  We present a study of the properties of network of political discussions on
one of the most popular Polish Internet forums. This provides the opportunity
to study the computer mediated human interactions in strongly bipolar
environment. The comments of the participants are found to be mostly
disagreements, with strong percentage of invective and provocative ones. Binary
exchanges (quarrels) play significant role in the network growth and topology.
Statistical analysis shows that the growth of the discussions depends on the
degree of controversy of the subject and the intensity of personal conflict
between the participants. This is in contrast to most previously studied social
networks, for example networks of scientific citations, where the nature of the
links is much more positive and based on similarity and collaboration rather
than opposition and abuse. The work discusses also the implications of the
findings for more general studies of consensus formation, where our
observations of increased conflict contradict the usual assumptions that
interactions between people lead to averaging of opinions and agreement.
