How an Interest in Mindfulness Influences Linguistic Markers in Online Microblogging Discourse

Abstract

Objectives This study aimed to investigate the linguistic markers of an interest in mindfulness. Specifically, it examined whether individuals who follow mindfulness experts on Twitter use different language in their tweets compared to a random sample of Twitter users. This is a first step which may complement commonly used self-report measures of mindfulness with quantifiable behavioural metrics. Method A linguistic analysis examined the association between an interest in mindfulness and linguistic markers in 1.87 million Twitter entries across 19,732 users from two groups, (1) a mindfulness interest group (n = 10,347) comprising followers of five mindfulness experts and (2) a control group (n = 9385) of a random selection of Twitter users. Text analysis software (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) was used to analyse linguistic markers associated with the categories and subcategories of mindfulness, affective processes, social orientation, and “being” mode of mind. Results Analyses revealed an association between an interest in mindfulness and lexical choice. Specifically, tweets from the mindfulness interest group contained a significantly higher frequency of markers associated with mindfulness, positive emotion, happiness, and social orientation, and a significantly lower frequency of markers associated with negative emotion, past focus, present focus, future focus, family orientation, and friend orientation. Conclusions Results from this study suggest that an interest in mindfulness is associated with more frequent use of certain language markers on Twitter. The analysis opens possible pathways towards developing more naturalistic methods of understanding and assessing mindfulness which may complement self-reporting methods.