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Peyman MamSharifi * 
, Faramarz Sohrabi , Ahmad Borjali , Enayatollah Zamanpour , Farideh HosseinSabet
, Faramarz Sohrabi , Ahmad Borjali , Enayatollah Zamanpour , Farideh HosseinSabet
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran. , peymanmamsharifi@gmail.com
Abstract: (84 Views)
Background: The expansion of social media has led to an increased reproduction of pornographic language and sexual expressions in online spaces, which from a psycholinguistic perspective reflects users’ emotions, attitudes, and cognitive processes. Analyzing these patterns enables a deeper understanding of the underlying mental and emotional mechanisms in digital discourse. Despite existing research, data-driven and comparative investigations of psycholinguistic patterns of pornographic language across different platforms remain limited.
Aims: The aim of the present study was to examine the psycholinguistic cognitive, emotional, and sexual dimensions of pornography across the social media platforms Instagram, Telegram, and X.
Methods: This study employed a descriptive–analytical design with a psycho-linguistic analysis approach. The unit of analysis consisted of text messages posted on Instagram, Telegram, and X between March 21, 2021, and September 22, 2025. The data was initially collected using keywords related to pornographic content within the specified timeframe. From the vast amount of data gathered, 100,000 messages were selected from each platform (totaling 300,000 messages) using a random sampling method. After preprocessing, which included character normalization, removal of non-textual characters, and stopwords, the data were analyzed using the Persian version of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count system (P-LIWC). Cognitive, emotional, and sexual indices were extracted and compared. Analyses were conducted using descriptive and comparative statistics to represent the psycho-linguistic patterns of content on each platform.
Results: The results indicated that pornography across Instagram, Telegram, and X exhibits distinct psycho-linguistic patterns. Telegram was characterized by high cognitive indicators, reflecting more analytical content and meaning-oriented processing. On X, negative affect, anger, and profane language were particularly prominent, indicating intense emotional reactions. Instagram showed a predominantly positive emotional orientation alongside a high salience of sexual vocabulary, reproducing a pattern centered on bodily representation and sexual attractiveness.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that pornography manifests different psycho-linguistic patterns across social media platforms, and that analyses conducted without attention to the specific media context fail to provide a complete and accurate picture. The results may inform the design of preventive and educational interventions tailored to the unique characteristics of each platform and can be applied in developing language-based preventive interventions specific to each platform.
Aims: The aim of the present study was to examine the psycholinguistic cognitive, emotional, and sexual dimensions of pornography across the social media platforms Instagram, Telegram, and X.
Methods: This study employed a descriptive–analytical design with a psycho-linguistic analysis approach. The unit of analysis consisted of text messages posted on Instagram, Telegram, and X between March 21, 2021, and September 22, 2025. The data was initially collected using keywords related to pornographic content within the specified timeframe. From the vast amount of data gathered, 100,000 messages were selected from each platform (totaling 300,000 messages) using a random sampling method. After preprocessing, which included character normalization, removal of non-textual characters, and stopwords, the data were analyzed using the Persian version of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count system (P-LIWC). Cognitive, emotional, and sexual indices were extracted and compared. Analyses were conducted using descriptive and comparative statistics to represent the psycho-linguistic patterns of content on each platform.
Results: The results indicated that pornography across Instagram, Telegram, and X exhibits distinct psycho-linguistic patterns. Telegram was characterized by high cognitive indicators, reflecting more analytical content and meaning-oriented processing. On X, negative affect, anger, and profane language were particularly prominent, indicating intense emotional reactions. Instagram showed a predominantly positive emotional orientation alongside a high salience of sexual vocabulary, reproducing a pattern centered on bodily representation and sexual attractiveness.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that pornography manifests different psycho-linguistic patterns across social media platforms, and that analyses conducted without attention to the specific media context fail to provide a complete and accurate picture. The results may inform the design of preventive and educational interventions tailored to the unique characteristics of each platform and can be applied in developing language-based preventive interventions specific to each platform.
Article number: 1
Keywords: cognitive, emotion, persian linguistic inquiry and word count (P-LIWC), pornography, sexual, social media.
References
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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)