Brief Textual Indicators of Political Orientation

Language reflects one’s thoughts, feelings, and worldview. Technology has led to a proliferation of brief communications. Is this brief text meaningful? We examine whether text from brief political and nonpolitical communications reflect political ideology. Student responses to their ideological fou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of language and social psychology 2019-01, Vol.38 (1), p.106-125
Main Authors: Okdie, Bradley M., Rempala, Daniel M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Celebrities
Changes
Communication
Conservatism
Court decisions
Fame
Ideology
New technology
Political attitudes
Political identity
Political ideologies
Politics
Resistance
Supreme courts
Technology
Text analysis
Threats
Worldview
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Summary:Language reflects one’s thoughts, feelings, and worldview. Technology has led to a proliferation of brief communications. Is this brief text meaningful? We examine whether text from brief political and nonpolitical communications reflect political ideology. Student responses to their ideological foundations (Study 1), brief snippets of unanimous Supreme Court verdicts (Study 2), and celebrity tweets (Study 3) were textually analyzed to examine whether they contained perceived threat and resistance to change content and whether this predicted the authors’ political affiliation. Across three studies, words related to resistance to change, but not perceived threat, were related to political ideology such that conservatives were more likely to include resistance-to-change-related words in their responses compared with liberals. These results suggest that brief text, even when not overtly political, reflects one’s political ideology. The increase in brief text production via new technology and its ability to predict political ideology make these findings particularly meaningful.
ISSN:0261-927X
1552-6526
DOI:10.1177/0261927X18762973