How people tweet on their phone is n’t quite the same as how they twirp on their business office or nursing home computer . earpiece tweets are all aboutme , me , me , concord to a novel subject area in theJournal of Communication .
A Goldsmiths , University of London sociologist team up up with researchers from Bowdoin College and the University of Maine to analyze a aggregate of 235 million tweet . Sources for the tweets , attract from an API design to draw random tweet from around the world , included mobile Twitter apps for iPhone , Android , Blackberry , and iPad , Twitter ’s web app , and the screen background TweetDeck app . They then study the kind of linguistic process used in these tweet , looking at whether they used word of honor like “ I ” and “ me ” or words like “ they ” and “ them , ” what kind of emotions the tweets contained , and whether they used linguistic process that fit gendered stereotypes .
They find out that tweets sent from multitude ’s sound tend to be more egocentric — mass tweeted more about themselves than any other subject from nomadic apps . They also used more minus language , point that drug user were more interested in keeping social culture medium up - to - date with the bad stuff in their lives than electroneutral or convinced events .
The researchers do n’t go so far as to explicate why this is , but it makes sense . If you ’re out and about , you ’re more likely to pick up your phone and tweet about the infuriating interaction you had at the deli than you are to take part in a discussion about political events or join to a great magazine publisher feature . Maybe the great unwashed who pinch from their desktop all day are stake as part of their work duties ( as most journalists do ) , skewing those tweet towards current result and discussion more than tweet about the ego . The study also leave get to the opening that Twitter ’s web users are significantly unlike from their nomadic users .
In addition , all the tweet , whether they were sent from nomadic devices or desktop estimator , skewed toward more stereotypically “ masculine ” language . The researchers defined " masculine " tweets as those using word like “ aggression ” and “ contention , ” rather than terms stereotypically assort with women , like “ gentle ” or “ supply ship . ” ( This may be why Twitter ’s algorithmsclassify many womenas being male users . ) While it ’s admittedly voiceless to imagine a scenario in which someone would feel the need to tweet about tenderness , the phenomenon could be deserving a follow - up study .
[ h / t : Pacific Standard ]
