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What words do you use on social media?


Fragile Bird

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Researchers who have been tracking the language used on social media like twitter and facebook have found out more things about us than most of us would probably ever imagine, especially about our health.

They also found out that the three words and phrases most used by women are "love you", "excited" and "shopping".

The three words most used by men could not be repeated on the radio broadcast I listened to.

And, of course, they have learned all kinds of stuff about us.

But now computer scientists, psychologists and statisticians are hard at work shovelling billions of tweets and Facebook status updates into the maws of their computers and mulching up all that big data to find out what it says about a group's physical and mental health.

"By looking at your Facebook profile or your Twitter feed, we can very accurately predict very intimate traits that you may not be aware you're revealing," says Stanford University's Michal Kosinski.
Kosinski analyzed the social media profiles of eight million people.

And his computer program can predict your political, religious and sexual orientation, even your IQ, all from your Facebook page.

It's personality research, without talking to any actual people.


"The results suggest that judgments made by the computer are even more accurate than your own judgments of your own personality," Kosinski says.


What's more, they are fast. By analyzing social media instead of using standard surveys, he can test thousands of people in minutes.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/what-facebook-twitter-posts-reveal-about-your-health-1.3000893

What do you talk about on social media?

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I don't even want to know how many times I've said "cat" or its variants in my posts.



I think I am much more restrained on social media than I am in real life, because I'm aware that my audience on Facebook includes a wide mix of beliefs, backgrounds, and ages. I'm sure most people could probably figure out that I'm very liberal, an atheist/agnostic, and concerned with racism, sexism, and gay rights. But because I'm not only talking to like-minded folks but my ultra-religious aunts and conservative colleagues, I am happy to engage in some discussion to hopefully beget change, but tend to keep things a little more light-hearted than I would in person.



I'm also keenly aware of the permanency of anything I write on social media and possible ramifications of what I put out there under my name. This is why I am relatively quiet on Twitter, despite working for a Twitter-based company. I'm much more active on Facebook (as many of you are aware) because I can at least somewhat control the limits of my words (although we all know that's still only within reason).


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My facebook is heavily controlled about who gets what. Most people just get cute animal pics, Australian politics and occasional photos of the boys. Every now and again I'll post something more personal to all my friends but it's rare and frequently accidental :p

Other groups get to listen to me complain about my kids, flirt with my friends, more intense political rants and a 'lucky' few get the ins and outs of my current mental state.

Twitter is a mix of Australian politics, feminist or lgbti related stuff and random and mostly uninteresting details of my day to day life. I really have no idea why anyone actually follows me on twitter.

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I don't curse as much on FB as I do on here or in real life because of elderly relatives and stuff.

yeah; I have my Nan on facebook lol so I don't really swear that much.

I pretty much just talk about the same stuff as here.

A whole lotta blade runner love, what movies im watching, a song here and there, amusing observations about the world around me. And a lot of dumb crap i guess

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They also found out that the three words and phrases most used by women are "love you", "excited" and "shopping".

I am pretty sure I have never used any of those in my fb posts. I have probably used "excited" and "shopping" on here, not sure about "love you" because I am just this cold-blooded person who does not tell people she loves them over the Internet. :P

I am quite shy on facebook, I just occasionally post random stuff that nobody apart from me finds interesting like quotes from whatever I am reading and a silly picture here and there.

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I've started my Facebook account for purposes of testing mobile apps I'm developing.


Though I do have some friends and do check in on Facebook every once in a while, I don't think I have posted a single thing on it.



Twitter and recently Instagram are different, and I use them daily.


99% of my Twitter posts are satyrical and/or cynical, while Instagram is for "look at what I saw today" which is an equal mix of beautiful and stupid stuff.


Either way, text of my social media posts is in Serbian almost 100% of the time so my accounts would be useless for this research.


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Given my Facebook has publicly shared video blogs of me talking about my surgical experiences, and my twitter bio states I'm a trans lesbian it wouldn't take a particularly detailed analysis to pick up those two traits.



Most of my FB posts are visible to family, and as such do not involve swearing. Twitter is much more activist oriented and involves much cussing, usually about assholes.


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Twitter I use pretty much exclusively for getting news and talking about Basketball. As far as I'm concerned Twitter as a medium is not a place that is conducive to productive discussion of any sort, so I basically only use it to be informed of breaking news and to find interesting articles to read.



Facebook is useful as a way of giving people updates about my life, should there be anything particularly important like a house move or something like that. I have a very hardline policy about link sharing though:



[a] I only share articles/sites/videos that I personally found particularly funny/moving/informative. If someone asks me to share something, I probably won't do it. I would never ask someone else to promote me, so don't expect me to promote your charity/startup/music unless it is exceptional.


If the headline is in a clickbait style, I do not click on it if someone else shares it and I NEVER re-share. If the content is interesting enough I will attempt to find a version of it that has not come from Buzzfeed or one of those sites, but I avoid giving them traffic as much as possible.


[c] If it has a whiff of being a corporate account, it doesn't get a like/share/follow. They are basically asking me to advertise their product to my friends for them, and I like to think I'm being considerate in not doing so.



ST


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I post about my kids, my cat, food, working out, weather, how work is going and when I remember, my goodreads.



I'd say they could come up with a lot of info about me, certainly several of those mentioned (politics & religion certainly), but really, that is just scratching the surface of my personality.

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