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#HARASSMENT Harassment in #Egypt is staggering …

• 83% women report getting harassed

• 2.4% actually report it to police

Twitter breaking down the cultural taboo of talking about harassment

RESEARCH GOALS

• What hashtags are used in discourse related to sexual harassment occurring in Egypt?

• What do these hashtags reveal about the tweeter?

• What is the purpose of these hashtags?

• What patterns emerge among tweets that reveal a certain constructed discourse?

• Do hashtags build a community of discourse? What are the metamessages of those communities?

AMBIENT AFFILIATION: A LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON TWITTER MICHELE ZAPPAVIGNA / @SMLINGUIST

“a typographic convention, the hashtag, has extended

its meaning potential to operate as a linguistic

marker referencing the target of evaluation in a

tweet … This both renders the language searchable

and is used to upscale the call to affiliate with values

expressed in the tweet. We are currently witnessing

a cultural shift in electronic discourse from online

conversation to such ‘searchable talk’…‘hashtags’

function as linguistic markers enacting the following

social relation:

‘Search for me and

affiliate with my

value!’.

METHODOLOGY Type of tweet

1. Speech act 2. Retweet 3. Conversational 4. News 5. Admonishment (e.g. #endSH)

Positive or Negative 1. Positive 2. Negative 3. Neutral

Type of tweeter 1. Individual 2. News organization 3. NGO 4. Other institutions

Location of tweeter 1. In Egypt 2. Outside of Egypt

Language 1. English 2. Arabic 3. Diaglossia (Eng+Arab) 4. Other

Sex of Tweeter 1. Female 2. Male 3. N/A (e.g. organization)

Nationality of Tweeter 1. Egyptian 2. Other Arab country 3. International, non-Arab Country

TWEET MINING

• Tweetarchivist.com

• Google Reader #endSH / 513 tweets in archive

RESULTS (LOADING … )

Tweet Archivist #endSH

CONCLUSION (FEWER THAN 140 CHARACTERS)• How many data points is 2 much? 2 many coded categories?

• Does #endSH automatically mean code 2 (admonishment). What abt multiple codes?

• RTs take up 2 much space … include or not include. Think of Tannen’s constructed dialogue..

TAKEAWAYS THUS FAR

• For English hashtags, apr. 75% of tweets are in english, the rest Arabic or diglossia

• Arabic Hashtags 99% arabic tweets

• Diglossia use most prevalent with arabic tweet, eng hashtag

• So far most are negative

• Reactions or live reporting of harassment may not be in a hashtag (!)