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#Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom

In this article, we analyze anti- and pro-immigrant attitudes expressed following the Essex Lorry Deaths tragedy in October 2019 in Britain, in which 39 Vietnamese immigrants died in a sealed lorry truck on their way to their destination. We apply Structural Topic Modeling, an automated text analysi...

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Autores principales: Than, Nga, Windel, Friederike, Steele, Liza G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9404524/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36033980
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.787450
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author Than, Nga
Windel, Friederike
Steele, Liza G.
author_facet Than, Nga
Windel, Friederike
Steele, Liza G.
author_sort Than, Nga
collection PubMed
description In this article, we analyze anti- and pro-immigrant attitudes expressed following the Essex Lorry Deaths tragedy in October 2019 in Britain, in which 39 Vietnamese immigrants died in a sealed lorry truck on their way to their destination. We apply Structural Topic Modeling, an automated text analysis method, to a Twitter dataset (N = 4,376), to understand public responses to the Lorry Deaths incident. We find that Twitter users' posts were organized into two themes regarding attitudes toward immigrants: (1) migration narratives, stereotypes, and victim identities, and (2) border control. Within each theme, both pro- and anti-immigration attitudes were expressed. Pro-immigration posts reflected counter-narratives that challenged the mainstream media's coverage of the incident and critiqued the militarization of borders and the criminalization of immigration. Anti-immigration posts ranged from reproducing stereotypes about Vietnamese immigrants to explicitly blaming the victims themselves or their families for the deaths. This study demonstrates the uses and limitations of using Twitter for public opinion research by offering a nuanced analysis of how pro-and anti-immigration attitudes are discussed in response to a tragic event. Our research also contributes to a growing literature on public opinion about an often-forgotten immigrant group in the UK, the Vietnamese.
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spelling pubmed-94045242022-08-26 #Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom Than, Nga Windel, Friederike Steele, Liza G. Front Sociol Sociology In this article, we analyze anti- and pro-immigrant attitudes expressed following the Essex Lorry Deaths tragedy in October 2019 in Britain, in which 39 Vietnamese immigrants died in a sealed lorry truck on their way to their destination. We apply Structural Topic Modeling, an automated text analysis method, to a Twitter dataset (N = 4,376), to understand public responses to the Lorry Deaths incident. We find that Twitter users' posts were organized into two themes regarding attitudes toward immigrants: (1) migration narratives, stereotypes, and victim identities, and (2) border control. Within each theme, both pro- and anti-immigration attitudes were expressed. Pro-immigration posts reflected counter-narratives that challenged the mainstream media's coverage of the incident and critiqued the militarization of borders and the criminalization of immigration. Anti-immigration posts ranged from reproducing stereotypes about Vietnamese immigrants to explicitly blaming the victims themselves or their families for the deaths. This study demonstrates the uses and limitations of using Twitter for public opinion research by offering a nuanced analysis of how pro-and anti-immigration attitudes are discussed in response to a tragic event. Our research also contributes to a growing literature on public opinion about an often-forgotten immigrant group in the UK, the Vietnamese. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-11 /pmc/articles/PMC9404524/ /pubmed/36033980 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.787450 Text en Copyright © 2022 Than, Windel and Steele. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sociology
Than, Nga
Windel, Friederike
Steele, Liza G.
#Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom
title #Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom
title_full #Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom
title_fullStr #Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom
title_full_unstemmed #Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom
title_short #Lorrydeaths: Structural Topic Modeling of Twitter Users' Attitudes About the Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants to the United Kingdom
title_sort #lorrydeaths: structural topic modeling of twitter users' attitudes about the deaths of 39 vietnamese migrants to the united kingdom
topic Sociology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9404524/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36033980
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.787450
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