After a cursory glance over Twitter, it might seem obvious that negativity tends to thrive on a platform that can often be overrun by hostility and anger. Nonetheless, the finding of new research from Harvard Business School that negativity tends to spread faster than positivity online is still noteworthy.
Not only does bad news seem to spread like wildfire on Twitter, but the authors also find that news agencies are readily taking advantage of this phenomenon.
If it bleeds, it leads
The researchers wanted to test whether the age-old maxim that “if it bleeds, it leads,” is as true on social media as it is in more traditional media. The researchers analyzed nearly 150,000 tweets from 44 news agencies during the early part of 2020. A sentiment analysis tool was then used to examine the tone of the tweets.
The analysis proved the hypothesis to be correct, with negativity around 15% more prevalent than positivity. What’s more, the negative tweets earned more engagement from users.
“Although people produce much more positive content on social media in general, negative content is much more likely to spread,” the researchers say.
Access to the news
Social media has become hugely important, with around half of Americans saying they access the news via social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook. The study suggests that news outlets have quickly learned that negativity is just as influential online as it is on television.
News organizations on both the right and the left of the political spectrum were found to use negativity to boost engagement, with the response similarly positive in both audiences. The researchers suggest that the polarized nature of political discourse makes it a perfect environment for negativity to thrive.
“People’s emotions toward their own group have stayed constant over the last 50 years, whereas people’s negative emotions toward the other side have increased,” the researchers say. “In the last five years, it’s the first time in US history that negativity toward one’s out-group is stronger than positivity toward one’s in-group.”
Fitting in
The researchers believe that the popularity of negativity online is in large part due to our desire to fit in, as one of the easiest ways to discern our political orientation is to understand who we dislike. Social media has become an active environment to show our group membership, and therefore negativity has thrived.
“It seems like high-arousal emotionality is more engaging,” they explain. “There are high-arousal emotions, like anger and excitement, which are often more engaging than low-arousal emotions, like sadness or calmness, but this is more prevalent in Western societies where high-arousal emotions are more prevalent in general.”
The findings have obvious implications for anyone who wants to spread their message online, as emotional engagement is likely to be crucial to success. The social media platforms themselves are generally well aware of this, and their algorithms tend to amplify emotional posts.
Social division
Of course, the question then becomes whether this spread of negativity is good for us, either as individuals or as a society. A highly influential study from 2014 highlighted how social media can encourage emotional contagion, with negativity breeding more negativity.
Do the social media platforms, therefore, have a moral responsibility to encourage more positive content on their platforms to try and heal some of the divisions that are all too evident across society?
The researchers are developing bots that could potentially intervene by identifying people who post an extremely high level of negative content. They suggest that social networks have already used a similar approach to discourage misinformation.
“Obviously, it’s not very good that negativity spreads,” they conclude. “It doesn’t help people’s wellbeing. It doesn’t help the political discourse.”
