IndigenousTweets and Other Social Media Being Used for Indigenous Language Revitalization

From http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/tweet-hereafter-social-media-is-saving-native-languages

Tweet Hereafter: Social Media Is Saving Native Languages
By Doug Meigs
June 14, 2011

Kevin Scannell is a 40-year-old Irish American working in Saint Louis University’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. In March, he created IndigenousTweets.com, a website that aims to preserve and proliferate indigenous language by connecting Twitter users online.

IndigenousTweets.com began when Scannell wrote a computer program to cross-reference Twitter messages with statistical data for minority languages. His website names languages by their Native names. For example, Navajo is listed as Diné bizaad, i.e., “Navajo language.” Click into the language and relevant Twitter users are listed on a second screen. The site then ranks Twitterers based on various criteria, such as number of tweets and percentage written in the language.

Read more about endangered languages and online technology at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/tweet-hereafter-social-media-is-saving-native-languages

IndigenousTweets is available at http://indigenoustweets.com