Negativity Spreads More than Positivity on Twitter After Both Positive and Negative Political Situations

Area of Science:

• Social Media Analysis
• Political Communication
• Computational Social Science

Background:

• Previous research indicates negative emotional language dominates social media discourse.
• Existing studies primarily focused on negative emotional contexts, leaving positive contexts under-explored.
• Understanding emotional language spread is crucial for analyzing political engagement online.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the spread of emotional language in both positive and negative political situations on social media.
• To determine if negativity or positivity drives content sharing in political discourse.
• To extend the understanding of emotional contagion in online political environments.

Main Methods:

• Study 1 analyzed tweets related to the 2016 US elections (winning and losing parties).
• Study 2 compared emotional language spread in a positive event (same-sex marriage approval) and a negative event (Ferguson unrest).
• Content sharing was measured as a function of emotional language intensity.

Main Results:

• Increased negativity predicted content sharing in both positive and negative political situations in Study 1.
• Negativity was again found to spread further than positivity in Study 2 across different contexts.
• Emotional language, particularly negativity, significantly influences the reach of political content online.

Conclusions:

• Negative emotional language demonstrates a greater capacity for spreading across social media platforms in political contexts.
• This finding holds true irrespective of whether the political situation is inherently positive or negative.
• The study highlights the pervasive influence of negativity on political discourse and user engagement online.