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Article published In:
Re/constructing Politics Through Social & Online Media: Discourses, ideologies, and mediated political practices
Edited by Michał Krzyżanowski and Joshua A. Tucker
[Journal of Language and Politics 17:2] 2018
► pp. 195–221

Moral discourse in the Twitterverse

Effects of ideology and political sophistication on language use among U.S. citizens and members of Congress

| Department of Psychology and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
| Department of Psychology, New York University
We analyzed Twitter language to explore hypotheses derived from moral foundations theory, which suggests that liberals and conservatives prioritize different values. In Study 1, we captured 11 million tweets from nearly 25,000 U.S. residents and observed that liberals expressed fairness concerns more often than conservatives, whereas conservatives were more likely to express concerns about group loyalty, authority, and purity. Increasing political sophistication exacerbated ideological differences in authority and group loyalty. At low levels of sophistication, liberals used more harm language, but at high levels of sophistication conservatives referenced harm more often. In Study 2, we analyzed 59,000 tweets from 388 members of the U.S. Congress. Liberal legislators used more fairness- and harm-related words, whereas conservative legislators used more authority-related words. Unexpectedly, liberal legislators used more language pertaining to group loyalty and purity. Follow-up analyses suggest that liberals and conservatives in Congress use similar words to emphasize different policy priorities.
Keywords: political ideology, psycholinguistics, morality, basic values, social cognition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Psychological differences between liberals and conservatives
  • 3.The present research program
    • 3.1Measuring moral intuitions through language
    • 3.2Political ideology
    • 3.3Topic-related differences in moral language
  • 4.Study 1: Ordinary citizens
    • 4.1Method
      • 4.1.1Political ideology
      • 4.1.2Political sophistication
      • 4.1.3Coding of political topics
      • 4.1.4Sample generation
      • 4.1.5Statistical modelling
    • 4.2Results and discussion
      • 4.2.1Using political ideology to predict moral themes
      • 4.2.2Moderating role of political sophistication
        • Fairness
        • Harm
        • Group loyalty
        • Authority
        • Purity
    • 4.3Summary
  • 5.Study 2: U.S. Congress members
    • 5.1Methods
      • 5.1.1Language sample
      • 5.1.2Political ideology
      • 5.1.3Structural variables
      • 5.1.4Demographic variables
      • 5.1.5Statistical analysis
    • 5.2Results
      • 5.2.1Exploratory analyses
    • 5.3Discussion
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
Published online: 24 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17034.ste
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