This article presents a conceptual and methodological framework to study heritage-based tribalism in Big Data ecologies by combining approaches from the humanities, social and computing sciences. We use such a framework to examine how ideas of human origin and ancestry are deployed on Twitter for purposes of antagonistic ‘othering’. Our goal is to equip researchers with theory and analytical tools for investigating divisive online uses of the past in today’s networked societies. In particular, we apply notions of heritage, othering and neo-tribalism, and both data-intensive and qualitative methods to the case of people’s engagements with the news of Cheddar Man’s DNA on Twitter. We show that heritage-based tribalism in Big Data ecologies is uniquely shaped as an assemblage by the coalescing of different forms of antagonistic othering. Those that co-occur most frequently are the ones that draw on ‘Views on Race’, ‘Trust in Experts’ and ‘Political Leaning’. The framings of the news that were most influential in triggering heritage-based tribalism were introduced by both right- and left-leaning newspaper outlets and by activist websites. We conclude that heritage-themed communications that rely on provocative narratives on social media tend to be labelled as political and not to be conducive to positive change in people’s attitudes towards issues such as racism.

本文提供了一个概念和方法框架，通过结合人文科学，社会科学和计算机科学的方法，来研究大数据生态中基于遗产的部落。我们使用这样的框架来检查如何将人类起源和祖先的想法部署在Twitter上，以进行对抗性的“其他”。我们的目标是为研究人员提供理论和分析工具，以调查当今网络社会中过去对在线的分散使用。尤其是，我们将遗产，其他和新部落主义的概念以及数据密集型和定性方法都应用于人们在Twitter上与切达曼（Cheddar Man）脱氧核糖核酸（DNA）的新闻订婚的情况。我们表明，通过融合不同形式的对抗性对等，大数据生态中基于遗产的部落主义被独特地塑造成一个集合。经常出现的是那些基于“种族观”，“专家信任”和“政治倾斜”的东西。右倾和左倾的报纸机构以及激进主义者网站都介绍了在触发基于传统的部落主义方面最有影响力的新闻框架。我们得出的结论是，以社交媒体上的挑衅性叙事为基础的以遗产为主题的交流往往被贴上政治标签，不利于人们对种族主义等问题的态度发生积极变化。