The Drift of #MyBodyMyChoice Discourse on Twitter

#MyBodyMyChoice is a well-known hashtag originally created to advocate for women's rights, often used in discourse about abortion and bodily autonomy. The Covid-19 outbreak prompted governments to take containment measures such as vaccination campaigns and mask mandates. Population groups oppos...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-05
Main Authors: Menghini, Cristina, Uhr, Justin, Haddadan, Shahrzad, Champagne, Ashley, Sandstede, Bjorn, Ramachandran, Sohini
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autonomy
Bodily integrity
Containment
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Outbreaks
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:#MyBodyMyChoice is a well-known hashtag originally created to advocate for women's rights, often used in discourse about abortion and bodily autonomy. The Covid-19 outbreak prompted governments to take containment measures such as vaccination campaigns and mask mandates. Population groups opposed to such measures started to use the slogan "My Body My Choice" to claim their bodily autonomy. In this paper, we investigate whether the discourse around the hashtag #MyBodyMyChoice on Twitter changed its usage after the Covid-19 outbreak. We observe that the conversation around the hashtag changed in two ways. First, semantically, the hashtag #MyBodyMyChoice drifted towards conversations around Covid-19, especially in messages opposed to containment measures. Second, while before the pandemic users used to share content produced by experts and authorities, after Covid-19 the users' attention has shifted towards individuals.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2205.04898