New Study Explains Why Trump's 'Sad' Tweets Are So Effective (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: During his campaign and presidency, Donald Trump has used Twitter to circumvent traditional media broadcasters and speak directly to the masses. He is particularly known for one specific tweet construction: he sets up a situation that he feels should inspire anger or outrage, then punctuates it with "Sad!" New research from New York University suggests a reason why this style is so effective: a tweet containing moral and emotional language spreads farther among people with similar political persuasion. The study offered up "duty" as an example of a purely moral word, "fear" as a purely emotional one, and "hate" as word that combined the two categories. The research found that the use of purely moral or purely emotional language had a limited impact on the spread of a tweet, but the "presence of moral-emotional words in messages increased their diffusion by a factor of 20% for each additional word." The impact of this language cut both ways. Tweets with moral-emotional words spread further among those with a similar political outlook, and they spread less with those who held opposing views, according to the research published in the journal PNAS. The study looked at 563,312 tweets on the topics of gun control, same-sex marriage, and climate change, and rated their impact by the number of retweets each one received.

Comments

Re:That's not a style

[SharpFang]

"Defending" is such a nice word until you look at what activities are hidden behind it.

Setting on fire the limo owned by Muhammad Ashraf, a muslim immigrant running a limo rental service. Wounding Luis Villarroel, a mexican immigrant, driver of that limo, with shards of broken windows. All in the name of defending immigrants from Trump.

Look, Soviet Russia was "only defending" other countries from the capitalist oppression too. It's just a narrative.

Honest minorities people behind #notyourshield during gamergate? Read up. First link on Google: "The reality is #notyourshield is an astroturfing campaign designed to invalidate very real accusations of misogyny and racism in gamergate" - a bullshit narrative pushed by SJWs and caught up by liberal press to silence the minorities who don't want their "protection".