Tracking significant topics of discourse in forums

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable code, the code comprising instructions for:

• storing member profiles of a plurality of users, each member profile storing one or more demographic attributes for a user;
• receiving a plurality of messages sent by users of a social networking system, wherein the social networking system allows users to communicate with other users via messages;
• for each message in the plurality of messages, storing information associating the message with a member profile of a user that sent the message;
• collecting a plurality of terms occurring in the plurality of messages, each term in the plurality of terms co-occurring with a given topic;
• selecting a demographic attribute stored in the member profiles of the plurality of users of the social networking system;
• determining a plurality of ranges of values of the demographic attribute;
• identifying a range in the plurality of ranges as a minority group if the number of users in the plurality of users having the demographic attribute within the identified range is below a threshold value;
• for each term, in the plurality of terms:
• determining a normalized frequency of the term as a ratio of a frequency of co-occurrence of the term with the given topic to a frequency of occurrence of the term in a random sample of messages;
• and
• determining a weighted aggregate value of the demographic attribute of users that used the term in at least a message, the weighted aggregate value weighing users of the minority group higher than users of one or more other ranges;
• and
• configuring for presentation, a graphical display showing one or more terms, the presentation of each of the one or more terms based on the weighted aggregate value of the demographic attribute for the term and the normalized frequency of the term.