Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections

Abstract Previous research investigating the transmission of political messaging has primarily taken a valence-based approach leaving it unclear how specific emotions influence the spread of candidates’ messages, particularly in a social media context. Moreover, such work does not examine if any dif...

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Autores principales:	Meng-Jie Wang, Kumar Yogeeswaran, Sivanand Sivaram, Kyle Nash
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Springer Nature 2021
Materias:	History of scholarship and learning. The humanities AZ20-999 Social Sciences H
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/ba1a164b89074dc39890f1b7b8a77e72
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:ba1a164b89074dc39890f1b7b8a77e722021-11-28T12:25:51ZExamining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections10.1057/s41599-021-00987-42662-9992https://doaj.org/article/ba1a164b89074dc39890f1b7b8a77e722021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00987-4https://doaj.org/toc/2662-9992Abstract Previous research investigating the transmission of political messaging has primarily taken a valence-based approach leaving it unclear how specific emotions influence the spread of candidates’ messages, particularly in a social media context. Moreover, such work does not examine if any differences exist across major political parties (i.e., Democrats vs. Republicans) in their responses to each type of emotional content. Leveraging more than 7000 original messages published by Senate candidates on Twitter leading up to the 2018 US mid-term elections, the present study utilizes an advanced natural language tool (i.e., IBM Tone Analyzer) to examine how candidates’ multidimensional discrete emotions (i.e., joy, anger, fear, sadness, and confidence) displayed in a given tweet—might be more likely to garner the public’s attention online. While the results indicate that positive joy-signaling tweets are less likely to be retweeted or favorited on both sides of the political spectrum, the presence of anger- and fear-signaling tweets were significantly associated with increased diffusion among Republican and Democrat networks, respectively. Neither expressions of confidence nor sadness had an impact on retweet or favorite counts. Given the ubiquity of social media in contemporary politics, here we provide a starting point from which to disentangle the role of specific emotions in the proliferation of political messages, shedding light on the ways in which political candidates gain potential exposure throughout the election cycle.Meng-Jie WangKumar YogeeswaranSivanand SivaramKyle NashSpringer NaturearticleHistory of scholarship and learning. The humanitiesAZ20-999Social SciencesHENHumanities & Social Sciences Communications, Vol 8, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	History of scholarship and learning. The humanities AZ20-999 Social Sciences H
spellingShingle	History of scholarship and learning. The humanities AZ20-999 Social Sciences H Meng-Jie Wang Kumar Yogeeswaran Sivanand Sivaram Kyle Nash Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections
description	Abstract Previous research investigating the transmission of political messaging has primarily taken a valence-based approach leaving it unclear how specific emotions influence the spread of candidates’ messages, particularly in a social media context. Moreover, such work does not examine if any differences exist across major political parties (i.e., Democrats vs. Republicans) in their responses to each type of emotional content. Leveraging more than 7000 original messages published by Senate candidates on Twitter leading up to the 2018 US mid-term elections, the present study utilizes an advanced natural language tool (i.e., IBM Tone Analyzer) to examine how candidates’ multidimensional discrete emotions (i.e., joy, anger, fear, sadness, and confidence) displayed in a given tweet—might be more likely to garner the public’s attention online. While the results indicate that positive joy-signaling tweets are less likely to be retweeted or favorited on both sides of the political spectrum, the presence of anger- and fear-signaling tweets were significantly associated with increased diffusion among Republican and Democrat networks, respectively. Neither expressions of confidence nor sadness had an impact on retweet or favorite counts. Given the ubiquity of social media in contemporary politics, here we provide a starting point from which to disentangle the role of specific emotions in the proliferation of political messages, shedding light on the ways in which political candidates gain potential exposure throughout the election cycle.
format	article
author	Meng-Jie Wang Kumar Yogeeswaran Sivanand Sivaram Kyle Nash
author_facet	Meng-Jie Wang Kumar Yogeeswaran Sivanand Sivaram Kyle Nash
author_sort	Meng-Jie Wang
title	Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections
title_short	Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections
title_full	Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections
title_fullStr	Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections
title_full_unstemmed	Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections
title_sort	examining spread of emotional political content among democratic and republican candidates during the 2018 us mid-term elections
publisher	Springer Nature
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/ba1a164b89074dc39890f1b7b8a77e72
work_keys_str_mv	AT mengjiewang examiningspreadofemotionalpoliticalcontentamongdemocraticandrepublicancandidatesduringthe2018usmidtermelections AT kumaryogeeswaran examiningspreadofemotionalpoliticalcontentamongdemocraticandrepublicancandidatesduringthe2018usmidtermelections AT sivanandsivaram examiningspreadofemotionalpoliticalcontentamongdemocraticandrepublicancandidatesduringthe2018usmidtermelections AT kylenash examiningspreadofemotionalpoliticalcontentamongdemocraticandrepublicancandidatesduringthe2018usmidtermelections
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Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections

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