Analyzing open-mindedness within online political debates

Abstract

This paper lays out a research proposal for investigating open-mindedness in online political settings, through an in-depth analysis of how people disagree with one another in discussion forums attached to online news articles. The goal of the proposed research is to investigate the political behavior of open-mindedness towards other viewpoints in a way that has not been directly studied before. Previous literature has investigated the relationship between a number of factors such as openness to experience and conscientiousness related to political behaviors and identification. However, the research proposed here offers a method of examining how individual traits correlate with one's own tendency to be open-minded toward others, as well as the tendency of others to be open-minded toward them.