Notes on Hale & Alberti (2024): A Peaceful Transfer of Power? Leadership Framing and Political Discourse in r/Politics and r/Conservative After the 2021 Capitol Riot

Overview

  • Study title (as presented): A Peaceful Transfer of Power? A Content Analysis of Leadership Framing and Political Discourse in r/Politics and r/Conservative Following the 2021 U.S. Capitol Riot.
  • Authors: Brent J. Hale and Laura Alberti (The University of Southern Mississippi).
  • Focus: How users on two Reddit communities framed Presidents Trump and Biden in the riot’s aftermath, examining leadership framing, generic news frames, and political climate frames, plus user sentiment and engagement signals (upvotes/downvotes).
  • Context: The 2021 Capitol riot disrupted the presidential transition and shaped public perceptions of Trump and Biden. The study situates itself in crisis-period political communication and social media discourse.
  • Data source: Reddit posts and comments from two large political subreddits,
    • r/politics (Democratic-leaning) and
    • r/conservative (Republican-leaning).
  • Time frame for data collection: January 6, 2021 (Capitol riot day) through April 30, 2021 (end of Biden’s first 100 days).
  • Method: Content analysis of posts/comments; sampling via Reddit API; coding with a structured codebook; intercoder reliability checks; examination of framing types and sentiment; analysis of Reddit scores (upvotes minus downvotes).
  • Key findings (high-level):
    • Followers in both subreddits focused on presidential behavior, conflict, and American democracy in the aftermath.
    • Trump portrayals were more negative in r/politics but showed a normalization trajectory in r/politics and a complicated trajectory in r/conservative over Biden’s first 100 days.
    • Leadership frames (notably morality, moderatism, patriotism, vision, honesty, altruistic democracy) were prominent, with clear differences in frame usage between subreddits.
    • Generic frames (conflict, game, human interest) and political climate frames (democracy, race, religion) showed distinct patterns across the two communities.
    • Time trends indicate sentiment and frame valence evolved differently across subreddits, suggesting polarization dynamics and temporary shifts rather than durable changes.

Key Concepts and Theoretical Framework

  • Leadership framing (core idea): How political leaders are characterized through a set of leadership traits; rooted in classic work identifying traits that publics expect in presidents.
    • Foundational references: Gans (1979); Hellweg (2004); Nimmo & Savage (1976); Steele & Redding (1962).
    • Entman (1993) framing concept: selection and salience of aspects to promote a problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.
    • Meraz & Papacharissi (2013) networked framing: adapts Entman to social media environments; frames are negotiated via crowdsourcing and sharing.
  • Generic news frames: Beyond leadership traits, the study uses three standard frames from political communication scholarship:
    • Conflict frame: emphasizes disagreement and antagonism between actors; common in political news coverage.
    • Game frame: presents politics as a contest with strategy and tactics; who’s ahead, who’s winning.
    • Human interest frame: humanizes issues by focusing on individual stories or emotional angles.
  • Political climate frames (contextual frames): frames tied to the broader democratic climate and social issues of 2020–2021:
    • Democracy: concerns about the state and resilience of democratic institutions.
    • Race: discussions of racial dynamics and voter diversity.
    • Religion: references to faith, religion, and related voting dynamics.
  • Research questions (paraphrased):
    • RQ1: How were Trump and Biden framed by users in r/conservative and r/politics in terms of leadership characteristics?
    • RQ2: Were leadership frames more frequent in one subreddit than the other?
    • RQ3: Which generic news and political climate frames manifested most prominently in each subreddit?
    • RQ4: Were there differences in the frequency of generic frames between subreddits?
    • RQ5: How did user sentiment toward Trump and Biden change over time within each subreddit?

