Refugee information consumption on Twitter

Maximiliano Perez-Cepeda, Leopoldo Arias-Bolzmann

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to describe how society expresses itself in regard to people who, due to war, politics or religion, migrate from their country of origin to foreign countries. Refugees are considered minority groups. Thus, examining their behavior reveals significant data on sociocultural factors (Tsai, 2011). Under a qualitative approach and the netnography method, we used Twitter as an instrument for data collection. The model proposed by Perez-Cepeda and Arias-Bolzmann (2020), which describes cultural factors, is used to analyze the Twitter conversation flow that evidences the sociocultural factors of minority subcultures. Studies have shown that the data structure, classification, categorization, and purpose are based on the information production and consumption of the users who participate in Twitter conversations with @Refugees—the official account of the ACNUR/UNHCR Américas. The findings showed recurrent subjects and sets of ideas related to sociocultural factors, human rights, economic news, critical reflection, and religious topics. Tweets about refugees describe the sociocultural issues around this minority group. This paper focuses on refugees, the consumption of refugee information, text writing, sociocultural factors, and the environment on Twitter. This research contributes to the social sciences, especially to sociocultural interaction studies. The originality of the work is the identification of sociocultural factors related to the social sciences that emerge from minority groups' tweets through images, texts, and objects.
Original languageSpanish
Pages (from-to)529-537
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Business Research
Volume123
StatePublished - 1 Feb 2021

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