De invloed van sociale media op de reguliere geschreven media Een descriptief en comparatief onderzoek naar Twitter

Abstract

With the growing influence of social media in our daily lives, we even tend to adapt our language to social media. But the question remains if, reversely, the language we use on social media influences the langauge we use in our daily or professional lives. In this study I try to define the characteristics of the language used on Twitter. As a startingpoint I take the characteristics used in previous studies about language use in new media such as MSN and Texting. To determine if these characteristics have passed over onto other language usage, I compare the language used on Twitter with the language used in newspapers from before the social media era (1998-1999) and with the language used in newspapers (2013-2014) from during the social media era. I have constructed a large Twitter Corpus based on which I have defined the characteristics for Twitter Language. To compare Twitter language with the language use in newspapers I had to search a corpus of newspaper articles for the same characteristics to find out if there are any similarities between the language used on Twitter and the language used in newspapers from 2013-2014. The language used in the Newspapers from 1998-1999 is used to determine if a change in language use in Newspapers occurred in the period from 1998 until 2014. In this study I find that it is hard to define language use on Twitter. But I do conclude that on Twitter it is more important to draw attention than it is to convey a clear message. Futhermore, I did not find a clear correlation between language use on Twitter and the language used in newspapers. But there is evidence which seems to point to a change taking place within the usage of language within new and traditional media. Further research into this development is needed.