2025/07/17 by Alessandro Bellina, Donald Ruggiero Lo Sardo, Bellina, Alessandro +11
Computer Science · #Digital Communication and Language #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.13068
openalex publication_date 2025/07/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Social media platforms have become essential spaces for public discourse. While political polarisation and limited communication across different groups are widely acknowledged, the connection between social network fragmentation and the language features and quality used by various communities has received insufficient attention. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the social structure and linguistic richness of the Italian debate on Twitter/X. We analyse tweets and retweets from Italian politicians and news outlets between 2018 and 2022, characterising the retweet network and evaluating the language used within different communities through various lexical metrics. Our analysis uncovers two systematic patterns: communities closer in the network tend to use more similar vocabulary, while isolated communities consistently demonstrate lower lexical diversity and richness. Together, these patterns illustrate what we call ``language bubbles''. These findings indicate that socially isolated communities interact less with others and develop distinct and poorer linguistic profiles, highlighting a structural link between social fragmentation and linguistic divergence.