Word Association Thematic Analysis: A Social Media Text Exploration Strategy

Journal of Data and Information Science

Fairclough

2021

PurposeAlthough gender identities influence how people present themselves on social media, previous studies have tested pre-specified dimensions of difference, potentially overlooking other differences and ignoring nonbinary users.Design/methodology/approachWord association thematic analysis was used to systematically check for fine-grained statistically significant gender differences in Twitter profile descriptions between 409,487 UK-based female, male, and nonbinary users in 2020. A series of statistical tests systematically identified 1,474 differences at the individual word level, and a follow up thematic analysis grouped these words into themes.FindingsThe results reflect offline variations in interests and in jobs. They also show differences in personal disclosures, as reflected by words, with females mentioning qualifications, relationships, pets, and illnesses much more, nonbinaries discussing sexuality more, and males declaring political and sports affiliations more. Other themes were internally imbalanced, including personal appearance (e.g. male: beardy; female: redhead), self-evaluations (e.g. male: legend; nonbinary: witch; female: feisty), and gender identity (e.g. male: dude; nonbinary: enby; female: queen).Research limitationsThe methods are affected by linguistic styles and probably under-report nonbinary differences.Practical implicationsThe gender differences found may inform gender theory, and aid social web communicators and marketers.Originality/valueThe results show a much wider range of gender expression differences than previously acknowledged for any social media site.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

Male, Female, and Nonbinary Differences in UK Twitter Self-descriptions: A Fine-grained Systematic Exploration

Journal of Data and Information Science

Fairclough

2021

“…This section reviews lifestyle information behaviour and how lifestyle information can be delivered on YouTube. Whilst there is some research into how, why and when people watch YouTube (e.g., Foster, 2020) and the content of YouTube comments (Thelwall, 2021), none so far seems to focus on general lifestyle information. Given the wide variety of uses of YouTube, from education and news to gaming and cartoons, it does not seem relevant to report general YouTube usage studies.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifestyle information from YouTube influencers: some consumption patterns

2021

PurposeDespite lifestyle information needs being an important part of our daily lives, little is known about the role of common sources. Whilst magazines and television are traditional providers of lifestyle content, including for fashion, makeup, fitness and cookery, they have been partly replaced by content-creating online influencers.Design/methodology/approachTo investigate this new resource, this article analyses comments on the videos of 223 UK female lifestyle influencers on YouTube for information about possible viewing patterns.FindingsThree quarters of comments are written during the week of the video being published, consistent with videos being consumed with an information browsing function, rather than treated as an information resource to be searched when needed. Commenting on the videos of multiple influencers occurred often, suggesting that many viewers are not loyal to a single influencer. Thus, influencers seem to primarily support active scanning rather than searching for specific information. Typical viewers of UK female lifestyle influencers can therefore expect to accumulate lifestyle ideas and knowledge for potential future use in addition to gaining timely suggestions for near future routine decision-making.Practical implicationsPublic-facing information professionals, health professionals and counsellors may consider recommending selected videos or influencers to help with lifestyle concerns.Originality/valueThis is the first large scale study of content-creating influencers as a lifestyle information resource.

“…The tweets from each country were analysed with Word Association Thematic Analysis (WATA), which is designed to identify themes in the differences between two sets of texts (Thelwall, 2021). The method draws attention to these themes that the analyst must then explain, potentially drawing attention to differences that could otherwise be overlooked (Thelwall et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Twitter give insights into international differences in Covid-19 vaccination? Eight countries’ English tweets to 21 March 2021

2021

EPI

Vaccination programs may help the world to reduce or eliminate Covid-19. Information about them may help countries to design theirs more effectively, with important benefits for public health. This article investigates whether it is possible to get insights into national vaccination programmes from a quick international comparison of public comments on Twitter. For this, word association thematic analysis (WATA) was applied to English-language vaccine-related tweets from eight countries gathered between 5 December 2020 and 21 March 2021. The method was able to quickly identify multiple international differences. Whilst some were irrelevant, potentially non-trivial differences include differing extents to which non-government scientific experts are important to national vaccination discussions. For example, Ireland seemed to be the only country in which university presidents were widely tweeted about in vaccine discussions. India’s vaccine kindness term #VaccineMaitri was another interesting difference, highlighting the need for international sharing.