Document is current

Article History

Received: 18 November 2024

Accepted: 18 February 2026

First Online: 10 March 2026

Competing interests

: The second author (S.O.) was a member of the Editorial Board of this journal at the time of acceptance for publication. The manuscript was assessed in line with the journal’s standard editorial processes, including its policy on competing interests. The other authors declare no competing interests.

: We followed ethics approval and informed consent where required and applicable. This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. More precisely, the research involved no direct interaction, recruitment, intervention, or manipulation of individuals and was limited to non-interventional analysis of publicly accessible user-generated content. Under the applicable regulatory frameworks in both the Republic of Türkiye and the Kingdom of Sweden, formal ethics committee approval is required only for research involving interventions, identifiable biological material, or the processing of sensitive personal data. Because none of these conditions applied, ethics committee approval was not required or applicable to seek. Since the study relied exclusively on publicly available data and involved no direct engagement with individuals, individual informed consent was not required. This study analyzed publicly available content posted on Platform X (formerly Twitter) between 2016 and 2021. The research involved no direct interaction with individuals, no recruitment, and no physical or psychological intervention; it consisted solely of non-interventional analysis of publicly accessible user-generated content. The first and last authors are affiliated with Sabancı University, Turkey, and the corresponding author holds a secondary affiliation at the same institution. According to the applicable law in Turkey (Republic of Türkiye - Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698, KVKK, ), ethics committee approval is only required where personal data are processed in ways subject to data protection regulation, particularly in relation to special categories of personal data. On the other hand, research based exclusively on publicly available sources, without the processing of sensitive personal data and without intervention, is exempt from ethics committee review. This interpretation is consistent with institutional research ethics guidelines established in Turkey as per the TR Dizin Ethical Principles flowchart ( ) which governs research and publication practices. As the present study relied solely on publicly accessible social media content and did not process sensitive personal data as defined under applicable legislation, ethics committee approval was not required under the applicable Turkish regulatory framework. The corresponding author’s primary affiliation is Linnaeus University, Sweden. According to the applicable law in Sweden (Kingdom of Sweden - Ethical Review Act 2003:460, ), ethical review is required only for research involving physical interventions on individuals, methods intended to affect participants physically or psychologically, identifiable biological material, or the processing of sensitive personal data. Because the present study analyzed publicly available material, involved no intervention, and did not process sensitive personal data as defined under Swedish legislation, formal ethical approval was not required under Swedish law. All procedures were conducted in accordance with applicable national regulations and institutional guidelines in both jurisdictions and with internationally recognized ethical principles for research involving human-related data, including the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki ( ) and the Belmont Report ( ).

: This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. The study did not involve direct contact, recruitment, participation, or intervention with individuals but relied exclusively on publicly available social media posts and replies. In accordance with internet-mediated research ethics and data protection principles, no attempts were made to identify, profile, or contact users. Usernames, profile metadata, and any potentially identifying information were removed prior to analysis. Only aggregated and irreversible derived features (e.g., emoji frequency counts and co-occurrence statistics) were used in the analyses, and no identifiable personal data are reported in the manuscript. Because the study relied exclusively on publicly available content and involved no direct interaction with individuals, individual informed consent was not required under the applicable regulatory and ethical frameworks in Turkey and Sweden.