The “I”s have it: Sex and Social Status Differences on Twitter

Beach, Jennifer C; Brownlow, Sheila; Greene, Melissa D.; Silver, N. Clayton

doi:10.17140/sbrpoj-1-104

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 14 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Status may be more important than sex among this target sample, 21 particularly because the ages of persons in this sample is large compared to many language studies. While not all language studies focus on only college-aged language users 14,16 many LIWC studies focused on college-aged students, who may show more sex-linked language differences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…20 Social status differences (such as those due to rank, hierarchy, or importance) are also important to language use, particularly pronoun use. 21,22 Less, however, is known about how status as opposed to other social and demographic markers influences affect language. While Kacewicz et al's 22 study of status focused on pronoun use, those researchers also reported no statistically significant overall effect sizes for affect collapsing across five studies in a meta-analysis.…”

Section: "I'm So Overwhelmed By All This Birthday Love!!!! Thank You mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because people sometimes impersonate celebrities on social media, we verified the Twitter account by either checking the blue circle on the account to look for a white checkmark (which means that the Twitter corporation verified to whom it belonged), or we went to the target person's website and located the Twitter account link. Following Beach et al, 21 we operationalized social status by the number of followers (number of people who receive one person's Tweets) taking a median split of our sample (Mdn=1,063,500 followers, SD=3,610,545). We used a median split rather than dividing the sample into thirds to avoid potentially discrepant and significantly small within cell sample sizes that could severely diminish power.…”

Section: Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

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How Social Status Influences “Affect Language” in Tweets

Brownlow¹,

Beach²,

Silver³

2017

Psychol Cogn Sci Open J

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Background : We studied the "affect language" (emotional content) in over 2000 Tweets of 50 famous celebrities across a one-month period. Method: The 140-character language bursts were analyzed with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), which provided percentage of language used to represent various emotional states. Results: Lower-status celebrities (i.e., those with fewer followers) used more positive emotion in their Tweets compared to higher-status celebrities, although negative emotional content did not vary by celebrity status. There was no statistically significant difference between sexes on emotional content. Conclusion: Our results suggest that social status may be more important to public use of affect language than sex of the celebrity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: "I'm So Overwhelmed By All This Birthday Love!!!! Thank You mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

How Social Status Influences “Affect Language” in Tweets

Brownlow¹,

Beach²,

Silver³

2017

Psychol Cogn Sci Open J

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“…Each Instagram caption was taken verbatim from the post and placed into a word document, where we then applied the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015. 2 Following Beach et al 10 we used a median split of number of followers to delineate high and low status, and then used a 2×2 (Sex×Status Median Split) between-subjects ANOVA with number of followers as the dependent measure to check our manipulation. Table 1 shows the mean number of followers according to our independent variables.…”

Section: Methods Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…On Twitter, for example, women and lower-status persons used "I" in their Tweets, but "I" was equal (and lesser-likely) in both women and men of higher social status. 10 The use of an informal and friendly style that includes self-referencing is seen in men of lower social status, perhaps in effort to engage more people and enhance their own status through more self-referencing. The use of "I" signals a more "narrative" or "story-like" approach to provide perspective, omitting sophisticated language, and avoiding cognitive mechanisms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Were They Thinking? Analytic and Cognitive Language in Instagram Captions

Brownlow¹,

Pate²,

Alger³

et al. 2019

Soc Behav Res Pract Open J

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Background We examined content and expression of Instagram captions of major celebrities who differed according to sex and status, with a focus on determining whether these variables influenced the use of analytic language and cognitive content. Method Instagram captions (n=942) were analyzed with the linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC), which delineated percentage of language reflecting analytical thought and various cognitive mechanisms, such as causality and discrepancy. Results Men and low-status persons used more functional analytic language, demonstrating critical thought; in contrast, high-status celebrities showed more causality. Women more than men "qualified" their speech with discrepancy. These findings were not a function of sentence length. Conclusion Status increased the tendency to construct and explain, perhaps because higher status celebrities (particularly women) knew that they could hold followers' attention with complex content. The tendency to write captions that were concrete was seen in those lower-status persons who may have perceived that followers would not wade through a lot of complicated thoughts. Thus, status contributes to the manner in captioning based, perhaps, on having a broader audience willing to read more complex language.

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Gender differences in language are small but matter for disorders

Wallentin

2020

Handbook of Clinical Neurology

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Language is omnipresent in human life and therefore also in the brain. Gender differences in language can be signs of cognitive differences, but can also by themselves be the cause for such differences. Females have a slight linguistic advantage to males, but effect sizes are small and gender explains very little of the variance seen in the normal population (1-2%). However, males outnumber females in the lowest 10 th percentile in language tests (2:1), causing males to more often be diagnosed with developmental disorders which rely on tests of language development. Thus, gender differences in language are negligible, if you focus on the whole population, but if you focus on language deficits, gender differences are outspoken. Differences in voice and word-use can be observed among the genders, making it possible to predict gender from these measures with a high degree of certainty. A subtle finding is that women use more 1 st person pronouns. This is also observed in depression which is more prevalent in females, opening up for a potential link. Sex chromosome trisomies are often accompanied by language deficits, but the causes for this are not known. No gender differences are observed in the linguistic symptoms of neurodegenerative disorders. Post-stroke aphasia is more prevalent among women than among men, but this seems to be an age-effect. A link between the brain and gender differences in language is thus missing.

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The “I”s have it: Sex and Social Status Differences on Twitter

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

How Social Status Influences “Affect Language” in Tweets

How Social Status Influences “Affect Language” in Tweets

What Were They Thinking? Analytic and Cognitive Language in Instagram Captions

Gender differences in language are small but matter for disorders

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