Debating Communities and Networks XIV

will the Māori   community continue to have a online presence with its language or will it slowly fade 

Abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the Te Reo Māori community (The Indigenous  tribe in Aotearoa  ( New Zealand)   and language through the use of the social networking/application Twitter (Pae Tīhau). The importance of this paper to is find out if the Māori  language will continue to be part of the  virtual community or will it eventually disappear. There was extensive research across different current papers done, to find the most reliable information which is linked to the topic. One particular University had written the most about this topic among the findings. These findings were crucial as it aided to confirm whether the  status from the hypothesis  at the start of writing the paper can be confirmed or rejected.

Paper

Since the creation of the “ World Wide Web” which is the creation that has connected the world together. There have been many advancements, upon which a user could think, create, access information and organise. We should expect that technology will always have a strong influence for years to come. (Fordis et al., 2011) The topic for this conference will focus on the Participation of  the Te Reo Māori ( Native New Zealanders)  community on Twitter (Pae Tīhau) in Māori), more specifically if Māori will continue to strive and keep its place or will the English language be the only way of communicating on Twitter. Before writing about the topic there is the need to know  understand the basic information about the application Twitter. The  language is written majority in the tone of  informal, non editable, usually unplanned and it is  unplanned, non-editable, and available post-haste  to the potential audiences that are interested in the topic. It can be said that the Twitter language is similar to Newspaper language. Essentially It would give individuals reflection to there style of linguistics. (Trye et al., 2020) Twitter was closed specifically as for its context for Mãori, it would be useful as there is not much available data on this particular topic. Twitter itself provides not only on user generated but natural content  that would be different then the traditional genres.  Since Twitter’s language spectrum is more informal tone as if it is spoken more than it looks it has been written in formal language.(Trye et al., 2022)

Māori has presence on different social networking applications, as the focus is on Twitter, it has been said that it had become popular in the recent years, and it was also said that these  would be most commonly seen during religious and commercial purposes. Mostly during eventful days.  This does not mean that people would not be lead to tweeting Mãori but rather they would consider Tweeting in the language itself. (Keegan et al., 2015) Hashtags would commonly been seen on Twitter.  This a method of creating categorisation of messages with the use of the # symbol, it could also  be linked to referring to a specific topic to create a community which certain people would be interested in. Some may argue that the use of Hashtags is an “ community building activity.” (Trye et al., 2020) The use of different hashtags; #tereo, TeWikiOTeReoMāori,#kōreromāori #MahuruMāori, and #arohatiatereo. ( Mahuta, n.d) However this paper is presumed to be written within the last 10 years as there is no publication year, with the research conducted there was the finding of the use of loanwords, which are a mixture of the two languages, both English and Mãori. These loanwords would contain one Mãori word and one english word , this would be  used as it is shorter than the Native English counterpart… , prime example of  a tweet  (1) Sorry  I thought you were Kiwi [a New Zealander]. Aotearoa is the Mãori name for NZ…  this information seemed to be more reliable as the paper was written in the last three years  ( 2020)  #kiwigold, #letssharegoodtereostories, #TreatyofWaitangi,  #beingmaori and #honeyhui. (Trye et al., 2020)  The information obtained about loanwords helps to understand more that it might not be tweets written in Mãori, however  it seemed to be an  attraction too more users  on twitter to participate and engage. As it is already a fact that Hashtags have always been used to gain more attention posts on Twitter.  The presence of these loanwords are known as a HybridHashtag. The outcome of the used of this particular hashtags contributed to the integration of village turning the virtual community. ( Mahuta, n.d) The Use of these HybridHashtags was not always the positive outcome, there was one instance where a negative tweets was posted, #BanTheHaka, which for NZ is considered  extremely  negative. The Haka is a very important part of culture to New Zealand, it is the Te Reo Mãori’s  War dance that will be performed on almost every occasion, most of the the time it would be recognised  during every international rugby game before kick off.  This has attracted certain controversy on  Tweets, for reason  that  it should be banned, the expression that  the traditional dance is an aggressive  form of behaviour. (Trye et al., 2020) In 2020 the creation of the Mãori loanword Twitter corpus was created, which is a technique  that relies on sets of words rather  than following different users.The case is that the more HybridityHashtags are used, the more use of English is incorporated, there is also the possibility that less cultural importance will be highlighted. As for the use of English, this could lead to it slowly fading in the coming years, as Māori will no longer be part. The Culture’s roots are based on respect, a very important practice.

