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Decriminalizing same-sex relationships and its impact on social media discussions in Asia
Kokil Jaidka1, Preetika Verma2, Yiting Chen3
1Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. jaidka@nus.edu.sg.
Abstract:
While legal reforms may coincide with shifts in public discourse, broader normative change often remains uneven and context dependent. Since 2018, four Asian countries-India, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore-have decriminalized same-sex relationships, providing an opportunity to examine how such institutional changes are associated with public discussions of LGBTQ+ topics. Here, using supervised and unsupervised natural language processing methods, we analysed 136,255 Facebook news posts and 65,969 public Instagram captions within a 100-day window before and after each reform. To contextualize online discourse with offline sentiment, we incorporated nationally representative survey data from the Gallup World Poll (N = 46,200). Following decriminalization, online discussions were characterized by reduced moralized and affectively negative language, particularly in contexts with greater freedom of expression. By contrast, offline perceptions of neighbourhood safety for same-sex couples shifted more modestly and unevenly across age groups and countries.
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