Multilingual use of Twitter: Social networks at the language frontier

Social media is international: users from different cultures and language backgrounds are generating and sharing content. But language barriers emerge in the communication landscape online. In the quest for language diversity and universal access, the vision of a cosmopolitan Internet has stumbled over the language frontier. In the microblogging site Twitter, information spreads across languages and countries. Expatriates, minorities, diaspora communities, and language learners play an important role in forming transnational networks, creating social ties across borders. This research investigates how multilingual users of Twitter mediate between language groups in their social network, focusing on social connections and language choice. This research contributes an original classification of network types based on the patterns of connections between language groups within the social networks of multilingual users. Also, it applies the novel idea of modeling the influence of network factors in the language choices of the user. The results can inform the design of social media platforms seeking to foster global connectivity and international communication flows. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.