The next content which is researched about was The Mãori  Twitter Corpus, which is the collection of  different Mãori tweets which had been posted. yet again written by the same scholars which had analysed the different uses of Hashtags. Why the Corpus is an important factor, it can be seen as a linguistic analysis  to view informal Mãori language which is what Twitter is built on in terms of the way its language is written. The corpus itself contained approximately  over 79,000 original tweets , one million words  made by over 2300 different Twitter accounts. A study which is conducted for the language will not only  aid for future generations for Mãori  Tweets but as well for the overall health of the language. After reading the paper, the crucial information was how this was created.  Four different steps were used. Step 1: Collection of Tweets; all data was collected on the website known as IndigenousTweets.com and on Twitter. Step 2:  Pre- process Tweets; looking at users as well as different links, and gathering tons of tweets from well well known users who write in  the language.  Step 3: the filtration of Non- Mãori Tweets; removal of other languages allocated in Tweets. and example would be Kãore he raru. No worries, those who were able to tweet in the language would only do so from time to time, a selection was strict, from each particular tweet needed to contain a certain amount of words in Mãori  and lastly Step 4 : The Removal of formulaic Tweets; Removal of  some forms of words. This seemed  to be the most complex step as it involved sorting data alphabetically , Tweets that were almost considered identical. To make sure there was no repetition.  (Trye et al., 2022)  Written within page 1261 was deep analysis of the Tweets per year, the data was collected from early as 2006 towards 2020 ( Just when Covid was at its peak) From there study it was concluded that  majority of the volume of the Mãori Tweets only started to peak from 2010  towards the year of 2014, a small decline to 2016, but then slowly  would rise up and decline in 2020.  There conclusion still was not clear why this had occurred.

As there is  almost little to no  research towards this topic, what has been given in the past years still seems to be the answer to the current state of what the status of  Te Reo Mãori within Twitter. However this research paper could be linked to one of the papers which was published in 2015,  as most of the reach has the potential to be linked to each other.The Indigenous Tweets website provides statics for a lot of different countries. The  analysis of  this was conducted and concluded into different Tweeting experiences; as mentioned above the the is a decline in the years of the Mãori Tweeters could be due to the infrequency of Tweets.  The users that were to use to contribute to creating posts  were only a small percentage, an indication that the community is much more smaller then it appears based on the data analysis above. The interaction  in the Native language is only through a certain amount of users.  Strategies were made over an 11 week period to try and encourage the use of Mãori, formulated on the following three: Encourage conversations by replying to tweets and retweeting Mãori-language tweets, Tweet questions to elicit responses and Tweet comments on topical issues. The conclusion to this study was that users are willing to respond to the Tweets, if the topic was to interest them.  Conversations would occur between each on other in the Native Language. Tweeting would occur only in certain times of the day, and lastly  English would be written to respond to those Tweets. (Keegan et al., 2015) In terms of the location where these Tweets were to be posted from larger areas of New Zealand; Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. Smaller areas also were located to be Tweeting as well, which aren’t the most populated areas, Palmerston North , Tauranaga, Picton, Nelson and some parts of the Northland ( North Auckland). (Keegan et al., 2015) Yet again there is not an answer to why this occurs, the paper mentions that further research needs to be developed.  Mentioned by previous scholars that there  has been there has been several resources that have compiled Te Reo Mãori, The RMT Corpus, which  has borrowed the loanwords, the only resources that  are existent, there has not yet been the finding of a fully incorporated Mãori language on the social networking spectrum. (Trye et al., 2022) Once again it can be seen that further research needs to developed. If this was to be developed it would play a crucial role towards the implementation of culture,  this would also aid both researchers and educators to contribute more to keep Māori prominent  in the digital world. 

All the data that had been collected from the various articles explained how Mãori participation is on Twitter, from each study that was conducted the relatable words would be towards the use of Hashtags, the form of events that occur would attract users to participate in writing in the native language. The decline that had occurred in the years and led to 2020 could be due to  Covid , as at that point New Zealand was on total lockdown. Furthermore there has been a lack of papers that have been written about this topic, meaning research has been limited, across the papers it has been mentioned that further research would be required.  Te Reo Mãori does not seem to be dying on Twitter but rather that it will not always be a continuous language, users will only post when there is  the need to Tweet, and yet again this will tend to Mãori tweets written with the use of both loanwords and HybridHashtags, which are two of the popular ways of Twitter (Pae Tīhau)  using  Te Reo Mãori.

References:

Fordis, M., Street, R. L., Volk, R. J., & Smith, Q. (2011). The prospects for web 2.0 technologies for engagement, communication, and dissemination in the era of patient-centered outcomes research: Selected articles developed from the Eisenberg Conference Series 2010 meeting. Journal of Health Communication, 16(sup1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2011.598398

Keegan, T. T., Mato, P., & Ruru, S. (2015). Using Twitter in an indigenous language: An analysis of Te Reo Māori tweets. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 11(1), 59–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/117718011501100105

Mahuta, P. s. (n.d.). Building virtual language communities through social media –

because we … University of Waikato. Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://www.waikato.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/394923/chapter7.pdf

Trye, D., Calude, A. S., Bravo-Marquez, F., & Keegan, T. T. (2020). Hybrid hashtags: #youknowyoureakiwiwhen your tweet contains Māori and English. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2020.00015

Trye, D., Keegan, T. T., Mato, P., & Apperley, M. (2022). Harnessing indigenous tweets: The REO Māori Twitter corpus. Language Resources and Evaluation, 56(4), 1229–1268. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-022-09580-w