Analyzing Ideological Discourse on Social Media: A Case Study of the Abortion Debate

Social media provides a unique platform enabling public discourse around cross-cutting ideologies. In this paper, we provide a methodological lens for studying the discourses around the controversial topic of abortion on social media. Drawing from the theoretical framework of “Critical Discourse Analysis”, we study discourse around abortion on Twitter through analysis of language and the manifested socio-cultural practices. First, employing a large dataset of over 700 thousand posts, we find that abortion discourse can be classified into three ideologies: For, Against, and Neutral to Abortion. We observe these ideological categories to be characterized by distinctive textual and psycholinguistic cues. Finally, we analyze the nature of discourse across ideologies against the backdrop of socio-cultural practices associated with abortion. Our findings reveal how the hegemonic nature of the rhetoric that has historically shaped the abortion debate in society is reconceptualized on Twitter. We discuss the role of social media as a public sphere that shapes critical discourse around controversial topics.