An Analysis of posts, symbols and abbreviations used on 'Twitter' in regard to the 'Black Lives Matter' movement.

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Abstract The development of online social media has culminated into significant changes in the way that people live. In linguistics, platforms such as Twitter have not only opened up a new communication conduit, but also provide a stage for the development of new cultures and linguistics. This dissertation is going to assess how written informal communication on twitter differs with real life verbal communication. In order to establish this distinction, the study sources 400 tweets from the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on Twitter to establish potential variations with real life verbal communication. In order to assess the text dran from Twitter, the dissertation identifies words that literature associates with written communication on social media and modern technology platforms in general and checks against a selected list of tweets from the movement. The study also reviews how articles are used in written communication, including their construction to see whether there are major difference. Findings from the study reveal that there is no much difference between the two communication contexts. It also finds that this could be down to the fact that the movement carries immense importance and characteristics of an official discourse, which causes messages sent to the discourse to personify a more official look. Another observation from the findings is that written communication also tends to change depending on context. While it could be true that certain words are predominantly used on Twitter, in comparison to verbal communication, their application is limited to specific contexts and discourses. This is a similar trait to verbal communication, which bridges the gap between the two even further.

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