What is it about?
Community Question Answering websites (CQAs) are social media platforms where Internet users ask questions, answer those submitted by others, and have the option to evaluate responses using UpVotes and DownVotes. They serve as a continually-growing repository of topic-specific information. This paper studies the topic of terrorism on CQAs in terms of the following research questions: What are the dominant themes reflected in terrorism-related questions? How do answer characteristics vary with question themes? How does users' anonymity relate to question themes and answer characteristics?
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Why is it important?
Terrorism has entered the main line of discourse in CQAs. A search conducted on the keyword 'terrorism' in the archives of Yahoo! Answers returned over 90,000 results as of 23 Jan 2020 (https://answers.search.yahoo.com/search?p=terrorism). The heightened interest in terrorism on CQAs notwithstanding, terrorism-related CQA content has yet to be systematically explored. This is the first work to addresses the research gap.
Perspectives
I found it quite unfortunate that CQAs are pestered with so much hate speech and Islamophobic content. Going forward, I hope netizens would become more responsible and sensitive when creating content on social media.
Dr Snehasish Banerjee
University of York
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The topic of terrorism on Yahoo! Answers: questions, answers and users’ anonymity, Aslib Journal of Information Management, December 2019, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/ajim-08-2019-0204.
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Resources
How do Social Media Users Talk about Terrorism Online?
Terrorism remains a persistent challenge worldwide. While portrayed as a threat to society and human civilisation by mainstream media, terrorists sell terrorism as freedom fighting via social networking sites and private messaging platforms. However, the actual workings of terrorism are largely shrouded in secrecy. For the curious, a convenient resource are community question answering sites (CQAs), which are social media platforms where users ask questions, answer those submitted by others, and have the option to evaluate responses using UpVotes and DownVotes.
Hate speech dominates social media platform when users want answers on terrorism
Answers were laden with negative emotions reflecting hate speech and Islamophobia, making claims that were rarely verifiable. Users who posted sensitive questions and answers generally tended to remain anonymous.
The Topic of Terrorism
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