Institutional Floors and Partisan Lenses: Cross-National Online Discourse on Political Violence in France and the United States
AI reveals how French and US online discussions morally evaluate political violence differently...
A new study by Andrew Yen Chang leverages GPT-4o-mini for zero-shot classification and social network analysis to examine online discourse on political violence across France and the United States. The research analyzes three incidents: the 2020 killing of Samuel Paty in France, the 2025 shooting of Charlie Kirk in the US, and the 2026 murder of Quentin Deranque in France. Using publicly available Instagram and Facebook posts, the study reveals clear cross-national differences in how moral values are perceived, the emotional intensity expressed, and the framing of institutions.
In France, the discourse tends to focus on the victim's civic role rather than their political affiliation, while in the US, the conversation is more ideologically divided, with moral judgments frequently reflecting partisan lines. By comparing the two French cases—a civic victim (Paty) versus a politically-affiliated victim (Deranque)—the study finds evidence consistent with the 'civic floor hypothesis', demonstrating that France's institutional framework upholds a cross-partisan civic baseline regardless of the victim's political ties. The paper concludes by analyzing the implications of computational social perception for multilingual NLP and exploring moral judgment in cross-national digital political discourse.
- GPT-4o-mini used for zero-shot classification of 3 political violence incidents across France and US
- French discourse focuses on victim's civic role; US discourse is ideologically divided along partisan lines
- Evidence supports 'civic floor hypothesis' in France maintaining cross-partisan baseline regardless of victim's political ties
Why It Matters
Shows AI can reveal deep cultural differences in moral reasoning, useful for cross-national policy and NLP.