How Social Status Influences “Affect Language” in Tweets
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17140/PCSOJ-3-130Keywords:
Affect, Language use, Twitter, LIWC, Celebrity statusAbstract
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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