TY - GEN
T1 - Analyzing ideological discourse on social media
T2 - 2017 International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas, CSS 2017
AU - Sharma, Eva
AU - Saha, Koustuv
AU - Ernala, Sindhu Kiranmai
AU - Ghoshal, Sucheta
AU - De Choudhury, Munmun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.
PY - 2017/10/19
Y1 - 2017/10/19
N2 - Social media provides a unique platform enabling public discourse around cross-cutting ideologies. In this paper, we provide a methodological lens for studying the discourses around the controversial topic of abortion on social media. Drawing from the theoretical framework of “Critical Discourse Analysis”, we study discourse around abortion on Twitter through analysis of language and the manifested socio-cultural practices. First, employing a large dataset of over 700 thousand posts, we find that abortion discourse can be classified into three ideologies: For, Against, and Neutral to Abortion. We observe these ideological categories to be characterized by distinctive textual and psycholinguistic cues. Finally, we analyze the nature of discourse across ideologies against the backdrop of socio-cultural practices associated with abortion. Our findings reveal how the hegemonic nature of the rhetoric that has historically shaped the abortion debate in society is reconceptualized on Twitter. We discuss the role of social media as a public sphere that shapes critical discourse around controversial topics.
AB - Social media provides a unique platform enabling public discourse around cross-cutting ideologies. In this paper, we provide a methodological lens for studying the discourses around the controversial topic of abortion on social media. Drawing from the theoretical framework of “Critical Discourse Analysis”, we study discourse around abortion on Twitter through analysis of language and the manifested socio-cultural practices. First, employing a large dataset of over 700 thousand posts, we find that abortion discourse can be classified into three ideologies: For, Against, and Neutral to Abortion. We observe these ideological categories to be characterized by distinctive textual and psycholinguistic cues. Finally, we analyze the nature of discourse across ideologies against the backdrop of socio-cultural practices associated with abortion. Our findings reveal how the hegemonic nature of the rhetoric that has historically shaped the abortion debate in society is reconceptualized on Twitter. We discuss the role of social media as a public sphere that shapes critical discourse around controversial topics.
KW - Abortion debate
KW - Critical discourse analysis
KW - Public sphere
KW - Social media
KW - Twitter
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049401830&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85049401830&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3145574.3145577
DO - 10.1145/3145574.3145577
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85049401830
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
BT - Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas, CSS 2017
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 19 October 2017 through 22 October 2017
ER -