How Symbols Influence Social Media Discourse
An Embedding Regression Analysis of Trump's Return to Twitter
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2424331 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel Karell (0000-0001-6709-6535, Yale University, corresponding author), Jeff Sachs (0000-0002-6451-2502, Yale University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2378-0231 • E-ISSN: 2378-0231 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/23780231231212108 |
| OpenAlex | W4389139351 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 36 |
How does social media content affect users' online discourse? Existing scholarship sheds light on how several social media features involving content can influence users' speech. However, this research often conflates content's lexical dimension with its symbolic dimension. The authors analyze how the symbolic properties of online content can distinctly affect discourse on social media. Specifically, they examine how the symbolic meanings conveyed by Twitter's reinstatement of Donald Trump's account influenced Twitter users' discourse. The results of embedding regressions indicate that Trump's reinstatement immediately shifted users' discourse about social and political identity-based groups, but only when they discussed Black and Jewish people. Additional results suggest that the discourse became more politicized and that the discursive shift was short lived. The authors' findings contribute conceptual and analytical clarity to the sociosemantic dynamics of online discourse, encouraging future research to distinguish and compare the lexical and symbolic dimensions of online content
Aesthetics · Affect (linguistics · CLARITY · Content (measure theory · Dimension (graph theory · Identity (music · Linguistics · Political science · Scholarship · Social media · Sociology · World Wide Web · Communication · Computer Science · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology
Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing
How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization
Silenced on social media
Issues, involvement, and influence
Social media use and polarized redistributive attitudes
Social Media, Political Expression, and Political Participation
Social Media, News Consumption, and Polarization
The role of (social) media in political polarization
Dynamics of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric in far-right social media
Trumping the equality norm? Presidential tweets and revealed racial attitudes
American Political Science Review
Leveraging the alignment between machine learning and intersectionality
The Populist Zeitgeist
Cultural cartography with word embeddings
Born for a Storm
Distributional Structure
Differential Online Exposure to Extremist Content and Political Violence
Embedding Regression
No2Sectarianism
Unsorted Significance
Does the Musk Twitter Takeover Matter? Political Influencers, Their Arguments, and the Quality of Information They Share
Mask Refusal Backlash
Who Wears the Maga Hat? Racial Beliefs and Faith in Trump
Theoretical Foundations and Limits of Word Embeddings
Why populism
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |