Original scientific paper · Medijska istraživanja 32(1) · 2026
Connected but Divided
Affective publics and the clash of communities on Croatian Reddit in the context of the 2024 elections.
The same election, the same words — but not the same mood. Croatian Reddit splits into communities that argue over identical topics while feeling them very differently.
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The study at a glance
The question
Are online publics fragmented into isolated echo chambers — or something more tangled? The 2024 parliamentary and EU elections serve as a sociological “stress test” that makes latent communicative patterns visible.
The data
11,503 Reddit comments gathered between 14 March and 10 June 2024 using electoral keyword stems (izbor, glas, parlament, hdz, sdp, most…), then analysed with co-participation network analysis (Louvain), sentiment analysis (NRC Croatian + CroSentiLex), and topic modelling (LDA) in R.
The finding
Communities are not divided by what they discuss — every cluster talks about HDZ, votes, and the election. They are divided by how it feels: negativity ranges from 37.6% to 46.3% across communities. A small set of high-activity “connectors” bridges them — sustaining, rather than resolving, the conflict.
The argument: a “clash of communities”
Rather than ideologically sealed echo chambers, Croatian Reddit looks like a set of structurally distinct but topically overlapping communities that meet constantly — and clash. Three results anchor the claim:
Structure (RQ1). The interaction network divides cleanly into communities that map onto subreddits (modularity Q = 0.41; assortativity r = 0.28). Each of the largest communities is overwhelmingly drawn from a single subreddit — r/croatia, r/hrvatska, r/askcroatia.
Affect (RQ2). Those communities discuss the same electoral keywords but with markedly different emotional climates. Following Papacharissi’s notion of affective publics, shared events produce divergent emotional formations rather than separate topics — and higher-negativity climates may quietly discourage less assertive users from participating.
Bridges (RQ3). The typical user is not a “local” but a bridge (median participation coefficient P = 0.53); a handful of “super-connectors” (P > 0.89), almost all from r/croatia, knit the system together. Yet this connectivity is a paradox — exposure across boundaries intensifies, rather than dissolves, division.
The result is read through an agonistic lens (Mouffe): a public sphere constituted by legitimate, ongoing contestation rather than consensus.
Figures from the paper
How to cite
Kunić, T. and Šikić, L. (2026) ‘Connected but Divided: Affective Publics and the Clash of Communities on Croatian Reddit in the Context of the 2024 Elections’, Medijska istraživanja, 32(1), pp. 31–54. DOI: 10.22572/mi.32.1.2.
@article{kunic2026connected,
author = {Kuni{\'c}, Tamara and {\v S}iki{\'c}, Luka},
title = {Connected but Divided: Affective Publics and the Clash of
Communities on Croatian Reddit in the Context of the 2024 Elections},
journal = {Medijska istra{\v z}ivanja},
year = {2026},
volume = {32},
number = {1},
pages = {31--54},
doi = {10.22572/mi.32.1.2}
}