New trends in Digital Marketing: Analysis of the social conversation on X.com about Metaverse and AI

Abstract

This article proposes a mixed methodology to analyze the social conversation around two digital marketing trends: the metaverse and artificial intelligence. The aim of this research is to find out which actors are leading the social conversation around the metaverse and artificial intelligence on X.com, in order to identify which types of companies or entrepreneurs are setting new trends in digital marketing and to what extent they reproduce gender biases. Methodologically, data mining was used to collect messages through its API and their subsequent processing. All tweets tagged with the hashtags #Metaverse #AI, and their translation into Spanish, were downloaded. The total sample consisted of 123,580 tweets, posted by 45,622 different users. Subsequently, the content was analyzed using digital ethnography to establish who is leading the conversation and what are the emerging themes. The results show that the companies leading the conversation are digital projects or recently created start-ups; among the users with the most likes, RTs or replies, there are no large innovative companies. In the case of content creators, those who receive the most likes are characters created with artificial intelligence that represent highly sexualized and objectified women.