Bridging semantic and social network analyses: the case of the hashtag #precisamosfalarsobreaborto (we need to talk about abortion) on Twitter

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an innovative method design that combines semantic with social network analysis in order to measure opinion leadership in social networking sites in a more accurate way. We used this method to assess the efficacy of the TPM magazine in disseminating its pro-decriminalization of abortion frames (contained in the cover story of its 148th issue) that were associated with the hashtag #precisamosfalarsobreaborto (a trending topic in November 2014). The data were collected from Twitter through the data-mining application NodeXL (N = 1010). A content analysis of a random sample was carried out (N = 376; margin of error = 4%; confidence interval = 95%; Krippendorff’s alpha = 0.661). Using the software Gephi, we plotted the data on a socio-semantic graph, which indicates that (a) the border of the social network does not represent a semantic gap with the center and (b) despite the network being extremely like-minded, one of its hubs appears to be what we conceptualize as a hotspot of contestation. We discuss how future research may replicate and refine our methodology to handle population datasets and big data as well.

KEYWORDS:

• Social network analysis
• opinion leadership
• content analysis
• abortion discourse
• frame analysis
• Twitter

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical assessment of this paper and Afonso de Albuquerque for making this research possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Diógenes Lycarião is Assistant Professor of Journalism at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). He has obtained his Ph.D. in 2014 from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). He worked as Guest Researcher (Capes/DAAD Fellow) at the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (Mzes) in 2013 and between 2014 and 2015 as a postdoctoral scholar at the Post-Graduate Program in Communication, Fluminense Federal University (UFF). His research focuses on Public Opinion, Social Media, and Journalism. [email: [email protected]]

Marcelo Alves dos Santos has a major degree in Journalism in the Federal University of São João del-Rei and is currently a Ph.D. candidate the Post-Graduate Program in Communication, Fluminense Federal University (UFF). His research is conducted in the field of internet and politics, focusing on elections, party system, polarization, public opinion and social media. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1.

[ … ] opinion leadership may refer to the point of origin of a plan or an idea, to the sanctioning of the idea, or to the diffusion of the idea. An individual qualifies as a key communicator if he fulfills any, or all, of these roles. (emphasis added)

Our research analyzes in this paper specifically political opinion leadership. Thus, influence in terms of ‘product diffusion’ (Iyengar, den Bulte, & Valente, 2011) or ‘product adoption decisions’ (Aral & Walker, 2012) are not in the scope of phenomena in which we are interested.

2. In Portuguese, the term ‘repercussão’ seems to be more accurate than the equivalent English word ‘repercussion’ because repercussão might be either a positive or a negative positioning produced by audiences in relation to a public statement or interpretative input such as a meme, a joke, a Congressman declaration, and so on. See ahead our translation of the following example: ‘Estou muito feliz com a repercussão positiva [ … ] à [minha] declaração recente de levar ao ministro da Fazenda o pleito pela desoneração de impostos sobre os sucos de frutas’. Our translation: ‘I am glad with the positive repercussion (repercussão) of [my] recent statement of bringing to the Finance Minister the demand in favor of tax exoneration of fruit juices’. In this quote, a Brazilian Congresswoman (Kátia Abreu) expresses her satisfaction with the positive reaction/feedback to her bill of law that proposes cutting taxes from fruit juices. Original quote retrieved from her official Facebook (https://goo.gl/ObCJwn, last visited 28 May 2015).

3. This legislation provides severe penalties for women who terminate a pregnancy, which might include up to three years of imprisonment (see http://presrepublica.jusbrasil.com.br/legislacao/91614/codigo-penal-decreto-lei-2848-40#art-124, and http://presrepublica.jusbrasil.com.br/legislacao/91614/codigo-penal-decreto-lei-2848-40#art-124, both last visited 29 May 2015).

4.

Pragmatic Consequences (Pro Direction): The issue is the effect of criminalizing abortion by not making it legally available. The social consequence of legal restriction is to force women with unwanted pregnancies into obtaining abortions under conditions that greatly increase their health risks, both physical and psychological. Ultimately, one must judge social policies by their costs and benefits, and attempts to limit abortion, however well intended, do not reduce abortions but merely raise their social cost. (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002, p. 108)

5. Pregnancies that offer risk of death to the woman, pregnancies resulted from rape, and in cases of anencefalous fetuses (http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto-lei/del2848compilado.htm, and http://www.stf.jus.br/portal/cms/verNoticiaDetalhe.asp?idConteudo=204863, last visited 29 May 2015).

6. Actually, we assume that it is a representative sample, but the technicalities of how this software collects data are for us still a little bit obscure.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Faperj) [grant number E-26/101.719/2014], [grant number E-26/112.059/2012]; and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) [grant number 133298/2014-0].