Data and Sampling Frame

  • Data scale and sources:
    • Top ten highest-scoring posts daily from January 6 to April 30, 2021, for both subreddits.
    • Initial set (pre-filter):
    • r/politics: N posts = 1,150; 141,415 comments.
    • r/conservative: N posts = 1,136; 71,261 comments.
  • Filtering steps (visualized in Fig. 1, not reproduced here):
    • Posts excluded: N = 812.
    • Duplicates removed: N = 48.
    • Keyword filtering (retained posts mentioning Trump, Biden, president, POTUS, Pence, Harris): N = 764 retained from the initial pool.
    • Resulting posts after keyword filtering: r/politics N = 465; r/conservative N = 324.
    • After further reductions (random selection to limit resources): final target sample =
    • r/politics: N = 200 posts; r/conservative: N = 200 posts.
    • Comment sampling: retain top five comments per post; final comments pool ~ 1,999 comments overall (approx. 1,000 per subreddit, with minor deviations).
  • Sampling frame considerations:
    • Timeframe includes: 2021 Georgia Senate runoff, January 6 riot, Trump impeachment developments, Biden’s first 100 days.
    • Data capture method: Reddit API; archived links used for some posts.
  • Coding and reliability:
    • Three coders trained with a codified codebook; a coder unfamiliar with the questions included for reliability.
    • Intercoder reliability reported via Krippendorff’s alpha: ranges from 0.74 to 1.0 across categories.
    • Example alphas for leadership frames (selected):
    • Rugged individualism: ext{α} = 1.0
    • Patriotism: ext{α} = 0.91
    • Altruistic democracy: ext{α} = 0.90
    • Responsible capitalism: ext{α} = 0.82
    • Small town pastoralism: ext{α} = 1.0
  • Measures (coding dimensions):
    • Leadership Frames: 15 frames with dimensions of positive presence, negative presence, or not present.
    • General News Frames: conflict, human interest, game (present/not present).
    • Political Climate Frames: democracy, race, religion (present/not present).
    • Sentiment: coded per comment as positive, negative, or neutral, with values +1, -1, 0; dominance determines overall sentiment.
    • Reddit engagement metrics: Reddit scores calculated as ext{score} = ext{upvotes} - ext{downvotes}. Higher scores imply greater community approval.

Leadership Frames (15 frames)

