Maybe people have read it but don't think renaming "ideas" and "empathy" to "emotional contagion" is particularly groundbreaking or constructive.
That's both groundbreaking and constructive, if constructive in a way that harms people who don't have Facebook stock.
It set the stage for so much of what's happening today. Acting like it's just another boring paper is baffling.
If you read the newspaper, watch TV, or read articles online, I have some bad news for you.
The actual result (people who see positive or negative messages are more likely to post the same) seems so obvious and uninteresting as not to be worth mentioning at all, though the fact that Facebook was willing to run the experiment and publish the result is perhaps more notable.
This study, which was much larger, showed that this was not the case.
From the abstract:
> When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred.
Well and good, when people see more positive posts, they post more positively. But then:
> This work also suggests that, [...] the observation of others’ positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.
What a leap into the dark that is!
This study cannot show anything about affect, only about what was measured, which is what people posted on Facebook.
I'm not defending the study in general, but the context of the research is somewhat important.
>a massive (N=689,00!)
Your critique reads like someone whose never done any research or serious statistical work. Big N's don't automatically mean the results are robust.
I'm sorry, this isn't the groundbreaking paper you want it to be.
Any way you want to cut it, these results are not to be trusted. You cannot even be sure the conclusions are true. The effect sizes are within measurement error.
Similarly, too many unregulated synaptic connections or overexcited neurons in the brain can cause seizures.
How does it bode for society if, for example, every single instance of racial animosity between people is broadcast for the whole world to see? Even if the rate of occurrence of these sorts of interactions is incredibly small, there will be many per day, driving entire segments of our society apart and causing even more such negative interactions in the future which are just fuel for the fire.