Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 11
Posts 1 - 10

Donald Trump Threatens Ted Cruz’s Wife, Eliciting Angry Retort

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 23.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | hashtags, misunderstanding, politics, Twitter
Summary | Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have started a public feud on Twitter over their spouses. Trump thinks that Cruz has used footage of Melania Trump modeling nude for GQ magazine in a commercial against Trump. Trump then threatened to reveal secrets about Heidi Cruz. It turned out the anti-Trump advertisement was not made or paid for by Cruz and Cruz shamed Trump via Twitter for threatening his wife with the hashtag #classless.
Image Description | Image of Ted Cruz speaking with his wife Heidi in the background.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

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

President @realdonaldtrump

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 3.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, hashtags, politics, smartphone, Twitter
Summary | During his first 100 days, Trump tweeted a lot. His most used word in Twitter was "Great" (then: very, today, fake, news). His most common hashtag was "MAGA", the topic he most tweeted about was the media, and his favorite interjection is "Enojy!". Trump does not use a lot of emojis in his tweets, but his most common emoji is the American flag. Also, his most common hour for tweeting is 8am, and he mostly uses his iPhone.
Image Description | N/A

Afro-Frisur einer Schülerin wird zum Politikum

(Afro hair of a student becomes a political issue)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 2.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, Facebook, gender, hashtags, politics, school, Twitter
Summary | A black girl at a high school in Pretoria in South Africa was chastised for wearing her hair naturally in an afro. This resulted in a lot of backlash against the school on social media under the hasthag #StopRacismAtPretoriaGirlsHigh. As many as 28'000 people signed an online petition to end racism at schools and major polititians condemned the chastising of wearing natural black hair.
Image Description | A black woman doing another black woman's hair in a salon.
Image Tags | female(s)

Leserbriefe

(Letters to the editor)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 18.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | language threat, research/study, school, texting, Twitter, word/writing
Summary | The Pisa study results show that the Swiss language education concept has failed. The reading skills of Swiss students are very poor. More time is being dedicated to foreign languages than to the native language - are children now supposed to learn German from Tweets and text messages in Swiss German?
Image Description | N/A

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

D'où vient l'acronyme Osef ?

(Where does the acronym Osef come from?)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 15.12.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | hashtags, texting, Twitter, word/writing, youth
Summary | The term "osef" seems to be very popular among teenagers nowadays. It means "on s'en fout" (we don't care). The expression was born on Twitter and was preceded by a hashtag or mot-dièse (the English term won).
Image Description | N/A

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

For Many Women, Trump's 'Locker Room Talk' Brings Back Memories of Abuse

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 11.10.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | hashtags, politics, Twitter
Summary | After a recording of Donald Trumps "locker room talk" leaked, a woman took Twitter and shared a personal story of sexual harassment and urged other women to do the same. Within a few days 27 million women responded and the hashtag #notokay became the marker for the thread. All of these singular examples demonstrated that they were not singular and that Donald Trump is wrapped up in and oblivious to the fact that his "harmless" locker room talk is perpetuating rape culture.
Image Description | Portraits of women who posted under the hashtah #notokay.
Image Tags | female(s)

How to Listen to Donald Trump Every Day for Years

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.1.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | grammar, language threat, politics, texting, Twitter
Summary | President Trump is widely criticized for his poor speaking abilities. His speaking style is more akin to regular talking whereas presidential speaking traditionally resembles the written language. This explains why Trump's medium of choice is Twitter or 'speeches' (too linguistically informal to be called an actual speech). Twitter, with its limitation on message length resembles texting, which as linguists have confirmed mimicks spoken language rather than formal writing.
Image Description | Donald Trump on a stage being photographed.
Image Tags | camera, male(s)

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