  • Frame definitions (positively vs negatively present; presence = yes/no):
    • Morality (α = 0.94): positive if leader shows integrity; negative if corrupt or unethical.
    • Moderatism (α = 0.91): balanced vs extreme; negative if extreme or connected to extreme actors.
    • Patriotism (α = 0.91): committed defender of American interests; negative if anti-American or weak.
    • Vision (α = 0.82): forethought and directed ideas; negative if unfocused or shortsighted.
    • Honesty (α = 0.94): forthcoming and truthful vs lying or double-speak.
    • Altruistic Democracy (α = 0.90): commitment to democratic ideals for all vs preferential treatment.
    • Responsible Capitalism (α = 0.82): respect for free market with guardrails vs pro-big business or unaccountable spending.
    • Small Town Pastoralism (α = 1.00): strong roots in small-town America; negative if out of touch with rural life.
    • Dedenomination of Moderatism (separate line in table under Moderatism; same as Moderatism above) [note: counted separately in some analyses].
    • Intelligence (α = 0.74): well-educated, articulate vs inarticulate.
    • Stamina (α = 1.00): physical vitality vs weakness.
    • Courage (α = 1.00): bravery vs cowardice.
    • Morality (already listed above; included for completeness in the full list).
    • Dedication (α = 0.78): willingness to commit to public service vs disengagement.
    • Populism (α = 1.00): relatability to ordinary voters vs being out of touch.
    • Charisma (α = 1.00): dynamic, engaging presence vs dullness.
  • Framing findings (summary):
    • Across both subreddits (Trump vs Biden), morality, moderatism, patriotism, vision, honesty, and altruistic democracy were among the most frequent frames in the window after January 6 through Biden’s first 100 days.
    • r/politics tended to frame Trump more negatively (≈ 93.83% of Trump frames negative; Biden frames ~93.83% positive) whereas r/conservative framed Biden negatively (≈ 94.96%) and Trump negatively (≈ 58.22%).
    • Temporal patterns: Trump’s leadership valence increased over time in both subreddits, but Biden’s valence rose in r/politics and declined in r/conservative during the same window. See regression results below.
  • Key results (frame-level statistics):
    • Overall frame presence and valence (per subreddit):
    • r/politics: high emphasis on morality, moderatism, patriotism, vision, honesty, altruistic democracy.
    • r/conservative: also used these frames but with different valence patterns; notable negative frames toward Trump and mixed toward Biden depending on the actor.
    • Statistically significant frame predictors of Reddit scores (Wilcoxon rank-sum results):
    • Trump moderatism in r/politics: higher scores when attacking moderation trait (Median comparison):
      ext{Median}_{ ext{attacked}} = 46{,}152.65 ext{ vs } 34{,}367.6,
      W = 5{,}972, p < 0.01.
    • Trump patriotism in r/politics: higher scores when attacked for patriotism trait
      ext{Median}_{ ext{attacked}} = 47{,}371 ext{ vs } 26{,}779,
      W = 6{,}033, p < 0.01.
    • Trump morality in r/politics: higher scores when morality targeted
      ext{Median}_{ ext{attacked}} = 34{,}976 ext{ vs } 27{,}190.5,
      W = 5{,}787, p < 0.05.
  • Cross-subreddit differences (RQ2): chi-square tests comparing frame frequencies across posts and aggregated frames showed:
    • Vision frame: more frequent in posts on r/politics (N = 62) than r/conservative (N = 40); ext{χ}^2(1, N=400) = 5.8, p < 0.05.
    • Altruistic democracy: more frequent in r/politics (N = 59) than in r/conservative (N = 28); ext{χ}^2(1, N=400) = 13.22, p < 0.001.
    • Responsible capitalism: more frequent in r/politics (N = 32) than in r/conservative (N = 13); ext{χ}^2(1, N=400) = 8.11, p < 0.01.
    • Other frames (morality, moderatism, patriotism, honesty, populism, dedication, charisma, rugged individualism) showed no significant cross-subreddit differences (p-values not significant).
  • Important interpretation: The two subreddits, while both focused on leadership traits and democratic processes, diverged in how aggressively they deployed certain frames (e.g., vision, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism) and in which leaders were targeted by those frames.

General News Frames and the 2021 Political Climate (RQ3 & RQ4)

  • Frame frequencies in posts and comments (Table 2):
    • Conflict frame:
    • r/politics posts: 145 (72.5%); comments 114 (11.4%).
    • r/conservative posts: 175 (87.5%); comments 261 (26.13%).
    • Overall: high prevalence; difference across subreddits significant: ext{χ}^2(1, N=400)=13.14, p<0.001.
    • Democracy frame:
    • Posts: r/politics 94 (47.0%); r/conservative 108 (54.0%).
    • Comments: r/politics 148 (14.8%); r/conservative 198 (19.82%).
    • Across postings, democracy frames were common; comments showed a slightly higher rate in r/conservative.
    • Game frame:
    • Posts: r/politics 92 (46.0%); r/conservative 72 (36.0%).
    • Comments: r/politics 92 (9.2%); r/conservative 100 (10.01%).
    • Race frame:
    • Posts: r/politics 47 (23.5%); r/conservative 59 (29.5%).
    • Comments: r/politics 27 (2.7%); r/conservative 102 (10.21%).
    • Religion frame:
    • Posts: r/politics 9 (4.5%); r/conservative 22 (11.0%).
    • Comments: r/politics 17 (1.7%); r/conservative 22 (2.2%).
    • Human Interest frame:
    • Posts: r/politics 8 (4.0%); r/conservative 23 (11.5%).
    • Comments: r/politics 17 (1.7%); r/conservative 4 (0.4%).
  • Key pattern: Across both subreddits, conflict dominated, but r/conservative showed especially strong conflict framing in posts (87.5%) and substantial conflict in comments (26.13%). Democracy framing was broadly present in both, with comments in r/conservative showing relatively higher democracy framing. Race and religion frames differed in prevalence across posts vs. comments, with race more prominent in r/conservative comments and religion more prominent in r/conservative posts.
  • Frame-score effects on engagement (posts): democracy-framed posts in r/politics attracted higher Reddit scores (median) than posts without democracy framing, suggesting audience affinity for frames that foreground democratic resilience.
    • Democracy frame in posts (r/politics): Median score for democracy frames was higher than non-democracy frames, indicating favorable reception to democratic discourse in this community.
  • Takeaway: Generic news frames (especially conflict) played a central role in shaping the discourse after January 6, with distinct Leanings across subreddits that reflect political orientation differences in how news frames are consumed and valued.

