Does negatively toned language use on social media lead to attitude polarization?

Buder, Jürgen; Rabl, Lisa; Feiks, Markus; Badermann, Mandy; Zurstiege, Guido

doi:10.1016/j.chb.2020.106663

Cited by 31 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Secondly, direct measures of mixed emotions were unavailable in Study 3, and comparisons between direct and indirect measures were hence not possible. While the index of emotional ambivalence cannot provide a direct assessment of mixed emotions, it is nevertheless a valid and well-established approach to estimating whether participants’ general emotional experiences tend to be ambivalent (Breckler, 1994 ; Buder et al, 2021 ; Hong & Lee, 2010 ; Schneider & Mattes, 2021 ; Spencer-Rodgers et al, 2010 ). Coupled with the large-scale, longitudinal dataset used in Study 3, this approach thus provides evidence complementing Study 1 and 2 about how ambivalent emotional states could be directionally linked to well-being.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Breckler (1994) found that this formula was most appropriate for these purposes and recommended its usage. Indeed, this index as well as variations 4 of this index have been very widely used in both recent (Buder et al, 2021;Schneider & Mattes, 2021) as well as previous (Hong & Lee, 2010;Spencer-Rodgers et al, 2010) research to index ambivalent or complex emotional states and are well-validated.…”

Section: Emotional Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Torn Between Valences: Mixed Emotions Predict Poorer Psychological Well-Being and Job Burnout

2022

J Happiness Stud

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Conflicting perspectives on whether mixed emotions are adaptive states which promote integrative processes or uncomfortable states which are agonizing make divergent predictions on whether mixed emotions in daily life are conducive towards psychological well-being. We examined this across three studies. Study 1 ( N = 335, 135 males; M age = 41.31) examined associations between state mixed emotions and psychological well-being. Study 2 ( N = 389; 160 males; M age = 40.86) examined associations between workplace-specific mixed emotions and workplace ill-being assessed based on burnout. Both direct measures and indirect measures were examined in Study 1 and 2, allowing some comparison of methodological issues related to their predictive validity. Study 3 ( N = 3444; 1587 males; M age = 55.34) examined bidirectional relationships between an index of emotional ambivalence and psychological well-being about ten years later, controlling for baselines. Demographic covariates, positive emotions, and negative emotions were controlled for in all studies. Analyses were performed using latent variable structural equation modelling. After adjusting for all covariates, the direct measures of mixed emotions predicted poorer psychological well-being (Study 1) and greater burnout (Study 2). However, indirect measures were found to suffer from relatively greater multicollinearity and poorer predictive validity upon controlling for positive and negative emotions. In Study 3, emotional ambivalence predicted poorer long-term psychological well-being, while psychological well-being also predicted lower emotional ambivalence, supporting bidrectionality. The findings provide preliminary evidence that naturalistically experienced mixed emotions may be conflicting and unpleasant, with potentially negative implications for psychological well-being over and above positive and negative emotions. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10902-021-00493-z.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Emotional Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

Torn Between Valences: Mixed Emotions Predict Poorer Psychological Well-Being and Job Burnout

2022

J Happiness Stud

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“…Moreover, the empirical evidence supports the suggestion that polarisation increases with time [ 66 ]. The prevalence of negative emotions in the news context enables its rapid diffusion in online networks [ 67 , 68 ], while users’ sentiment negativity, in general, creates a favourable environment for their polarisation [ 69 ]. Partisan users were found to be especially likely to engage in homogeneous connections and produce more polarised network structures [ 70 ].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Users’ polarisation in dynamic discussion networks: The case of refugee crisis in Sweden

Kopacheva

Yantseva

2022

PLoS ONE

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This paper presents a study on the dynamics of sentiment polarisation in the active online discussion communities formed around a controversial topic—immigration. Using a collection of tweets in the Swedish language from 2012 to 2019, we track the development of the communities and their sentiment polarisation trajectories over time and in the context of an exogenous shock represented by the European refugee crisis in 2015. To achieve the goal of the study, we apply methods of network and sentiment analysis to map users’ interactions in the network communities and quantify users’ sentiment polarities. The results of the analysis give little evidence for users’ polarisation in the network and its communities, as well as suggest that the crisis had a limited effect on the polarisation dynamics on this social media platform. Yet, we notice a shift towards more negative tonality of users’ sentiments after the crisis and discuss possible explanations for the above-mentioned observations.

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“…However,in the light of our results we argue that the problem is not only with the design of these social media platforms (including their recommendation systems to enhance visibility of specific content), but also about how political parties use these platforms. While some actors may use the platform to engage in a democratic and fruitful dialogue, other actors may use the same platform either for magnifying their echo-chambers and political polarization to their advantage or propagating messages of incivility and sarcasm (Barberá 2014 ; Buder et al 2021 ; Nithyanand et al 2017 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online polarization and cross-fertilization in multi-cleavage societies: the case of Spain

Casañ

García-Vidal

Grimaldi

et al. 2022

Soc. Netw. Anal. Min.

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The impact of the social media (SM) has been seen on the one hand as the cause of large exacerbation of negative messages, responsible for massively harmful societal phenomenon against democracies. On the other hand, recent studies have begun to look at how these online channels were able to provide a new impulse in human communication. The novelty of our work resides on analysing several axes of polarizations related to different societal topics. We believe our approach to reflect a more complex society, differing from the recent literature, which has considered a unique left–right dichotomic cleavage. Our methodology consists of extracting topics from the priority themes of the SM debate, using BERT language processing techniques and TF-IDF model. Our results show situation of social media interactions in a multidimensional space does exist. We highlight how social media behaviours, polarization and cross-fertilization differ as upon concrete topics. We argue therefore the ‘mega-identity partisanship’ which differentiate US online users in two different spaces cannot be extended for the rest of countries taking as first evidence the case of Spain. Further research should extend our conclusions for a possible generalization.

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Does negatively toned language use on social media lead to attitude polarization?

Cited by 31 publications

References 55 publications

Torn Between Valences: Mixed Emotions Predict Poorer Psychological Well-Being and Job Burnout

Torn Between Valences: Mixed Emotions Predict Poorer Psychological Well-Being and Job Burnout

Users’ polarisation in dynamic discussion networks: The case of refugee crisis in Sweden

Online polarization and cross-fertilization in multi-cleavage societies: the case of Spain

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