From the article (see also earlier post): “A new study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst chronicles the use of dialect in online communications using the Twitter app. The authors examined more than 59 million tweets by 2.8 million Twitter users. The goal of the study was to identify online language usage by African Americans so that search engines like Google will be better able to serve a more diverse population of users. The data will help computer programs recognize words, phrases and language patterns that are associated with language spoken by African Americans.”