CULTURE OF POLARIZATION: AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL PARTICIPATION POST #DEMONETISATION ON TWITTER

This research presents an overview of the impact of the notification of demonetization on patterns of social participation and group polarization on twitter. It attempts to draw together in a single volume a wide range of factors that contribute to the immediate responses and reactions of people on twitter on a calamitous event. The study engages in understanding the group dynamics and the nature of different forms of communication in attitude formation. The prime focus of this research work is to throw light on the intervening variables that impact upon group polarization and uniformity in opinion forming within groups rather than looking for a unidimensional relationship between social engagement and the culture of polarization. Homophily among people remains an important tool in understanding group polarisation, attitude and interaction forms, as there is a tendency among people both offline and online to align with isomorphic groups which reinforce their existing attitudes. This scholarly work provides a detailed account of the patterns of social engagement, opinion and attitude formation on the basis of reply-pair tweets, frequency of tweets around different clusters of time and captured tweets. The study highlighted that the range of people on the spectrum of diversity gained to a large extent. Findings in this study thus provide a useful insight into the role of Twitter being a more breaking news medium than a social networking site. One of the major indications in this study to acknowledge that under specific conditions of filtering, algorithm-gate keeping~ by the socio-technical giants, group polarization may or may not produce the given impact within the framework of online social participation and engagement.