The Grievance Dictionary

The Grievance Dictionary is a psycholinguistic dictionary which can be used to automatically understand language use in the context of grievance-fuelled violence threat assessment. The development of the dictionary was informed by suggestions from experienced threat assessment practitioners. These suggestions and subsequent human and computational word list generation resulted in a dictionary of 20,502 words annotated by 2,318 participants. The dictionary was validated by applying it to texts written by violent and non-violent individuals, showing strong evidence for linguistic differences between populations and high classification performance.

Before using the Grievance Dictionary, please read our paper, which contains important information on how and when the dictionary should be used.

Github repository to download and use the dictionary

Materials

• Study materials and development: Open Science Framework
• Paper: Behavior Research Methods

Papers/pre-prints using the dictionary

Please email me if you would like your paper to be added to this list.

• Frenguelli, N. (2024). The construction of masculinity in far-right attacker manifestos in the west: the reification of hegemonic masculinity and the use of ‘the child’ to mobilise others. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1–24. [Uses dataset only]
• Smart, E. (2024). Ruling in the Shadows: Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Use of the ‘Shadow Docket’and its Effects. Doctoral dissertation.
• Ai, L., Chen, Y. W., Yu, Y., Kweon, S., Hirschberg, J., & Levitan, S. I. (2024). What Makes A Video Radicalizing? Identifying Sources of Influence in QAnon Videos. Pre-print.
• Wadham, B., Connor, J., Toole, K., & Thomas, E. (2023). Mapping Service and transition to Self Harm and Suicidaility. Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.
• Chen, B., Lukito, J., & Koo, G. H. (2023). Comparing the #StopTheSteal Movement across Multiple Platforms: Differentiating Discourse on Facebook, Twitter, and Parler. Social Media + Society, 9(3).
• Klonek, F. E., Gerpott, F. H., & Handke, L. (2022). When Groups of Different Sizes Collide: Effects of Targeted Verbal Aggression on Intragroup Functioning. Group & Organization Management.
• Allchorn, W., Dafnos, A., & Gentile, F. (2022). The Role of Violent Conspiratorial Narratives in Violent and Non‑Violent Extreme Right Manifestos Online, 2015‑2020. Global Research Network on Terrorism and Technology (GNET).
• Habib, H., Srinivasan, P., & Nithyanand, R. (2022). Making a Radical Misogynist: How online social engagement with the Manosphere influences traits of radicalization. arXiv preprint.
• Lanning, K., Wetherell, G., Warfel, E. A., & Boyd, R. L. (2021). Changing channels? A comparison of Fox and MSNBC in 2012, 2016, and 2020. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.

Contact / questions

i.w.j.vandervegt [at] uu [dot] nl