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Diversity from Emojis and Keywords in Social Media

  • George Mason University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Social media is a popular source for political communication and user engagement around social and political issues. While the diversity of the population participating in social and political events in person are often considered for social science research, measuring the diversity representation within online communities is not a common part of social media analysis. This paper attempts to fill that gap and presents a methodology for labeling and analyzing diversity in a social media sample based on emojis and keywords associated with gender, skin tone, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology. We analyze the trends of diversity related themes and the diversity of users engaging in the online political community during the leadup to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Our results reveal patterns along diversity themes that otherwise would have been lost in the volume of content. Further, the diversity composition of our sample of online users rallying around political campaigns was similar to those measured in exit polls on election day. The diversity language model and methodology for diversity analysis presented in this paper can be adapted to other languages and applied to other research domains to provide social media researchers a valuable lens to identify the diversity of voices and topics of interest for the less-represented populations participating in an online social community.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication11th International Conference on Social Media and Society
Subtitle of host publicationDiverse Voices - Promises and Perils of Social Media for Diversity, SMSociety 2020
EditorsAnatoliy Gruzd, Philip Mai, Raquel Recuero, Angel Hernandez-Garcia, Chei Sian Lee, James Cook, Jaigris Hodson, Bree McEwan, Jill Hopke
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages92-100
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9781450376884
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 22 2020
Event11th International Conference on Social Media and Society: Diverse Voices - Promises and Perils of Social Media for Diversity, SMSociety 2020 - Virtual, Online, Canada
Duration: Jul 22 2020Jul 24 2020

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference11th International Conference on Social Media and Society: Diverse Voices - Promises and Perils of Social Media for Diversity, SMSociety 2020
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVirtual, Online
Period07/22/2007/24/20

Keywords

  • diversity
  • elections
  • emoji
  • political campaigns
  • Social media

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