Words Matter: How Language Choices Predict Societal Trends and Outcomes in Media, Health and Policing

Explore the profound impact of language choices on societal trends and outcomes in this 45-minute talk by Eugenia Rho, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Delve into three research studies that demonstrate how specific patterns in language are predictive of real-world outcomes in media, health, and policing. Discover how partisan divides in broadcasting news language correlate with Twitter trends, how social media discussions about pandemic health practices unveil underlying beliefs, and how the first 45 words spoken by police officers during traffic stops with Black drivers can indicate the stop's outcome. Gain insights into the application of linguistics and psychology theories, analyzed through large language models, statistics, and experimental design, to understand the far-reaching implications of our communication choices across institutional, media, and online contexts.