Social media is a powerful tool in shaping political discourse, and a recent study that examined Reddit posts spanning over a decade sheds light on exactly what kinds of conversations may have influenced the public\u2019s shift in support of marijuana legalization.<\/p>\n
A Brown University researcher used machine learning to analyze more than three million Reddit comments from 2009 to 2019\u2014a key timeframe in the state-level legalization movement\u2014to better understand the online conversations that have driven people to back reform.<\/p>\n
A dissertation from Ph.D. candidate Babak Hemmatian\u2014titled, \u201cTaking the High Road: A Big Data Investigation of Natural Discourse in the Emerging U.S. Consensus about Marijuana Legalization\u201d\u2014revealed some surprising trends. Specifically, it seems that while sharing personal anecdotes has historically been a major factor in changing hearts and minds, people posting more generalized, character judgment-based arguments was a more clear harbinger for state-level cannabis reform.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarijuana legalization is a highly unusual topic in how a bipartisan consensus was reached in a matter of years while the American society was otherwise becoming more polarized,\u201d Hemmatian told Marijuana Moment. \u201cI wanted to know if the way the public discusses marijuana facilitated this unusual shift, and how the societal change in attitudes in turn affected how we talk about cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Character judgements\u2014or, \u201chighly moralistic assertions about people\u2019s timeless attributes\u201d like whether being a prohibitionist makes someone a bad person\u2014more commonly preceded state legalization efforts, particularly around 2012 as the first states moved to end prohibition, the study found.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnecdotes were less often used to persuade people, meaning their persuasive potential was somewhat wasted,\u201d Hemmatian said. \u201cStill, people did often briefly mention them to buttress more general claims like the mentioned character judgments.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were some other interesting themes identified in the study. For example, discussions of the health impacts of cannabis \u201conly picked up after legalization was all but over, and only in casual conversations.\u201d Legal implications of reform, meanwhile, \u201cwere not prominently discussed even after legalization had succeeded in most states.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth topics are highly relevant to whether and how the substance should be de-regulated, but were ignored in decision-making and at best attended to once the societal decision was already made,\u201d the study author said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile not the most persuasive approach according to previous research, character judgments may have still pushed people who were on the fence but not diametrically opposed to legalization over to the pro-legalization camp,\u201d he continued. \u201cThis is because they highly simplify decision-making: One no longer needs to know the complicated effects of cannabis on health, the economy and the society to make up their mind; they just need to think through their personal moral principles. This may have been comforting during a transition period when the uncertainty surrounding marijuana\u2019s status would have been anxiety-inducing for many folks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study<\/a> concludes that \u201cearly legalization victories depended on Character judgments while the final nails were hammered into prohibition\u2019s coffin with Plot-focused strategies revolving around politics and crime.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe shift happened entirely within the generalized portion of discourse, meaning that a non-compositional approach to frame classification would have missed it,\u201d the paper states.<\/p>\n Hemmatian and his research team at Brown aren\u2019t the only ones interested in exploring the intersection of drug policy and social media.<\/p>\n In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that it plans to use Reddit and other \u201cnovel\u201d data sources to gain a better understanding of public health issues surrounding use of CBD<\/a> and other \u201cemerging\u201d marijuana derivatives like delta-8 THC.<\/p>\n The agency also wants to develop a system of finding \u201csafety signals and usage patterns associated with emerging CDPs in real-time.\u201d That includes delta-8 THC, a\u00a0cannabinoid that the agency recently warned consumers about<\/a>, as it has not yet evaluated its safety or efficacy.<\/p>\n Reddit users subscribed to the popular marijuana forum r\/trees have previously helped researchers identify trends and patterns in cannabis consumption<\/a>.<\/p>\n A peer-reviewed study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence in 2018 analyzed more than two million posts found on the site\u2019s largest marijuana-related subreddit from 2010 to 2016. The research team made a series of discoveries, including a few that might seem obvious to regular consumers (e.g. dabbing is gaining in popularity, but users still largely favor smoking cannabis flower).<\/p>\n DEA Wants To Help Parents Decode The Emojis Young People Use To Discuss Marijuana And Other \u2018Bomb Ass\u2019 Drugs<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Researcher Uses Reddit To Learn What Kinds Of Marijuana Posts Influenced Legalization Attitudes<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Social media is a powerful tool in shaping political discourse, and a recent study that examined Reddit posts spanning over a decade sheds light on exactly what kinds of conversations may have influenced the public\u2019s shift in support of marijuana legalization. A Brown University researcher used machine learning to analyzeContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[99,18,15462],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51961,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51960\/revisions\/51961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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