The climate of climate change: Impoliteness as a hallmark of homophily in YouTube comment threads on Greta Thunberg's environmental activism

This paper investigates impoliteness and value homophily (‘thinking alike’) in the context of YouTube-based ideological discussions beneath the videos critical towards the Swedish environmental activist – Greta Thunberg. Drawing on the idea of rapport management, the study finds a remarkable scale of homophily as the postings follow recurrent patterns of face and sociality rights attacks echoing the same point of view. Consequently, while...