Analyzing U.S. Tweets for Stigma Against People Experiencing Homelessness

Rising homelessness in the United States has been a considerable source of concern, with policymakers and community members calling for "solutions." Stigma, as a societal barrier to addressing inequity, is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality for people experiencing homelessness (PEH) and presents a barrier to the proposed solutions. Given that using surveys to study stigma against PEH carries potential social desirability bias, our research team used Twitter, a microblogging platform comprised of 140-character messages (aka, tweets), to get a snapshot of how American Twitter users stigmatize PEH. We conducted a content analysis of 6,400 tweets regarding homelessness collected over 3 months. Our analysis was informed by Erving Goffman's theoretical framework regarding stigma. Consistent with Goffman's work, we illustrate the ways that Twitter users rationalized the situation of PEH by creating a "stigma theory," in which they attribute undesirable characteristics to PEH, highlight the multiple ways in which they "deserve" to be homeless because of their character flaws, and emphasize their devalued "bottom of the heap" status. We describe the ways that this stigma theory of homelessness is expressed in tweets regarding interactions between PEH and housed individuals. Complementing Goffman's work as applied to PEH, we also describe the ways in which Twitter users impute additional stigmatized identities onto PEH and the role that disgust plays in stigma against PEH. Our findings suggest the need for a multi-level response to stigma, including addressing stigma at the individual and structural levels and providing housing to PEH across communities.