Date of Award:

5-2023

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mathematics and Statistics

Committee Chair(s)

Jürgen Symanzik

Committee

Jürgen Symanzik

Committee

Brennan Bean

Committee

Jeannie Johnson

Abstract

A recent example of political violence in the United States was that of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack in connection with the certification of Joseph R. Biden’s victory over Donald J. Trump in the 2020 US presidential election. This thesis analyzes the events of January 6, 2021, through the lens of social media discourse. This thesis presents a workflow that acquired over 5 million 8kun and Reddit posts from various apolitical and political forums in the three months preceding and following the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. Techniques from text analysis are then used to group forums according to the similarities of their posting patterns. Five main groups of forums are identified. Finally, this thesis analyzes these forums for feelings of isolation and displacement from society in connection with the events of January 6, 2021. Such feelings were not clearly identified. This thesis demonstrates the challenges and opportunities of scraping and analyzing social media data.

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