  Human social behaviour has been observed to adhere to certain structures. One
such structure, the Ego Network Model (ENM), has been found almost ubiquitously
in human society. Recently, this model has been extended to include signed
connections. While the unsigned ENM has been rigorously observed for decades,
the signed version is still somewhat novel and lacks the same breadth of
observation. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to examine this signed
structure across various categories of individuals from a swathe of culturally
distinct regions. Minor differences in the distribution of signs across the
SENM can be observed between cultures. However, these can be overwhelmed when
the network is centred around a specific topic. Indeed, users who are engaged
with specific themes display higher levels of negativity in their networks.
This effect is further supported by a significant negative correlation between
the number of "general" topics discussed in a network and that network's
percentage of negative connections. These findings suggest that the negativity
of communications and relationships on Twitter are very dependent on the topics
being discussed and, furthermore, these relationships are more likely to be
negative when they are based around a specific topic.
