Ever thought about how the words we use can shape our thoughts? Turns out, the metaphors we use online, particularly in heated topics like immigration, can not only reflect our political views but also make our arguments go viral. This research peeks into the world of social media to see how different metaphors influence discussions and even user engagement in surprising ways. Spoiler: Conservatives and liberals don’t always talk the same way!
The researchers dove into a sea of tweets, 400,000 to be exact, to find out how often metaphors are used by people across the political spectrum. They pinpointed seven metaphor types, such as
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Based on “When People are Floods: Analyzing Dehumanizing Metaphors in Immigration Discourse with Large Language Models” by Julia Mendelsohn, Ceren Budak, available on arXiv (arxiv.org/abs/2502.13246), used under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
