Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 6
Posts 1 - 6

What Happened to Who?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | abbreviations, grammar, language threat, politics, Twitter
Summary | More and more politicians have begun replacing the relative pronoun "who" with "that" in sentences like ''people that come with a legal visa and overstay''. Although some dictionaries say this is an acceptable for, the New York Times' style sheet does not condone using "that" instead of "who". It denies the mentioned persons their humanity. This trend is unsurprising considering that our communication is increasingly happening on platforms like Twitter that only allow 140 characters so that we invent loads of abbreviations like "LOL" and "TTYL".
Image Description | Artwork copying Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and a few high-profile Tweets with spelling mistakes.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Twitter

Facebook musste AI abschalten, die "Geheimsprache" entwickelt hat

(Facebook had to turn of AIs who developed their own "secret language")

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 28.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, language threat
Summary | Facebook had to deactivate two artificial intelligence chatbots called Bob and Alice. They had begun communicating with one another in a knockoff language similar to English with sentences like: "I can can I I everything else." Because this communication is unintellegible for the developers, Bob and Alice were taken down for security reasons.
Image Description | Getty images of Mark Zuckerberg and cyborgs as well as a Tweet by Elon Musk.
Image Tags | male(s), Twitter

Redes sociales en las primarias del PSOE: una competición desigual

(Social networks in the PSOE primaries: an uneven competition)

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Newspaper | El País
Date | 21.5.2017
Language | Spanish
Country | Spain
Topic Tags | hashtags, politics, research/study, social media, Twitter
Summary | The PSOE candidates in Spain use social media differently in their campaign. Sánchez knows the language of social networks very well and knows how to use them. He is the most active candidate on social media. Lopez was the first one to have a Twitter account and uses the social network intensively. However, he doesn't use the network the same way Sanchez uses it. Díaz only posted 670 tweets and has 115000 followers. Moreover, her language is not actualized; she uses the at sign @ too much. A study analyzed the online community of the candidates. When Díaz started using the hashtag #100por100PSOE, some people started attacking and criticizing her using the same hashtag. There are also multiple analytical tools that show different statistics regarding the candidates and their online campaign.
Image Description | Screenshots of the three candidates' Twitter profiles, and five different charts/graphs related to the candidates and their online campaign
Image Tags | chart, female(s), male(s), Twitter

School apologises for 'slut-shaming' prom posters about 'appropriate' dresses suggesting women 'to blame' for rape

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 31.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | gender, hashtags, school, social media, Twitter
Summary | A Florida school was widely criticized online after a student shared posters that were put up in the school depicting what appropriate women's prom dresses look like and what kind of dresses are inappropriate. These posters were labeled with "good girl". The outrage is around the mysoginist language (degrading women to girls) and the mere fact that women's styling of their bodies is strongly policed and tied to accountability in sexual harrassment cases. The internet responded with a hashtag on Twitter with many contributions and the school's administration has since apologized.
Image Description | Image of the school, the original tweet with the posters, then tweets with students wearing woman symbol t-shirts in protest.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), school, Twitter

«Jpp», «wtf», «oklm»... maîtrisez-vous le parler jeune?

("Jpp", "wtf", "oklm"... do you master teenagers' language?)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 25.8.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | abbreviations, language threat, texting, youth
Summary | Young people tend to use a lot of words and abbreviations that are unintelligible, according to many parents and professors. Their language is very creative and is influenced by our ancestors' language. Writer Stéphane Ribeiro claims that young people's language is a melting pot; it is a mix of American and historical expressions. Moreover, the language used by today's youth has been influenced by new technologies and the texting culture. It is not a threat to the French language; language is constantly changing and evolving
Image Description | Photograph of five young people looking happy, screenshots of two tweets depicting the use of abbreviations, and "Top Wesh" video.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), text, Twitter

El impacto de la redes sociales en el lenguaje

(The impact of social media on language)

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Newspaper | infobae
Date | 3.7.2016
Language | Spanish
Country | Argentina
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, social media, spelling
Summary | Social media have an impact on the Spanish language with the adoption of new words such as "tuitear" (to tweet) or googlear (to google). Linguist Silvia Ramirez Gelbes claims that language is alive; it is growing, changing, and adopting new words. The introduction of new words in a language is not anything new; for example, when planes were first created, the aeronautical world had to create new words. Gelbes also states that people (and not authorities) are the ones who decide which words are to be used. Moreover, she says that although we live in a "visual culture", emojis are not a threat to our language; they should be viewed as a complement. Finally, people write more, so we witness a multiplication of spelling mistakes, but new technologies don't have a negative impact on spelling.
Image Description | Photograph of a man holding a speech bubble with different symbols related to new technologies, and five Twitter links to other related infobae articles.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s), Twitter

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