Who rallies around the flag? Analyzing the impact of foreign interventions on nations' political stance using social media data

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2473816 _(Table of contents)

There is a common-sense that in times of foreign interventions, the country’s political actors are likely to set aside their differences and support the state or the government for a period of time as a temporary reaction to that foreign intervention. This study focuses on the specific case of Iran-U.S. conflicts to investigate the effects of events such as U.S. sanctions and military interventions on political discourse among Iranian influencers on Twitter. The quantitative approach in this study utilizes Classical Natural Language Processing to measure Iranian tweeps’ sentiment towards the state across the time. We have grouped Iranian Twitter Influencers by their political affiliations to analyze which political affiliations in Iran (e.g. Conservatives, Reformists, . . . ) are more likely to rally around the flag in correspondence to foreign interventions and what categories of foreign interventions have more potential in stimulating them for such reactions