Sentiment Toward Trump and Biden (RQ5) and Time Dynamics

  • Overall sentiment: across both subreddits, average sentiment was negative: M = -0.62 (negative skew).
  • Subreddit-specific sentiment:
    • r/conservative: M = -0.71 (negative majority: 791 negative, 127 neutral, 81 positive).
    • r/politics: negative sentiment also high but less extreme: 695 negative, 160 positive, 144 neutral.
  • Time trend in sentiment (regressions):
    • r/conservative: sentiment did not significantly change over time (β = -0.0005, t = -0.85, p = ns; R^2 ≈ -0.0003).
    • r/politics: sentiment became more positive over time toward both leaders (β for Trump = 0.001, t = 6.8, p<0.001; β for Biden = 0.0006, t = 3.78, p<0.001; R^2 values: 0.19 for Trump, 0.07 for Biden).
  • Frame valence trends (leadership frames as a combined positive/negative valence):
    • r/conservative:
    • Trump leadership valence increased over time (β = 0.0006, t = 2.79, p<0.01; F(1,198)=7.78; R^2 = 0.03).
    • Biden leadership valence decreased over time (β = -0.0009, t = -4.00, p<0.001; F(1,198)=15.98; R^2 = 0.07).
    • r/politics:
    • Trump leadership valence increased over time (β = 0.001, t = 6.8, p<0.001; F(1,198)=46.29; R^2 = 0.19).
    • Biden leadership valence also increased over time (β = 0.0006, t = 3.78, p<0.001; F(1,198)=14.29; R^2 = 0.07).
  • Interpretation of time patterns:
    • r/politics shows a broad shift toward more favorable framing of both leaders over the 100-day window, potentially signaling acceptance of the Biden presidency and continued relevance of Trump in Democratic discourse.
    • r/conservative shows a polarization pattern where Trump’s perceived leadership improved slightly over time, but Biden’s framing did not sustain positive growth, indicating persistent conservative skepticism toward Biden in this period.
  • Theoretical implication: The Capitol riot induced a temporary shift in leadership framing, but the effects varied by community and did not erase enduring polarization. Framing and sentiment appear to refract through platform-specific norms and political leanings.

Methodology in Brief (Coding, Measures, and Reliability)

  • Codebook development: 15 leadership frames + 3 general news frames + 3 political climate frames + sentiment coding; grounded in established literature and prior measurements.
  • Coding procedure:
    • Each unit (post or comment) coded for presence/absence of each frame and sentiment.
    • Frames could be multi-valued (not mutually exclusive).
    • Intercoder reliability assessed with Krippendorff’s alpha (α).
  • Krippendorff’s alpha highlights (selected examples):
    • Rugged Individualism: ext{α} = 1.0
    • Patriotism: ext{α} = 0.91
    • Altruistic Democracy: ext{α} = 0.90
    • Responsible Capitalism: ext{α} = 0.82
    • Small Town Pastoralism: ext{α} = 1.0
    • Honesty: ext{α} = 0.94
    • Vision: ext{α} = 0.82
    • Intelligence: ext{α} = 0.74
    • Morality: ext{α} = 0.96
    • Charisma: ext{α} = 1.0
    • Dedication: ext{α} = 0.78
    • Populism: ext{α} = 1.0
  • Sample composition details (recap):
    • Final coding sample: 400 posts total (200 per subreddit) with about 1,999 comments.
    • Post-level sampling: from top daily posts, filtered for direct references to Trump or Biden; keyterm filtering retained posts mentioning Trump/Biden/POTUS/Harris/Pence.
  • Measures, linkage to data: the study links frame presence to Reddit scores to assess community reception of frames, using nonparametric tests (Wilcoxon) due to skew in score distributions.

