On the Margins of Socio-Political Extremes: An Analysis of Conservative Albertans’ Facebook Posts and Comments
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
This study investigates Albertans' expressions of social, political, and economic discontent to describe to what extent these expressions reflect right-wing populist outlooks and the characteristics of recent right-wing populist movements.This question was investigated using a critical theoretical orientation and an ethnographic content analysis methodology to analyze content collected from two popular, Alberta-based, socio-politically conservative public Facebook pages: Alberta Proud and Alberta Stronger.Analysis revealed the central elements of populism with social decline being attributed to corrupt elites and associated 'others' and social revival being attributed to 'the people'.Overarching themes of discontent are consistent with the characteristics of recent right-wing populist movements including distrust in institutions, elected officials and experts, and perceived economic threat.Ultimately, I theorize that expressions of right-wing populism observed here reflect the political imaginaries of a settler colonial population that remains committed to economic liberalism and liberal individualism despite outwardly rejecting 'liberalism'.Gruzd, 2022) compared to other popular social media sites (e.g.Instagram and X/Twitter) while offering relatively unrestricted modes of exchange.Facebook does not limit the amount of text that can be used within individual posts or comments (unlike X/Twitter), enabling the expression of complex ideas and opinions and encouraging responses to posts and exchanges among commenters 1 while also providing a mix of textual and image-based exchanges.The pages chosen for this project are politically conservative in tone but are not openly affiliated with a specific political party or politician. 2 Posts on both pages are consistent with a meme-driven format, pairing posts with relatively minimal text with attention grabbing images that help to signal and frame various social, political, and economic topics.Upon commencing this study in the fall of 2023, the 'Alberta Proud' FB page had 225K followers and had been active since Jan. 16, 2016.It is one of multiple FB pages using the 'province/territory/region Proud' phrase that are popular on FB as well as other social networking sites and is cited as originating the trend of politically oriented 'Proud' pages (Gerson, 2020).Alberta Proud has an explicitly sociopolitical agenda and is registered with Elections Alberta as a third-party advertiser and is registered as a not-for-profit corporation.3 The mission of Alberta Proud is stated as the following on the group's official website: Alberta Proud is a group of citizens concerned about Alberta's future within Canada.Alberta has a distinct identity thanks to our western roots and entrepreneurial spirit.But 1 Replies to comments proved to be a particularly rich source of information for this project.Within comment 'replies', commenters often explained or defended their opinions to other commenters, which further strengthened the validity of the analysis by indicating that commenters were willing to engage in discussion. 2 Although these pages are not known to be explicitly affiliated with any political party, I discovered through research about this page within the multi-phase ECA process that the Alberta Proud page is likely a part of a larger network of Facebook pages that have received funding from conservative political advocacy groups as well as individuals affiliated with conservative political parties and politicians.This topic will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4 under the heading 'Alberta Proud: Emergent Relevance'. 3 See Appendix A: Alberta Proud Certificate of Incorporation 'He is a typical leech on society.He should be put on a union poster.' -Comment from AP 'What public sector parasite union do you work for?!' -A reply to a comment on AP that dissents from the post frame
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction machine sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Le volet Gemma est une étiquette directe du modèle pour chaque travail de la base, lue sur la notice réduite au titre. Le volet Codex est un classifieur appris des 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et calibré sur les taux pondérés de l'échantillon; les champs sans appui suffisant ne portent aucun appel Codex. Le mode candidate est l'union des deux volets; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont pas des étiquettes humaines.
Scores du classifieur distillé par catégorie (deux têtes)
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,002 | 0,005 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,003 | 0,004 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,007 | 0,005 |
| Communication savante | 0,003 | 0,001 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,003 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule source (Gemma direct ou Codex distillé), pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».