Tweeting about Black Lives: Estimating Racial Affinity of #Blacklivesmatter Users
Posted: 30 Oct 2017
Date Written: October 28, 2017
Abstract
Much attention has been paid to the use of Twitter as a form of political expression. Use of the Black Lives Matter hashtag has generated discussion about the treatment of Black people in the United States and sentiment about the Black Lives Matter organization itself. While analysis of the tweets themselves are an important step in understanding online political expression, what is also important to understand is who is doing the tweeting as discussion may differ based on race. In this paper, I focus on tweets using the Black Lives Matter hashtag to understand how tweeting patterns and sentiment toward Black Lives Matter differs by racial group. More specifically, I estimate race (racial affinity) using pictures of twitter users and text. I expect to find that Black twitter users utilize the Black Lives Matter hashtag in distinct and more positive ways than their white counterparts.
Keywords: tweets, racial affinity, text, text as data
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