Cross-Platform Digital Discourse Analysis of the Israel-Hamas Conflict: Sentiment, Topics, and Event Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper addresses how protracted conflict discourse unfolds across multiple online platforms by framing online communications as interconnected digital conflict ecosystems influenced by affective publics. It combines a large, FAIR-compliant multi-platform dataset (Telegram, Reddit, Twitter) with an integrated NLP workflow (LDA, BERTopic, transformer-based sentiment, spam filtering) to map evolving themes, emotions, and propagation dynamics from 2023 to 2025. The study contributes a cross-platform resource, advances methodological practice by combining topic modeling with emotion analysis, and reveals platform-specific roles in sustaining digital engagement and humanitarian framing. The findings highlight a persistence paradox where discourse remains intense and evolving despite crisis durations, with practical implications for mitigating polarization and digital trauma in protracted conflicts.

Abstract

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains one of the most polarizing geopolitical issues, with the October 2023 escalation intensifying online debate. Social media platforms, particularly Telegram, have become central to real-time news sharing, advocacy, and propaganda. In this study, we analyze Telegram, Twitter/X, and Reddit to examine how conflict narratives are produced, amplified, and contested across different digital spheres. Building on our previous work on Telegram discourse during the 2023 escalation, we extend the analysis longitudinally and cross-platform using an updated dataset spanning October 2023 to mid-2025. The corpus includes more than 187,000 Telegram messages, 2.1 million Reddit comments, and curated Twitter/X posts. We combine Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), BERTopic, and transformer-based sentiment and emotion models to identify dominant themes, emotional dynamics, and propaganda strategies. Telegram channels provide unfiltered, high-intensity documentation of events; Twitter/X amplifies frames to global audiences; and Reddit hosts more reflective and deliberative discussions. Our findings reveal persistent negative sentiment, strong coupling between humanitarian framing and solidarity expressions, and platform-specific pathways for the diffusion of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli narratives. This paper offers three contributions: (1) a multi-platform, FAIR-compliant dataset on the Israel-Hamas war, (2) an integrated pipeline combining topic modeling, sentiment and emotion analysis, and spam filtering for large-scale conflict discourse, and (3) empirical insights into how platform affordances and affective publics shape the evolution of digital conflict communication.

Figures (20)

• Figure 1: CDF Messages over time on Telegram
• Figure 2: Distribution of messages on Telegram
• Figure 3: Topic Word Scores: Top keyword distributions for the eight most salient BERTopic clusters. Bar lengths indicate relative word importance within each topic, reflecting thematic variation across Telegram discourse.
• Figure 4: Intertopic Distance Maps for BERTopic Clusters. Overview of all discovered topics (a) and selected semantically related sub-topics surrounding the Jenin discourse (b–k). Bubble size reflects the number of messages associated with each topic; proximity indicates semantic similarity. Topics 3, 16, 40, 212, 315, and 406 illustrate the hierarchical clustering of discussions around military operations, humanitarian aid, and civilian narratives.
• Figure 5: Interconnected BDS discourse clusters (Topic 957 and 508).