Results in Brief: What the Data Show

  • Engagement and reach:
    • Posts on r/politics had much higher engagement than those on r/conservative (mean Reddit post scores and comment counts significantly higher for r/politics).
    • Upvote ratio differed: r/politics had a higher mean upvote ratio (~0.91) than r/conservative (~0.80). This suggests more uniform approval in r/politics and potential brigading concerns were discussed but not verified; brigading is banned in both communities.
  • Leadership framing patterns (RQ1/RQ2):
    • Leadership frames most commonly occurred around morality, moderatism, patriotism, vision, honesty, and altruistic democracy.
    • r/politics: Trump frames skewed negative; Biden frames skewed positive; high prevalence of the above frames, with some frames more frequent than in r/conservative (vision, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism).
    • r/conservative: Trump framed negatively in a majority of frames; Biden framed negatively in a large portion of frames as well, indicating ambivalence toward both leaders depending on the actor.
    • Subreddit differences (vision, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism): more frequent in r/politics than in r/conservative, indicating different framings favored by the Democratic-leaning community.
  • General frames and climate frames (RQ3/RQ4):
    • Conflict frame dominated in both subreddits, especially in r/conservative posts (87.5% of posts), with substantial usage in comments as well (26.13%).
    • Democracy frame also common, with similar post-level prevalence in both subreddits; race and religion frames more pronounced in r/conservative, especially in comments for race and in posts for religion.
    • Race frame presence depressed overall Reddit scores in both communities; religion and human interest frames were less prevalent but showed some significant differences across subreddit and post/comment strata.
  • Sentiment and time (RQ5):
    • Overall negative sentiment, stronger in r/conservative than in r/politics.
    • Time trends show divergent trajectories: r/politics moved toward more positive sentiment for both leaders over time; r/conservative showed a rise in Trump valence but a decline in Biden valence, indicating repolarization toward Trump and away from Biden among conservative users through Biden’s first 100 days.
  • Implications:
    • The Capitol riot produced a momentary reshuffling of leader perceptions, but patterns suggest durable polarization and divergent trajectories across ideological communities on a single platform.
    • Reddit content facilitated, and was shaped by, user voting behavior and content sharing, underscoring the role of platform affordances in shaping political discourse during crises.

Ethical, Philosophical, and Practical Implications

  • Ethical considerations:
    • Research uses publicly accessible online discourse; however, it raises concerns about privacy, consent, and the potential for misinterpretation of online expressions as representative of broader populations.
    • The study acknowledges limitations in generalizing Reddit findings to other platforms or to the general public.
  • Philosophical implications:
    • Demonstrates how democratic publics negotiate leadership imagery during political crises, and how online communities may converge or diverge around moral judgments, nationalism, and democratic legitimacy.
  • Practical implications for political communication:
    • Leadership framing and framing shifts can influence audience reception and political engagement, especially in polarized environments.
    • Platform-specific norms (e.g., voting systems on Reddit) can modulate which frames gain traction and how leaders are perceived over time.
  • Real-world relevance:
    • The Capitol riot served as a crucible for examining how crises shape online political discourse and how leadership narratives evolve in the wake of democratic stress.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

  • Limitations:
    • Focused on two large Reddit communities; findings may not generalize to other subreddits or platforms with different norms and user bases.
    • Temporal window limited to Jan 6–Apr 30, 2021; longer-term trajectories beyond Biden’s first 100 days are not captured.
    • Possible confounds include external political events (e.g., impeachment, elections) and media coverage that influence framing and sentiment beyond Reddit dynamics.
  • Future research ideas:
    • Expand to additional Reddit communities (e.g., r/democrats, r/liberal) and other platforms (Twitter/X, Facebook groups) to compare cross-platform framing dynamics.
    • Extend the time window to include later phases of the Biden presidency and the 2024 election cycle to examine durability of frame-based shifts.
    • Investigate the causal pathways between specific frames and upvote dynamics, including potential interaction effects with comment sentiment and user engagement metrics.
    • Explore the role of moderation and community norms in shaping frame usage and the suppression or amplification of particular narratives.

