{"378181":{"#nid":"378181","#data":{"type":"news","title":"How a wedding engagement changes Twitter feeds","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology has used Twitter as a lens to look into the lives of nearly 1,000 people who used the site to announce their wedding engagement. By comparing tweets before and after, the study was able to determine how people changed their online personas following the proposal. Some differences were split along gender lines. Others identified how people alter the words they use on Twitter after they are engaged.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe study followed 923 people who used \u201c#engaged\u201d to announce in 2011. The research team then looked at each person\u2019s tweets in the nine-month period before the engagement and 12 months afterward (2 million total tweets). They were also compared to a random sampling of tweeters during the same time frame (12 million tweets).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter people got engaged, tweets with the word \u201cI\u201d or \u201cme\u201d dropped by 69 percent. They were replaced with \u201cwe\u201d and \u201cus.\u201d There was barely any change within the control group.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cPeople began to paint themselves as a couple, rather than as individuals,\u201d said Munmun de Choudhury, a Georgia Tech assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing who led the study. \u201cThey\u2019re going through a major change in life, and it shows on social media as they adapt to society\u2019s expectations of their marital identity.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESimilarly, tweets using familial words such as \u201cfuture-in-laws\u201d and \u201cchildren\u201d jumped by 219 percent after the proposal (although men tended to wait until after marriage to tweet family-based words).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe study also noticed that men and women gush about each other differently.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe most frequent terms used by females when tweeting about their significant other were tied to emotion (for example, they \u201clove\u201d their\u0026nbsp; \u201cwonderful\u201d fianc\u00e9). Men are more likely to use physical descriptors such as sexy, beautiful or gorgeous when talking about their fianc\u00e9e. \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDe Choudhury and co-author Michael Massimi also noticed that engaged people are much more likely to think and tweet about the future. Instead of using past-tense verbs, future-tense verbs surged by 62 percent after engagement.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cPeople are more likely to post that they \u2018are going on a date night tonight\u2019 rather than tweeting that they already did so,\u201d said Massimi, a former postdoctoral fellow at Microsoft Research Cambridge. \u201cThey\u2019re looking forward to the future in their real lives and boasting about it on social media too.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis is the first empirical study of engagement in social media. It centered on the anthropological concept of liminality \u2013 a phase people undergo when they transition from one role in society to another.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cTwitter can be a powerful tool that can mirror our thoughts and how we\u2019re actually feeling,\u201d said de Choudhury, who has done similar social media studies on mothers and postpartum depression. \u201cThis isn\u2019t based on what they told us they did. It\u2019s a reliable record \u0026shy;\u2013 it\u2019s what they actually did.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe paper, \u201c\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.news.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/GT-computing-research-twitter-engagement-2015.pdf\u0022\u003EShe Said Yes!\u201d Liminality and Engagement Announcements on Twitter\u003C\/a\u003E,\u201d was accepted and will be presented at \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/ischools.org\/the-iconference\/\u0022\u003EiConference 2015\u003C\/a\u003E in Newport Beach, California, March 24-27.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Study examines what happens to online personas in the months after she says #yes"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology has used Twitter as a lens to look into the lives of nearly 1,000 people who used the site to announce their wedding engagement. By comparing tweets before and after, the study was able to determine how people changed their online personas following the proposal. Some differences were split along gender lines. Others identified how people alter the words they use on Twitter after they are engaged.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Online personas change after people announce their wedding engagement on Twitter."}],"uid":"27560","created_gmt":"2015-02-13 10:05:40","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:01:46","author":"Jason Maderer","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-02-13T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-02-13T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"378171":{"id":"378171","type":"image","title":"Getting engaged changes your Twitter feed","body":null,"created":"1449246205","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:23:25","changed":"1475894342","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:02","alt":"Getting engaged changes your Twitter feed","file":{"fid":"75207","name":"451633113-small.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/451633113-small.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/451633113-small.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":171822,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/451633113-small.jpg?itok=WisQboVx"}},"378191":{"id":"378191","type":"image","title":"Munmun de Choudhury","body":null,"created":"1449246205","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:23:25","changed":"1475894385","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:45","alt":"Munmun de Choudhury","file":{"fid":"75208","name":"munmun-dechoudhury1.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/munmun-dechoudhury1.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/munmun-dechoudhury1.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":27072,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/munmun-dechoudhury1.jpg?itok=CIvEa8MY"}}},"media_ids":["378171","378191"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.news.gatech.edu\/features\/romance-age-social-sharing","title":"Romance and social sharing"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.news.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/GT-computing-research-twitter-engagement-2015.pdf","title":"Read the study"}],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"654","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"10352","name":"engagement"},{"id":"166848","name":"School of Interactive Computing"},{"id":"167543","name":"social media"},{"id":"314","name":"twitter"},{"id":"118791","name":"Wedding"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71901","name":"Society and Culture"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003ENational Media Relations\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-385-2966\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["maderer@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}