Causal effects of trigger words in social media discussions: a large-scale case study about UK politics on Reddit

Antypas, Dimosthenis, Arnold, Christian, Camacho-Collados, Jose ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1618-7239, Ousidhoum, Nedjma and Perez-Almendros, Carla ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9360-4011 2026. Causal effects of trigger words in social media discussions: a large-scale case study about UK politics on Reddit. Presented at: WebSci '26: 18th ACM Web Science Conference, Braunschweig, Germany, 26-29 May 2026. Published in: Balke, Wolf-Tilo, Plotzky, Florian, Demartini, Gianluca, Dietze, Stefan, Golbeck, Jennifer, Kaiser, Sierra and Rezapour, Rezvaneh eds. Proceedings of the 18th ACM Web Science Conference. New York, NY, US: ACM, pp. 359-369. 10.1145/3795766.3799750

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Abstract

Political debates on social media often escalate quickly, leading to increased engagement as well as more emotional and polarised exchanges. Trigger points [43] represent moments when individuals feel that their understanding of what is fair, normal, or appropriate in society is being questioned. Analysing Reddit discussions, we examine how trigger points shape online debates and assess their impact on engagement and affect. Our analysis is based on over 100 million comments from subreddits centred on a predefined set of terms identified as trigger words in UK politics. We find that mentions of these terms are associated with higher engagement and increased animosity, including more controversial, negative, angry, and hateful responses. These results position trigger words as a useful concept for modelling and analysing online polarisation.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Paper)
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode, Start Date: 2026-05-25
Publisher:	ACM
ISBN:	9798400725043
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 June 2026
Last Modified:	04 Jun 2026 11:47
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187403

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