these two groups.