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Shouting at the wall : Does negativity drive ideological cross-posting in Brexit Facebook comments?

Bossetta, Michael LU ; Segesten, Anamaria Dutceac LU orcid ; Zimmerman, Chris and Bonacci, Duje (2018) 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, SMSociety 2018 p.246-250
Abstract

Using a novel methodological approach to measure emotions in Facebook comments, this Work in Progress (WIP) paper explores the relationship between negative feelings and ideological cross-posting behavior. Using the VoxPopuli data harvester, we collect over 770,000 public Facebook comments1 from the three major political campaign pages active during the Brexit referendum. After sorting users into ideological camps based on their reactions to campaign posts, we then examine their commenting patterns across ideological lines. Using three different methods of sentiment analysis, we identify negative and positive emotions and their fine-grained sub-categories in comments. The analysis reveals one quarter of all comments are... (More)

Using a novel methodological approach to measure emotions in Facebook comments, this Work in Progress (WIP) paper explores the relationship between negative feelings and ideological cross-posting behavior. Using the VoxPopuli data harvester, we collect over 770,000 public Facebook comments1 from the three major political campaign pages active during the Brexit referendum. After sorting users into ideological camps based on their reactions to campaign posts, we then examine their commenting patterns across ideological lines. Using three different methods of sentiment analysis, we identify negative and positive emotions and their fine-grained sub-categories in comments. The analysis reveals one quarter of all comments are cross-ideological posts, with Leave supporters overwhelmingly active in commenting on Remain posts. A comparison across the campaigns shows that Brexiteers are much more likely to express anger than Remainers.

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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
ACM proceedings, Emotions, Facebook, Marketing, NLP, Political communication, Sentiment analysis
host publication
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, SMSociety 2018
pages
5 pages
publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
conference name
9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, SMSociety 2018
conference location
Copenhagen, Denmark
conference dates
2018-07-18 - 2018-07-20
external identifiers
  • scopus:85051454470
ISBN
9781450363341
DOI
10.1145/3217804.3217922
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
f53d0eea-ab45-42b1-80b2-0b86ba8197eb
date added to LUP
2018-09-11 14:00:32
date last changed
2022-03-25 03:48:32
@inproceedings{f53d0eea-ab45-42b1-80b2-0b86ba8197eb,
  abstract     = {{<p>Using a novel methodological approach to measure emotions in Facebook comments, this Work in Progress (WIP) paper explores the relationship between negative feelings and ideological cross-posting behavior. Using the VoxPopuli data harvester, we collect over 770,000 public Facebook comments<sup>1</sup> from the three major political campaign pages active during the Brexit referendum. After sorting users into ideological camps based on their reactions to campaign posts, we then examine their commenting patterns across ideological lines. Using three different methods of sentiment analysis, we identify negative and positive emotions and their fine-grained sub-categories in comments. The analysis reveals one quarter of all comments are cross-ideological posts, with Leave supporters overwhelmingly active in commenting on Remain posts. A comparison across the campaigns shows that Brexiteers are much more likely to express anger than Remainers.</p>}},
  author       = {{Bossetta, Michael and Segesten, Anamaria Dutceac and Zimmerman, Chris and Bonacci, Duje}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, SMSociety 2018}},
  isbn         = {{9781450363341}},
  keywords     = {{ACM proceedings; Emotions; Facebook; Marketing; NLP; Political communication; Sentiment analysis}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{07}},
  pages        = {{246--250}},
  publisher    = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}},
  title        = {{Shouting at the wall : Does negativity drive ideological cross-posting in Brexit Facebook comments?}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217922}},
  doi          = {{10.1145/3217804.3217922}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}