Michigan State University: Cringeworthy Politics: Trump Sparks ‘Embarrassment’ Spikes On Twitter. “A piece of not-fake-news: there has been a 45-percent increase in people tweeting about embarrassment since Donald Trump took office. In an analysis of Twitter traffic between June 2015 and June 2017, researchers revealed how the platform’s users responded to Trump’s actions at high-profile events.”
emotions
Boston Globe: This Twitter account tells you the general mood of MBTA riders by the hour
Boston Globe: This Twitter account tells you the general mood of MBTA riders by the hour. “Riders have long been able to turn to the MBTA’s Twitter account and online alerts to get updates and find out what’s happening around the transit system. But now, there’s more available than just announcements about a train’s arrival time. People can also find out how fellow commuters are feeling about the transit agency’s daily performance.”
Nieman Lab: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing — no, seriously, it is, according to this new research
Nieman Lab: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing — no, seriously, it is, according to this new research. “People who’ve scanned Facebook for news gain a little knowledge. Why do some of them think they’ve gained a lot? Consider statements like ‘I feel that I need to experience strong emotions regularly’ and ‘I feel like I need a good cry every now and then.’ How much do these statements apply to you?”
Quartz: You can catch a mood from watching YouTube videos
Quartz: You can catch a mood from watching YouTube videos. “A new study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science is the first to measure the effects of YouTube videos on viewers’ emotional state, according to its authors, psychologists Hannes Rosenbusch, Anthony Evans, and Marcel Zeelenberg from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Previous studies have examined emotional contagion in text-based platforms like Twitter and Facebook, noting that feelings move online from one person to another just as they do in physical environments.”
“Angry face” Facebook: Rage now trumps “love” in reactions to legislators’ Facebook posts (Nieman Lab)
Nieman Lab: “Angry face” Facebook: Rage now trumps “love” in reactions to legislators’ Facebook posts. “Facebook has gotten angrier since the election: Facebook users are increasingly using the ‘angry’ reaction in response to legislators’ Facebook posts, Pew finds.”
Nautilus: How Social Media Exploits Our Moral Emotions
Nautilus: How Social Media Exploits Our Moral Emotions . “Why does this keep happening? Because the architecture of social media exploits our sense of right and wrong, reaping profit from the pleasure we feel in expressing righteous outrage. The algorithms that undergird the flow of information on social media are, like the sensationalist print media and incendiary talk radio that came before them, designed to maximize ad revenue by engaging consumers’ attention to the fullest extent possible. Or as novelist John Green puts it, ‘Twitter is not designed to make you happier or better informed. It’s designed to keep you on Twitter.'”
PLOS: Under the Weather? How social media sentiments reflect weather patterns
PLOS: Under the Weather? How social media sentiments reflect weather patterns. “Grey skies getting you down? Research suggests that weather may impact our emotional state. But in a new PLOS ONE study, Patrick Baylis from the University of British Columbia, Nick Obradovich from MIT, and colleagues wanted to find out if specific weather conditions are associated with the positive or negative feelings expressed via social media. The researchers gathered 2.4 billion posts from Facebook and 1.1 billion from Twitter between 2009 and 2016. They used a categorization tool to analyze the sentiment for each post based on its positive and negative keywords. They also examined weather data for the location and date of each post to look for any associations.”
