The Social Media Audience of Diplomatic Crisis

Social media communication makes visible the linkages between governments’ actions to diplomatic events and domestic audiences’ reactions. This study analyzes tweets that discuss the recent diplomatic crisis between Japan and Korea. Through the detection of clusters of Twitter users and the content analysis of the tweets in the two countries, this study shows how the public’s interpretation of a crisis widely differs by their stances toward their country’s government. The analysis finds that the clusters are aligned with their pro- and anti-stances toward the current government and that pro-government clusters tend to interpret the diplomatic crisis through a historical perspective, while anti-government clusters interpret it as a matter of present-day politics. Furthermore, we find strong negativity in the tweets discussing the opponent online groups, especially by the anti-government cluster against the pro-government online camp. These findings suggest that a diplomatic crisis can create or deepen domestic polarization.