This document analyzes Twitter usage data from 26 academic conferences between 2009-2013 to study language usage and interactions between different language groups. The key findings are: 1) Over 60% of users tweeted in English, but many users were multilingual, with English-French and English-Spanish being other top languages. 2) English received the most attention from other language groups in mentions and retweets. Some language groups like English, English-French, and English-Spanish mentioned their own group members more. 3) Speaking multiple languages was linked to more interactions - users who spoke an additional language had 95% higher odds of interacting in the network. The study aims to use these findings to help connect attendees

1. Language,
Twitter
and
Academic Conferences
Ruth García, Diego Gómez, Denis Parra, Christoph Trattner,
Andreas Kaltenbrunner, Eduardo Graells-Garrido
Eurecat, PUC Chile, NTNU, Telefónica I+D
ACM Hypertext, 2015
Northern Cyprus

2. English is the lingua franca in
International Academic Conferences
but …

3. • Attendees have different cultural
backgrounds and languages:
– How to assess communication and integration?
– Overview culture of audiences?

4. Twitter: a backchannel platform
• It targets community’s communication and
participation:
– note taking
– sharing resources
– dissemination of work
– real-time reactions to events
– conference and social activity
• Hashtags are used identify conferences.

5. #hypertext2015

6. Dataset
26 computer and information science conferences from the CORE
Conference Ranking list active in Twitter (2009 – 2013)
Initial users 19,943*
Tweets 6,993,693
Modeled Users 18,347
Tweets with language 6,199,228*
Lingua groups 18,347
*errata from paper Garcia et al.
Language is detected using n-grams after removing URLs and
mentions.
A profile is considered to use a language if at least five tweets use it
(NOT including RTs).
If a user is multi-lingual, we consider at most his/her most common
three languages.

7. Conferences in the dataset (font size => number of users ([71, 5081]).
Grey - near the average english presence (79%).
Red - over the average (max: 93%)
Blue - below the average (min: 59%)

8. Research Questions
1. To what extent do people tweet in other
languages beyond English?
2. How do lingua groups interact with each
other?
3. Is there an effect of language over online
user interaction?

9. 1. To what extent do people tweet in other
languages beyond English?
2. How do lingua groups interact with each
other?
3. Is there an effect of language over online
user interaction?

10. Top 3 Lingua groups
Lingua Users Tweets Tweets/user IQR
en 61.31% 31.56% 167.18 142.00
en-fr 6.46% 3.85% 193.88 164.75
en-es 3.79% 2.52% 216.14 191.00
Others
24% English
Lingua
32%
Most of the English tweets comes from lingua groups different
than “only English speakers”
RQ1 Languages
Users of multilingual groups are the most engaged
* Complete table in paper Garcia et al.

11. 1. To what extent do people tweet in other
languages beyond English?
2. How do lingua groups interact with each
other?
3. Is there an effect of language over online
user interaction?

12. RQ2 Interactions
Retweets
(no necessarily reciprocated)
English lingua receives most
of the attention from other
language communities in
mentions and retweets.
Some lingua groups
mention their members
more : en, en-fr, en-ja, en-
es-pt

13. 1. To what extent do people tweet in other
languages beyond English?
2. How do lingua groups interact with each
other?
3. Is there an effect of language over online
user interaction?

14. RQ3 Effect
Keeping all the other factors fixed, for each additional language the
user speaks the odds ratio of interacting in the network increases by 95%
(e0.666
= 1.95)
Variable β coeff. S.E
year(=2009) 2.05*** (0.390)
year(=2010) 2.46*** (0.385)
year(=2011) 2.45*** (0.385)
year(=2012) 2.29*** (0.383)
year(=2013) 2.42*** (0.383)
Number of languages 0.67*** (0.035)
Constant -1.371*** (0.385)
Observations 26,281
Note: *p<0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p<0.01
Logistic Regression :
D.V: user interacted (yes/no)
I.V: conference year and languages spoken (1, 2 or 3)

15. Summary
• English monolinguals receive most of the attention
• There is a potential homophily in lingua groups in
terms of interaction
• People who do not interact with others are mostly
monolinguals, because the number of languages linked
to interactions

16. Future work
• Recommend people to connect with at the
conference, especially for newcomers.
• Does the venue of the conference (city,
country) have an impact on the languages
used?

17. Thank you
QUESTIONS?
This talk: @carnby
Corresponding author: @ruthygarcia
ruth.garcia@oii.ox.ac.uk
Thank you
QUESTIONS?