The research, carried out by Walter Quattrociocchi's team from the Department of Computer Science of Sapienza University of Rome and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined a sample of 300 million comments in English published on eight different platforms. The large corpus used by the researchers provides an almost realistic snapshot of the evolution of language used on social media over the past three decades.

The study, which looked at data from Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, and other platforms, documents a steady decline in the complexity and linguistic richness of user comments. Concise texts with less lexical variety: the researchers' findings show how users have increasingly moved towards the use of simple language and short forms of discourse over time. Despite the increasing simplification of the content produced, a certain degree of innovation still remains in digital environments: new words are being introduced into the social world at a steady pace.

"This simplification of language may affect the way we form and share ideas and public debate", explains Walter Quattrociocchi, "changes in online content production show us not only the impact of technology but also how our social and cultural interactions evolve".

While the simplification of language may be influenced by the business models of the platforms, the changes observed seem to be common to all the online spaces studied. This suggests that how digital communication has evolved over the years is, at least in part, disregarding the specific characteristics of the social networks in question. Indeed, the new modes of interaction between users seem to reflect broader, transversal dynamics of human behaviour online.

References:

Di Marco N., Loru E., Bonetti A., Serra A. O. G., Cinelli M., Quattrociocchi W., “Patterns of linguistic simplification on social media platforms over time”, PNAS (2024) https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2412105121

Further Information

Walter Quattrociocchi
Department of Computer Science
walter.quattrociocchi@uniroma1.it