LGBTQ Visibility Measured Consistently and Persistently in US Twitter Bios from 2012 through 2023

Irissa Cisternino
LGBTQ visibility is an often discussed but rarely quantified concept. Here we operationalize visibility as the prevalence of active social media accounts with an LGBTQ signifier in the profile bio and measure the prevalence of such accounts consistently and persistently at daily resolution over twelve years in the United States. We found that prevalence for the signifiers lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer increased. The term ‘gay’ grew most rapidly. Accounts with LGBTQ signifiers were espe