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Detecting emotional contagion in massive social networks
Lorenzo Coviello1, Yunkyu Sohn2, Adam D I Kramer3
1Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, United States of America.
Plos One
|March 14, 2014
Summary
Emotions spread through online social networks, even to friends not directly experiencing events. This suggests social networks amplify global emotional synchrony.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Computational Social Science
- Network Science
Background:
- Emotions are known to spread through direct social contact.
- The influence of online social networks on emotional contagion is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether emotional expression spreads through massive online social networks.
- To develop a novel method for measuring emotional contagion in digital environments.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a novel method to measure emotional contagion.
- Analyzed status message data from millions of Facebook users.
- Correlated emotional content with external environmental factors like rainfall.
Main Results:
- Rainfall directly influenced the emotional content of users' status messages.
- Emotional contagion extended to friends in different cities not experiencing rainfall.
- Each directly affected person influenced approximately 1-2 other individuals.
Conclusions:
- Online social networks facilitate the spread of emotional expression.
- Social networks may amplify the intensity of global emotional synchrony.
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