Collective Emotions and Social Resilience in the Digital Traces After a Terrorist Attack

Abstract

After collective traumas such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks, members of concerned communities experience intense emotions and talk profusely about them. Although these exchanges resemble simple emotional venting, Durkheim’s theory of collective effervescence postulates that these collective emotions lead to higher levels of solidarity in the affected community. We present the first large-scale test of this theory through the analysis of digital traces of 62,114 Twitter users after the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015. We found a collective negative emotional response followed by a marked long-term increase in the use of lexical indicators related to solidarity. Expressions of social processes, prosocial behavior, and positive affect were higher in the months after the attacks for the individuals who participated to a higher degree in the collective emotion. Our findings support the conclusion that collective emotions after a disaster are associated with higher solidarity, revealing the social resilience of a community.

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response

“…Specifically, we discussed research on threat perception, social context, science communication, aligning individual and collective interests, leadership, and stress and coping. These are a selection of relevant topics, but readers may also be interested in other relevant work, including on psychological reactance 247,248 , collective emotions and social media 249,250 , and the impact of economic deprivation and unemployment 251,252 .…”

The virtues of collective gatherings: A study on the positive effects of a major scouting event

“…And their results suggest that the effects of collective events last between 1 and 3 weeks (Páez et al, , ; Rimé et al, ). Still, a recent study on the Twitter exchanges following the Paris attacks, suggested that effects of emotional synchronization might last for several months (Garcia & Rimé, ). The present study showed that the long‐lasting results obtained through online interactions are also observed when people actually participate in a collective gathering.…”

“…Moreover, most of them have suggested that effects of collective events last between 1 and 3 weeks (Páez et al, , ; Rimé et al, ). A notable exception to this trend is a study by Garcia and Rimé () on the digital traces left by Twitter users after the Paris attacks (). These authors have shown that participation in emotional exchanges on Twitter following the attacks led to prosocial effects similar to those of collective gatherings.…”

The Economic Penalty of Terrorism: Increase in Discrimination Against Arabs and Muslims after Paris Attacks

“…First of all, in so far as research on public opinion focuses on changes in the immediate aftermath of attacks, it is unclear how the effect reverberates over time. It has been shown (Hopkins, 2010) that post-attack spikes in anti-immigrant sentiment dissipate rapidly, within a few months, in line with evidence on the short-term duration of associated psychological effects like post-traumatic stress disorder (Silver et al, 2002), of behavioral reactions like the substitution of air travel after the attacks of 9/11 (Gigerenzer, 2006) and of collective emotions and pro-social behavior following the November 2015 attacks in Paris (Garcia and Rimé, 2019). Second, research tracking effects in a longer temporal window (i.e., one to three years) like some of the aforementioned studies on economic outcomes does not rely on perfectly settled evidence.…”