# Measuring Narrative Polarization in Online Discourse

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07398 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07398/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Engagement, User Satisfaction, and the Amplification of Divisive Content on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16941/) (2023)
- [Heroes, Villains, and Victims, and GPT-3: Automated Extraction of Character Roles Without Training Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07557/) (2022)
- [Users Polarization on Facebook and Youtube](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.02705/) (2016)
- [Shifting Polarization and Twitter News Influencers between two U.S. Presidential Elections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02505/) (2021)
- [Evolving linguistic divergence on polarizing social media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01659/) (2023)
- [Selective Exposure shapes the Facebook News Diet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.00699/) (2019)
- [Ideology and polarization set the agenda on social media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05176/) (2024)
- [Mapping News Narratives Using LLMs and Narrative-Structured Text Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06540/) (2024)
- [How Influencers and Multipliers Drive Polarization and Issue Alignment on Twitter/X](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14280/) (2025)
- [Quantifying Polarization: A Comparative Study of Measures and Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07473/) (2025)
- [Towards global equity in political polarization research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11090/) (2025)
- [Forgetful by Design? A Critical Audit of YouTube's Search API for Academic Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11727/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Polarization research has demonstrated how people cluster in homogeneous groups with opposing opinions. However, this effect emerges not only through interaction between people, limiting communication between groups, but also between narratives, shaping opinions and partisan identities. Yet, how polarized information environments portray opposing interpretations of reality, and whether narratives move between content environments despite limited interactions, remains unexplored. To address this gap, we formalize the concept of narrative polarization and demonstrate its measurement in 212 YouTube videos and 90,029 comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based on structural narrative theory and implemented through a large language model, we extract the narrative roles assigned to central actors in two partisan information environments. We find that while videos produce highly polarized narratives, comments exhibit significantly lower levels of narrative polarization, converging on shared core narrative structures. However, recurring narrative motifs capturing more complex actor constellations reveal additional differences between partisan environments.