The Dynamics of Polarisation in Australian Social Media: The Case of Immigration Discourse

This chapter provides a case study of a public debate attracting highly polarised and antagonistic participants within the Australian context and examines the dynamics of polarisation, information flows, discourses, and materialities shaping these dynamics. Twitter conversations about immigration policies of the Australian government and detention of asylum seekers in offshore camps attract a great deal of polarised debate. The authors show how the affordances of the platform constitute, and are constituted by, the discourses of the users, and how users strategically discursify and give meaning to these affordances to further make their own political positions visible, amplify antagonisms, and at times, join each other in the formation of larger agonistic communities.