Skip to main content
Search
Search
    Quick Search anywhere
    Quick search in Citations
Advanced Search
Skip main navigationClose Drawer MenuOpen Drawer Menu
Previous article
Research Report

Emotionally Toned Online Discussions Evoke Subjectively Experienced Emotional Responses

Published Online:April 27, 2022https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000341

Abstract

Abstract. Emotions are an important element of human interactions, including those in social media. Despite the prominence of text-based messages in online communication, little is known about how the emotional tone of the messages affects the emotions of the recipients. With three experiments, the current study investigated these effects in the context of online news discussions. Participants first read news discussion threads with a negative, neutral, and positive tone, and then rated their subjective emotional state in terms of valence and arousal. Results showed that negatively toned discussions induced more negative valence and higher arousal ratings than the other conditions. Positive discussions had an opposite effect. Emotionally toned online comments evidently affect the quality and the intensity of the readers’ subjective emotions. We discuss implications for future research and emotion mitigation strategies to improve online discussion quality.

References

  • Anderson, A. A., Brossard, D., Scheufele, D. A., Xenos, M. A., & Ladwig, P. (2014). The “nasty effect:” Online incivility and risk perceptions of emerging technologies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(3), 373–387. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12009 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1994). Measuring emotion: The self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 25(1), 49–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7916(94)90063-9 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (2007). Emotion and motivation. In J. T. CacioppoL. G. TassinaryG. G. BerntsonEds., Handbook of psychophysiology (pp. 581–607). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511546396.025 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (2017). Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW): Instruction manual and affective ratings. Technical Report C-3. UF Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Champely, S. (2020). Pwr: Basic functions for power analysis. R package version 1.3-0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=pwr First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Cheng, J., Bernstein, M., Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., & Leskovec, J. (2017). Anyone can become a troll: Causes of trolling behavior in online discussions. In ACMEd., Paper presented at the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 1217–1230). https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998213 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Chmiel, A., Sienkiewicz, J., Thelwall, M., Paltoglou, G., Buckley, K., Kappas, A., & Hołyst, J. A. (2011). Collective emotions online and their influence on community life. PLoS One, 6, Article e22207. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022207 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Coe, K., Kenski, K., & Rains, S. A. (2014). Online and uncivil? Patterns and determinants of incivility in newspaper website comments. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 658–679. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12104 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Ekman, P. (1999). Basic emotions. In T. DalgleishT. PowerEds., The handbook of cognition and emotion (pp. 45–60). John Wiley & Sons. First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Gervais, B. T. (2015). Incivility online: Affective and behavioral reactions to uncivil political posts in a web-based experiment. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 12(2), 167–185. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2014.997416 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Izard, C. E. (2009). Emotion theory and research: Highlights, unanswered questions, and emerging issues. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163539 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Kiskola, J., Olsson, T., Väätäjä, H., Syrjämäki, A. H., Rantasila, A., Isokoski, P., Ilves, M., & Surakka, V. (2021). Applying critical voice in design of user interfaces for supporting self-reflection and emotion regulation in online news commenting. Paper presented at the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445783 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Kramer, A. D., Guillory, J. E., & Hancock, J. T. (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 8788–8790. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Masullo Chen, G., & Lu, S. (2017). Online political discourse: Exploring differences in effects of civil and uncivil disagreement in news website comments. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 61(1), 108–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2016.1273922 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Masullo Chen, G., & Ng, Y. M. M. (2017). Nasty online comments anger you more than me, but nice ones make me as happy as you. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 181–188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.010 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Mauss, I. B., & Robinson, M. D. (2009). Measures of emotion: A review. Cognition and Emotion, 23(2), 209–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930802204677 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Mohammad, S. M. (2016). Sentiment analysis: Detecting valence, emotions, and other affectual states from text. In H. E. MeiselmanEd., Emotion measurement (pp. 201–237). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100508-8.00009-6 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Prochazka, F., Weber, P., & Schweiger, W. (2018). Effects of civility and reasoning in user comments on perceived journalistic quality. Journalism Studies, 19(1), 62–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1161497 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Rösner, L., Winter, S., & Krämer, N. C. (2016). Dangerous minds? Effects of uncivil online comments on aggressive cognitions, emotions, and behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 58, 461–470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.01.022 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Seering, J., Fang, T., Damasco, L., Chen, M., Sun, L., & Kaufman, G. (2019). Designing user interface elements to improve the quality and civility of discourse in online commenting behaviors. Paper presented at the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–14). https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300836 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Syrjämäki, A. H. (2022). Supplementary materials to “Emotionally toned online discussions evoke subjectively experienced emotional responses”. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GZ847 First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Topal, K., Koyuturk, M., & Ozsoyoglu, G. (2016). Emotion-and area-driven topic shift analysis in social media discussions. Paper presented at the 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM) (pp. 510–518). https://doi.org/10.1109/ASONAM.2016.7752283 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling as implicit emotion regulation. Emotion Review, 10, 116–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073917742706 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Ziegele, M., Weber, M., Quiring, O., & Breiner, T. (2018). The dynamics of online news discussions: Effects of news articles and reader comments on users’ involvement, willingness to participate, and the civility of their contributions. Information, Communication & Society, 21(10), 1419–1435. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1324505 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar