Sharing on Social Media: How Twitter Replies Contribute to Emotional Intensity

psyarxiv.com

20 points·brahmwg··3 comments

"...Combined, these two studies reveal emotional sharing processes that may drive social movements..."

One of the interesting and cool things about social media is how we're just now able to observe a bunch of stuff we couldn't before. I have a feeling that entire disciplines are going to be overturned over the next few decades. (Obligatory Kuhn reference)

To me this looks a lot like an inside view of mob mentality. We've always known that mobs are dangerous and evil things -- in the U.S. we did a lot in the beginning to avoid having lots of democracy -- but we've never been able to peer inside and see what's actually going on. Looking forward to seeing more research like this.

Social media has huge systematic differences than social interaction elsewhere. And I mean "systematic" in the systems-thinking definition, not the definition used on social media as an adjective interchangeable with "wide-ranging, big deal."

We already see too many journos assume that Twitter is an accurate representation of something more than the people they happen to sample on Twitter acting in the context of Twitter. I'd hate to see the social sciences start making the same mistake.

I completely agree. We're in uncharted territory here. Most likely there's a new science being born. For now, however, it's gotta be shoehorned into some other science.

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