Emotion and morals, keys to success in social networks

Researchers at the University of New York have conducted an exhaustive study to try to understand what is the key to virality in social networks. For this they have analyzed more than 560,000 messages on Twitter on three issues of political debate: gun control in the US, climate change and same-sex marriage. The results, published in the PNAS magazine, indicate that tweets on political issues that include a emotional and moral language substantially increase its diffusion within the ideological group of the issuer itself.

social networks and bubbles of ideological comfort

"The content that spreads most quickly is the one that can have the greatest impact on social networks, so individuals, community leaders and political elites could see their influence increased by highlighting in their messages moral and emotional aspects" , says William Brady, lead author of the work, as we read in SINC.

However, for these messages to reach a greater diffusion they have to be shared in circles that show an ideological or social affinity, that share the same worldview.

This finding confirms the thesis of the book 'The bubble filter.As the network decides what we read and what we think' (2011) , that has just published in Spain the editorial Taurus .According to its author, the Internet aimed to become a fundamental tool to achieve a more democratic and transparent society and, nevertheless, has segmented the information to personalize it, creating bubbles in which there is only room for news that matches our interests and preferences.

During their research, scientists at the University of New York segmented tweets into different categories based on whether they contained words with a moral and emotional meaning (for example, 'greed'), only emotional ('fear'), or only moral ('duty'), based on the consultation of several dictionaries previously selected to identify the terms.

In this way, they counted how many retweets corresponded to each category and identified what the ideological position was, both of the sender of the message and of the person who retweeted it, through an algorithm that analyzes the network of followers of each user.

The results of the study showed that, in all three topics of debate, the retweets increased by 20 percent when their words provided a moralizing and emotional message at the same time. However, the impact was reduced in cases where language is limited to being only moral or only emotional.

stories to cry on facebook

Advertisers already seem to have realized the power of emotions to improve the chances of success on social networks.So, a Digiday article notes that emotional content is already being used to improve reach I organize on Facebook. "We are gravitating towards stories that could make you cry," LittleThings editor-in-chief Maia McCann told this post.Generating sadness, happiness or anger is the key begins to be the goal of all kinds of means to make your stories more viral.

BBC News published a video with the father of one of the girls injured in the Manchester terrorist attack, which was shared more than 14,000 times.Another video, from AJ +, about a 12-year-old Syrian boy asking for help for his Country devastated by the war was shared more than 440,000 times.Bloomberg, for example, has a private Facebook group focused on personal finance that challenges members to change their consumption habits.Encouraging readers to share stories about their progress, they participate personally."You automatically generate that community and you can take advantage of the excitement, ”said Meena Thiruvengadam , global director of audience development at Bloomberg.

Image: Wikimedia commons

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