Mapping Moral Controversies in the Digital Age: Big Data Insights into Global Culture Wars

Big Data analysis offers powerful tools for understanding how moral controversies and cultural wars emerge, evolve, and circulate across digital platforms. This paper investigates how recent methodological advances enable us to analyze public debates on contentious issues such as trans rights, abortion, or vaccines. Social media platforms play a crucial role in shaping these debates, acting as arenas where moral (digital) entrepreneurs—individuals or groups who drive moral discourses—mobilize their audiences and campaign aggressively against opposing views, often intensifying dynamics of polarization.

While our research focuses on Spanish-language content, the methodologies discussed can be applied to other linguistic contexts, emphasizing the rise of culture wars in multiple regions. We explore how different publics engage with moral debates on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter, examining how these discussions vary by platform, age group, and cultural context.

We also reflect on the challenges and biases of using Big Data in this context, such as algorithmic filtering and language-specific complexities, and address the methodological difficulties in capturing the nuances of moral debates and polarization dynamics. Based on our study of moral controversies among Spanish-speaking digital communities, this paper sheds light on how digital tools can map discourses, identify key actors, and offer insights into the formation of moral communities and their influence on global moral debates