Measuring Emotional Contagion in Social Media.
Measuring Emotional Contagion in Social Media.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0142390
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Yang Z
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ferrara E;Yang Z
社交媒体每天被数百万人用作主要的讨论渠道。个人在日常基于社交媒体的微通信中产生的内容以及其中表达的情绪可能会影响他人的情绪状态。最近在Facebook上进行的一项实验假设，即使没有面对面互动中典型的非语言线索，情绪也会在网上传播，如果这些情绪在社交网络中过度表达，个体更有可能接受积极或消极的情绪。然而，这种类型的实验引起了伦理问题，因为它们需要大规模的内容操纵，对参与其中的个人产生未知的后果。在这里，我们使用Twitter用户的随机样本来研究情绪传染的动态，这些用户的活动（以及他们接触到的刺激）是在2014年9月的一周内观察到的。我们没有操纵内容，而是设计了一个零模型，它忽略了一些混淆因素（包括情绪传染的影响）。我们测量用户在发布自己的推文之前所接触到的内容的情感效价。我们确定，平均而言，一个负面的帖子会比基线多暴露4.34%的负面内容，而积极的帖子会在平均多暴露4.50%的积极内容之后出现。我们强调存在的线性关系的平均情绪效价的刺激用户接触到的，他们产生的反应。我们还确定了两类不同的个体：高度和几乎不受情绪传染的影响。高度敏感的用户比几乎不敏感的用户更不倾向于接受消极情绪，但同样可能接受积极情绪。一般来说，接受积极情绪的可能性要比接受消极情绪的可能性大得多。
Social media are used as main discussion channels by millions of individuals every day. The content individuals produce in daily social-media-based micro-communications, and the emotions therein expressed, may impact the emotional states of others. A recent experiment performed on Facebook hypothesized that emotions spread online, even in absence of non-verbal cues typical of in-person interactions, and that individuals are more likely to adopt positive or negative emotions if these are over-expressed in their social network. Experiments of this type, however, raise ethical concerns, as they require massive-scale content manipulation with unknown consequences for the individuals therein involved. Here, we study the dynamics of emotional contagion using a random sample of Twitter users, whose activity (and the stimuli they were exposed to) was observed during a week of September 2014. Rather than manipulating content, we devise a null model that discounts some confounding factors (including the effect of emotional contagion). We measure the emotional valence of content the users are exposed to before posting their own tweets. We determine that on average a negative post follows an over-exposure to 4.34% more negative content than baseline, while positive posts occur after an average over-exposure to 4.50% more positive contents. We highlight the presence of a linear relationship between the average emotional valence of the stimuli users are exposed to, and that of the responses they produce. We also identify two different classes of individuals: highly and scarcely susceptible to emotional contagion. Highly susceptible users are significantly less inclined to adopt negative emotions than the scarcely susceptible ones, but equally likely to adopt positive emotions. In general, the likelihood of adopting positive emotions is much greater than that of negative emotions.