The Role of Social Media in the 2021 Capitol Riot

Abstract

After years of increasing political tensions, in 2021, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol with the intent of overturning the official vote count of the 2020 presidential election. Many have attributed the Capitol Riot to a mass delusion fueled by misinformation. There are still many open venues of research regarding the attempted insurrection – exploring the role of online social networks should provide a more comprehensive understanding of social media dynamics and their real-world consequences. A better understanding of the communicative actions that unfold on online social media following highly salient events might also provide useful insights for policymakers or regulatory bodies. Using a large Twitter dataset comprising multiple communities – as encoded by political preference – the present study seeks to answer four key questions. First, what is the overall sentiment shared by groups originating from distinct processors during the riot event as compared to sampling controls and similar time periods before and since? Second, to what extent does activity within and across political dyad types spike on the day of the riot? Third, do highly retweeted posts on the day of the riot emanate from a specialized subset of political communities? Fourth, which topics and personas dominate the analyzed Twitter discourse surrounding the spread of misinformation regarding the riot? In the weeks following the Capitol Riot, identifying important considerations when optimizing platform transparency is of primary importance. Had these taken place two months prior to the event, they may have prevented or mitigated violent escalation at the Capitol on January 6.

Keywords Capitol Riot, social media, misinformation, Twitter, political sentiment, online networks, communication dynamics, regulatory insights.