Identifying accurate pro‐choice and pro‐life identity labels in Spanish: Social media insights and implications for comparative survey research

Abstract

Introduction Although debate remains about the saliency and relevance of pro‐choice and pro‐life labels (as abortion belief indicators), they have been consistently used for decades to broadly designate abortion identity. However, clear labels are less apparent in other languages (e.g., Spanish). Social media, as an exploratory data science tool, can be leveraged to identify the presence and popularity of online abortion identity labels and how they are contextualized online. Purpose This study aims to determine how popularly used Spanish‐language pro‐choice and pro‐life identity labels are contextualized online. Method We used Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic models, an unsupervised natural language processing (NLP) application, to generate themes about Spanish language tweets categorized by Spanish abortion identity labels: (1) proelección (pro‐choice); (2) derecho a decidir (right to choose); (3) proaborto (pro‐abortion); (4) provida (pro‐life); (5) antiaborto (anti‐abortion); and (6) derecho a vivir (right to life). We manually reviewed themes for each identity label to assess scope. Results All six identity labels included in our analysis contained some references to abortion. However, several labels were not exclusive to abortion. Proelección (pro‐choice), for example, contained several themes related to ongoing presidential elections. Discussion and Conclusion No singular Spanish abortion identity label encapsulates abortion beliefs; however, there are several viable options. Just as the debate remains ongoing about pro‐choice and pro‐life as accurate indicators of abortion beliefs in English, we must also consider that identity is more complex than binary labels in Spanish.

Randomized experimental testing of new survey approaches to improve abortion reporting in theUnitedStates

“…Although there is evidence that abortion is also a stigmatized experience for cisgender men and that they underreport their partners' abortions, 34 they were not included in much of the formative research or the survey experiment. The experiment was conducted only in English, as there is a need to develop questions in Spanish that are reflective of potentially differentiated reporting issues for Spanish speakers and different understandings and experiences of abortion stigma 59 . Finally, the models do not include interactions between Factor 1 and Factor 2 (and were not adequately powered to detect interaction effects); as a result, the ATE for any given question wording experiment in Factor 2 (for example) is technically a weighted average of the effect when placed at the beginning of the survey and the effect when placed at the end of the survey 60 .…”

“…The experiment was conducted only in English, as there is a need to develop questions in Spanish that are reflective of potentially differentiated reporting issues for Spanish speakers and different understandings and experiences of abortion stigma. 59 Finally, the models do not include interactions between Factor 1 and Factor 2 (and were not adequately powered to detect interaction effects); as a result, the ATE for any given question wording experiment in Factor 2 (for example) is technically a weighted average of the effect when placed at the beginning of the survey and the effect when placed at the end of the survey. 60 However, this combined effect is, in fact, the estimate of interest, as it mirrors the real context of question changes in surveys: Any given intervention in question wording or placement is almost always embedded in surveys with multiple other factors that may influence reporting.…”

Pro‐choice/pro‐elección versus pro‐life/pro‐vida: Examining abortion identity terms across English and Spanish in the United States

“…The terms pro-vida and pro-elección do appear in Spanish language media (e.g., Boone 2017; Univision and AP 2019), academic papers (Casado 2014;Tabares Loza and Quishpe Gaibor 2019), and across numerous websites (e.g., Planned Parenthood, Wikipedia) related to abortion and have been used by national polling firms and organizations on survey items related to abortion (e.g., Kaiser Family Foundation 2020; PerryUndem 2016). Yet, the relative frequency of use of pro-vida and pro-elección in Spanish-language media appears to be much lower than the use of pro-life and pro-choice in English-language media, including social media (Valdez et al 2022). Additionally, within Spanish-language media, there is an apparent disconnect between how often pro-vida appears when compared with pro-elección, suggesting that, while the translation of pro-life (as pro-vida) may be relatively straightforward, the translation of pro-choice may be much less so.…”

“…Yet, the relative frequency of use of pro‐vida and pro‐elección in Spanish‐language media appears to be much lower than the use of pro‐life and pro‐choice in English‐language media, including social media (Valdez et al. 2022). Additionally, within Spanish‐language media, there is an apparent disconnect between how often pro‐vida appears when compared with pro‐elección, suggesting that, while the translation of pro‐life (as pro‐vida) may be relatively straightforward, the translation of pro‐choice may be much less so.…”

Examining ethno-racial attitudes of the public in Twitter discourses related to the United States Supreme Court Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling: A machine learning approach

“…Nevertheless, this challenge can be overcome by employing advanced natural language processing and computational text analytic methods such as sentiment analysis and topic modeling to uncover attitudes and salient themes emerging from public discourses contained in big data ( 29 , 30 ). Several studies have employed computational text analytic methods to examine population attitudes toward contraception ( 31 ), topics and sentiments expressed in health events ( 32 ), abortion legislation ( 24 , 33 , 34 ), including the recent Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs ( 2 ), COVID-19 pandemic ( 35 ) and “Black Lives Matter” ( 36 ). Also, the utility of Twitter in studying abortion attitudes draws from existing literature which showed that opponents and proponents of abortion, including public figures and social movement organizations use their social media platforms to demonstrate their solidarity, spread information, mobilize supporters and raise funds for events following the referendum repealing Eight Amendment of the constitution in Ireland in 2017 ( 37 ).…”