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

Yep - it's a theory

[Okian Warrior]

Does not sound like much of a study. More like a bit of a theory.

Yep. Researchers find a trend in the data, then rationalize an explanation and present it as "theory".

I'll propose an alternate explanation for the data.

People are tired of being told what to think, the outlets have been telling people what to think in the strongest possible terms, and as a result the strength of the words has declined.

Calling someone a liar, fascist, racist, islamophobe, Hitler, Cthulhu, and everything else was so completely over the top(*) that many people simply got used to the terms, thinking that exaggeration was the new normal they applied an internal reverse bias to compensate.

The term "sad" is mild, so when you encounter it you might think the person saying it *isn't* exaggerating, and may be choosing their words carefully. It's the difference between someone saying "I'm uncomfortable" versus "I'm too hot!". Literally, the 2nd phrase implies required action, which isn't usually true (that the action is required), and is taken as exaggeration. The 1st phrase sounds more accurate and reasonable, and gives the impression of truthfulness.

So when Trump says something is "sad", it's in lieu of calling something bad, nasty, stupid, or unconscionable. It comes off as more nuanced, non-exaggerated, and more trustworthy.

That's my theory, and it also fits the data.

Can someone propose a test to distinguish between the two theories?

(*) If you don't think that the recent media coverage was over the top, consider Breitbart's enormous jump in readership in recent months, [Democrat minority leader] Nancy Pelosi is desperately trying to shore up support, and CNN is now literally synonymous with the term "fake news". That doesn't happen overnight, nor from isolated events, nor does it happen for no good reason.

You Can Do Something About It

[SoftwareArtist]

Yes, emotionally manipulative language is effective, but it doesn't have to be. Train yourself to look for it, and then choose to reject it. When you see someone appealing to your emotions instead of your reason, recognize what they're doing and call them out for it. That's especially true when they're saying things you agree with, because that's when you're most vulnerable to manipulation. We each have the responsibility to reject people who try to manipulate our emotions and tell them that's not acceptable. We also have the responsibility not to stoop to doing it ourselves. If your arguments are sound, they can stand on their own without emotionally manipulative language. If you find you can't make your arguments sound convincing without it, that's a pretty good clue there's something wrong with them.

Re: Trump's effective

[ffreeloader]

That isn't really the problem.

The government has so tied up business with regulation that it sucks trillions of dollars a year out of the economy. Since Obamacare went into effect the vast majority of jobs created have been part time and temporary jobs so the employer wouldn't get hit with the costs of Obamacare. The other problem is the QE that the Fed started under Obama. They have been printing over $80 billion/month and sending it straight to the stock market. One of the laws of economics is that the more currency there is floating around the higher prices will go--inflation. In other words, the Obama administration and Fed have been stealing from us through inflation at a fantastic rate as every time the dollar is devalued what its purchasing power drops. And who gets stuck with that? All of us.

Oh, the government tells us inflation is low, but who really believes that? My food costs have risen from less than $300/month to more than $500/month in less than 3 years and my food buying habits haven't changed at all.. Much of this is hidden price increases. Take cottage cheese for instance. It used to be sold by the quart--32 ounces. Now it is in a 24 ounce container. That alone is a 25% increase in cost. It doesn't even take account of how much the price/container has risen. Many other products have had the same thing happen. I used to buy grapfruit juice for $3.25/half gallon. Now its a few pennies higher, but the carton has been reduced in size 9%. Noticed the reduction in size of potato chip bags? Candy bar sizes and prices? The rise in meat prices? However, when the government figures food price inflation they count only the cost of the container. They ignore the size of the container. Easy way to lie about inflation.

A week or two ago Trump rolled back a bunch of regulations Obama had put in place just before he left office. The Democrats screamed about it, but those regulations alone would have drained about $2 trillion/yr out of the economy. He also rolled back the permitting process for things like road and bridge building/reconstruction. He had a report that a road contractor had given him that had cost the contractor 5 years and $24 million to make. The cost of the report was in the neighborhood of $7000/page. And the contractor still couldn't build his 18 miles of road under our current regulatory structure.

The MSM didn't cover these things at all that I know of. Why? Because these are things that Trump is doing that will start the economy to move again. If they did cover it they did it in a way to ignore how this will affect job creation in a positive way.

I don't know if you have ever seen the shadowstats.com website. The guy who is the brains behind it looks at the US economy the way the government used to look at it 30 to 40 years ago. He figures inflation, unemployment, the value of the dollar, the gdp, etc... the same way the federal government used to before they began manipulating the numbers. You ought to take a look at the site. It's a real education. We are at, financially speaking, the same point we were in the 1930's economically, only we have been in a negative growth period, depression in other words, since 2001. He has publicly available charts on our economy on the site that anyone can look at for free..