Developing a Theoretical Framework for Processing the Negative Information in Social Media
Analysis of Twitter User Interaction with Negative Political Misinformation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.51.3Keywords:
Information Processing, Rationality, Emotion, Agenda-setting, Social MediaAbstract
The author explores the fundamental aspects of the rational decision-making process with the aim of understanding that negative information has the possibility to distort processing of political information. This article further develops a theoretical framework of the relationship between negative information on social media and its receiver. This article conducts an empirical analysis to partially prove this framework with the Twitter texts spread by the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This analysis indicates that: (1) tweets containing negative information had more interaction than tweets containing positive information; (2) tweets containing anger-inducing content had more interaction than tweets containing fearful content. These results suggest that negative emotion would have a more significant effect on this process, and different negative emotions can have a distinct effect on information processing.
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