Using Linguistic Cues for Analyzing Social Movements

TL;DR

This paper investigates how linguistic cues like sentiment and individualism differ in social media and news articles during the Black Lives Matter movement, revealing insights into discourse dynamics across media types.

Contribution

It introduces a comparative analysis of linguistic features in social media and news coverage of a social movement, highlighting differences in discourse over time.

Findings

Linguistic cues vary significantly between social media and news articles.

Sentiment and emotional expression differ across media types.

Discourse patterns evolve uniquely in social media versus traditional news.

Abstract

With the growth of social media usage, social activists try to leverage this platform to raise the awareness related to a social issue and engage the public worldwide. The broad use of social media platforms in recent years, made it easier for the people to stay up-to-date on the news related to regional and worldwide events. While social media, namely Twitter, assists social movements to connect with more people and mobilize the movement, traditional media such as news articles help in spreading the news related to the events in a broader aspect. In this study, we analyze linguistic features and cues, such as individualism vs. pluralism, sentiment and emotion to examine the relationship between the medium and discourse over time. We conduct this work in a specific application context, the "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) movement, and compare discussions related to this event in social media vs. news articles.