Research Article

Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War

Volume: 11 Number: 28 September 30, 2026
TR EN

Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War

Abstract

This study analyzes how online audiences expressed stance and interpretive frames toward three related targets, U.S. strikes, Israel, and Iran, during the 12-day Iran–Israel war period through YouTube comments on prominent U.S. news videos. A corpus of 112,000 comments was divided into pre-event, event-window, and post-event periods. Stance was modeled separately for each target using four labels: Support, Oppose, Unclear, and Not Applicable, allowing evaluation and target salience to be distinguished. A humanlabeled, double-coded sample of 2,500 comments supported annotation reliability testing and model training. Classifiers were evaluated with leakage-resistant protocols controlling for video overlap and temporal generalization, then applied to the full corpus. Under these evaluation settings, TF-IDF with Logistic Regression achieved the strongest average four-way Macro-F1, outperforming the hierarchical DeBERTa model, particularly under temporal generalization. Results show that discussion most often focused on U.S. strikes, while Israel and Iran were less frequently evaluated directly. During the event window, support for U.S. strikes increased among applicable comments. Topic modeling identified recurring frames of escalation, legitimacy, accountability, and regional security.

Keywords

References

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Communication Systems, Internet Publishing

Journal Section

Research Article

Publication Date

September 30, 2026

Submission Date

May 16, 2026

Acceptance Date

September 22, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 11 Number: 28

APA
Erbay, C. (2026). Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War. TRT Akademi, 11(28), 1170-1209. https://doi.org/10.37679/trta.1952921
AMA
1.Erbay C. Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War. TRT Akademi. 2026;11(28):1170-1209. doi:10.37679/trta.1952921
Chicago
Erbay, Celal. 2026. “Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War”. TRT Akademi 11 (28): 1170-1209. https://doi.org/10.37679/trta.1952921.
EndNote
Erbay C (September 1, 2026) Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War. TRT Akademi 11 28 1170–1209.
IEEE
[1]C. Erbay, “Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War”, TRT Akademi, vol. 11, no. 28, pp. 1170–1209, Sept. 2026, doi: 10.37679/trta.1952921.
ISNAD
Erbay, Celal. “Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War”. TRT Akademi 11/28 (September 1, 2026): 1170-1209. https://doi.org/10.37679/trta.1952921.
JAMA
1.Erbay C. Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War. TRT Akademi. 2026;11:1170–1209.
MLA
Erbay, Celal. “Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War”. TRT Akademi, vol. 11, no. 28, Sept. 2026, pp. 1170-09, doi:10.37679/trta.1952921.
Vancouver
1.Celal Erbay. Event-Window Analysis of Public Discourse via Multi-Target Stance Classification During the 12-Day Iran–Israel War. TRT Akademi. 2026 Sep. 1;11(28):1170-209. doi:10.37679/trta.1952921