Author ORCID Identifier
Cynthia Najdowski: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3624-9188
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2023.2296484
Abstract
Attitudes towards immigration have been shown to be driven by dehumanization and disgust. The more people dehumanize immigrants and the more disgusted they feel, the more negative attitudes they tend to have toward immigrants. However, little is known about how exposure to social media content that links dehumanization, disgust, and immigration influences users’ attitudes on this issue. This is important to consider because the majority of adults in the United States are on social media. We used Twitter data, machine learning, and sentiment analysis to investigate whether exposure to dehumanizing or disgust-eliciting tweets about immigration impacts users’ own sentiment toward immigration over time. Our results were in some ways consistent and in other ways inconsistent with prior literature. They showed that either dehumanizing or disgust-eliciting language appears in 66% of our sample of tweets pertaining to immigration. Unexpectedly, however, exposure to both kinds of language in tweets about immigration related to small increases in positive sentiment about immigration over time. There was evidence of Granger-causality only for dehumanizing language, however, and only when controlling for the political affiliation of the communicator. These findings indicate that social media exposure may influence public perceptions of immigrants and immigration issues in unexpected ways.
Recommended Citation
Wahrer, Katherine S.; Najdowski, Cynthia J.; and Passarelli, John V., "Effects of Dehumanization and Disgust-Eliciting Language on Attitudes Toward Immigration: A Sentiment Analysis of Twitter Data" (2024). Psychology Faculty Scholarship. 48.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/psychology_fac_scholar/48
Included in
American Politics Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Immigration Law Commons, Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons, Law and Psychology Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons, Social Justice Commons, Social Media Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons, Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons
Comments
This is the Author's Accepted Manuscript. The Version of Record appears here: Wahrer, K. S., Najdowski, C. J., & Passarelli, J. V. (2024). Effects of dehumanization and disgust-eliciting language on attitudes toward immigration: a sentiment analysis of Twitter data. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2023.2296484