Analyzing the language used by social groupings may reveal ideals and principles that go beyond what they openly proclaim about themselves.
According to new research, the way groups communicate online indicates how the group perceives itself, and by seeing how group members write, it is possible to follow how a group’s values develop over time.
The research, carried out by psychologists from the Universities of Exeter, Bath, and Lancaster, could provide social scientists with a new technique of researching group behavior and social dynamics. It may also assist authorities in addressing detrimental behaviors such as the propagation of conspiracy theories, as well as better predicting when groups are at risk of radicalization or criminal behavior.
“The study of group dynamics often involves asking people to tell us about their group for example, what does being an England football supporter mean to you?” says Dr. Alicia Cork from the University of Bath. “The drawbacks of this, in simple terms, is that these questions can be quite ambiguous to answer, and it is tricky to articulate what particular group memberships may mean to a person. However, when you concentrate on the style of communication used by group members, you can access the overarching principles that guide the behaviour of those members.”
The PhD research, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, was conducted in three distinct stages. The academics initially investigated if similar groups communicated in similar ways. They chose three communities on the internet forum Reddit for each of the five extant group types: vocational, political, religious/ethnic, relational, or stigmatized.
For example, for the relational type, they chose communities specific to fatherhood and motherhood, but also a more general one focused on relationships; for the political type, they selected a political party (Conservative), a social movement (Feminist) and a shared ideology (Libertarian); and for the stigmatised type, they selected a transgender community, one focused on alcohol abuse and one discussing homelessness.
The study of group dynamics often involves asking people to tell us about their group for example, what does being an England football supporter mean to you? The drawbacks of this, in simple terms, is that these questions can be quite ambiguous to answer, and it is tricky to articulate what particular group memberships may mean to a person. However, when you concentrate on the style of communication used by group members, you can access the overarching principles that guide the behaviour of those members.
Dr. Alicia Cork
The researchers ran a year’s worth of Reddit comments from the 15 online communities through specialist software, which calculated the writing style of each group. This factored on things like formality and how emotive/reflective the language was. They then compared the writing styles of the groups to see how similar or dissimilar they were.
When they plotted their relative positions on a graph, they discovered that groups clustered closely with their counterparts, implying that similar groups interact in similar ways. The communities associated with stigma were an exception, as their communication styles varied more.
The team attempted to link the way a group communicates with the explicit values that they hold in the second phase. They were able to construct a picture of how the groups most likely described themselves by analyzing the posts against ten well-established values such as compassion, security, conformity, power, and achievement. They then compared this to their relative clustering position.
“The results indicated that our vocational identities such as entrepreneurs and white-collar salespeople expressed high levels of achievement but fairly little benevolence,” said Dr. Miriam Koschate-Reis, Associate Professor of Computational Social Psychology, from the Institute for Data Science and AI (IDSAI) at Exeter.
“Groups that expressed benevolence were consistent with the relational types mothers, fathers, and those focused on relationships. Interestingly, we also found that while the political and religious/ethnic groups tended to espouse conformity, the latter tended to express greater benevolence in their language.”
The project’s last step studied if this linguistic technique might be used to track the evolution and development of a group’s collective self-understanding through time.
Focusing upon the transgender identity, they analysed Reddit data going back to 2011, and found that it had migrated away from fellow stigmatised groups (communities discussing homelessness or alcohol abuse), towards those defined more by the theme of collective action, such as those in the political and religious/ethnic groups.
“The changes we observe in the linguistic style of this transgender group appears to correspond with the gradual politicisation and de-stigmatisation of that group,” said Prof Mark Levine, of the Department of Psychology at Lancaster. “And this is consistent with what we know of the development of LGBTQ+ rights over that period.”
According to the researchers, this language strategy could help better identify fledgling political movements, such as those that begin as mutual support groups but subsequently grow radicalized. It also allows them to learn about groups that may want to conceal their true character, such as criminal organizations that hide in plain sight on online forums.
“Understanding what groups stand for is integral to a diverse array of social processes, ranging from understanding political conflicts to promoting public health behaviours,” adds Prof Richard Everson, a Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Exeter. “The results from these three studies provide compelling evidence that suggests that linguistic style can be used to understand the collective self-understanding of social groups.”