Key References and Foundational Works (selected)

  • Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm.
  • Meraz, S., & Papacharissi, Z. (2013). Networked gatekeeping and networked framing on #Egypt.
  • Semetko, H., & Valkenburg, P. (2000). Framing European politics: A content analysis of press and television news.
  • Gans, H. J. (1979). Deciding what’s news: A study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time.
  • Cappella, J. N., & Jamieson, K. H. (1997). Spiral of cynicism: The press and the public good.
  • Hale, B. J., & Grabe, M. E. (2018). Visual war: Clinton and Trump subreddits during the 2016 campaign.
  • Stier, S., Bleier, A., Lietz, H., & Strohmaier, M. (2018). Election campaigning on social media: Politicians, audiences, and the mediation of political communication on Facebook and Twitter.
  • Prakasam, N., & Huxtable-Thomas, L. (2021). Reddit: Affordances as an enabler for shifting loyalties.
  • Additional context: Annenberg IOD Collaborative (2023) on democracy amid crises; U.S. Department of Justice (2021) documents on Capitol riot events.

Takeaway Messages for Exam Preparation

  • Capstone insight: Leadership framing on social media is fluid and closely tied to crisis context; different ideological communities may repurpose similar frames to serve divergent political ends.
  • Expect to discuss: Entman’s framing, networked framing on social media, and how crisis moments like January 6 alter leadership perceptions over short and medium terms.
  • Be able to describe: the 15 leadership frames and how they were operationalized in this study (positively present, negatively present, not present), plus the three generic frames and three climate frames.
  • Understand the methodological chain: sampling via Reddit API, keyword filtering, random selection to create a balanced 400-post final sample, top-five-comments sampling, coding with good intercoder reliability, and linking frames to Reddit scores to gauge community approval.
  • Recognize limitations and the importance of cross-platform generalizability when discussing political communication in a polarized era.

Quick Glossary (terms to remember)

  • Leadership frames: positive/negative portrayals of leaders using traits like morality, patriotism, vision, etc.
  • Generic news frames: conflict, game, human interest.
  • Political climate frames: democracy, race, religion.
  • Krippendorff’s alpha: a reliability metric for intercoder agreement; in this study, several leadership-frame categories achieved high reliability (e.g., ext{α} = 1.0 for Rugged Individualism and Small Town Pastoralism; others ranged from roughly 0.74 to 0.94).
  • Reddit score: net community approval, computed as ext{score} = ext{upvotes} - ext{downvotes}.
  • Time trend metrics: regression coefficents eta, t-values t, p-values p, and variance explained R^2.

Quick References to Figures and Tables Mentioned

  • Table 1: Frequencies of Leadership Frames in Posts (split by subreddit and leader).
  • Table 2: News Frame Frequencies in Posts and Comments (split by subreddit).
  • Figures 2 and 3: Frame valence over time for Trump and Biden by subreddit (not shown here but referenced in the text).

Summary for exams

  • The study demonstrates that leadership framing and generic news frames on two politically polarized Reddit communities shifted in response to the Capitol riot and the start of Biden’s presidency, with distinct trajectories for Trump and Biden depending on the community. Leadership frames like morality, patriotism, and altruistic democracy dominated, but the patterns differed by subreddit, indicating persistent polarization and context-sensitive framing. Time-based analyses show partial normalization for Trump in some venues and continuing negative sentiment for Biden in conservative spaces, highlighting how online publics negotiate crisis-era political leadership narratives.