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Article
We tweet Arabic; I tweet English: self-concept, language and social media
Heliyon
  • Justin Thomas, Zayed University
  • A. Al-Shehhi, Khalifa University of Science and Technology
  • M. Al-Ameri, Zayed University
  • Ian Grey, Lebanese American University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-1-2019
Abstract

© 2019 The Authors Differences in self-concept have been observed across cultures. Participants from collectivist societies tend to describe themselves using social and relational attributes (mother, student, Arab) more frequently than their individualist counterparts, who tend to rely more heavily on personal attributes (fun, tall, beautiful). Much of this past research has relied on relatively small samples of college students, tasked with spontaneously reporting self-concepts in classroom settings. The present study re-examines these ideas using data extracted from Twitter, the popular social media platform. In analysis one, the Twitter biographies of individuals exclusively posting messages in English (N = 500) and those posting only in Arabic (N = 500) were content analyzed and quantified for differences in the frequency of personal versus social attribute use. Analysis two applied a bilingual word counting algorithm to the biographies of a larger sample of Twitter users (N = 242,162), exploring the relative frequency of social attributes, specifically familial roles (e.g. mother, father, daughter, son), across both English and Arabic users. In analysis one, the Twitter biographies of exclusive Arabic users contained significantly more social attributes than their English using counterparts. In analysis two, Arabic biographies contained significantly more familial references than their English language counterparts. These findings support the idea that cultural values may influence self-construal. Big data extracted from social media platforms appear to offer a useful means of exploring self-concept across cultures and languages.

Publisher
Elsevier Ltd
Keywords
  • Arabic,
  • Culture,
  • Psychology,
  • Self concept,
  • Social media,
  • Twitter,
  • UAE
Scopus ID

85069674047

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International
Indexed in Scopus
Yes
Open Access
Yes
Open Access Type
Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series
Citation Information
Justin Thomas, A. Al-Shehhi, M. Al-Ameri and Ian Grey. "We tweet Arabic; I tweet English: self-concept, language and social media" Heliyon Vol. 5 Iss. 7 (2019) p. e02087 ISSN: <p><a href="https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/issn/2405-8440" target="_blank">2405-8440</a></p>
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/justin-thomas28211/20/