Social Media has by far easily become the place for people to vent out their feelings and platforms specially like Twitter which allows users to express themselves and their thoughts in a given number of characters has made vocalizing expressions online pretty normal. Soon it became evident that users continued putting out all their outrage about global circumstances online and some researchers at Yale namely William Brady, a postdoctoral researcher in the Yale Department of Psychology and Molly Crockett, an associate professor of psychology decided to conclude a report on whether social media’s hype and the race of likes and appreciation is changing our tone of online rage.
The researchers concluded that during controversial or emotional events, users tend to upload more statuses expressing their thoughts and feelings. However, the case study was that did their outrage and feelings on events increased over time. The answer to their question was given after scanning through 12.7 million tweets from 7331 different users. It was concluded that social media’s incentives like the “Comments” and “likes” feature had a lot to do in motivating people to post about their say on particular matters whether political or controversial. Users who received a great back up and some good number of likes were more likely to get hyped up and post or debate on global matters online rather than people who did not receive enough likes and shares as per the online popularity norm.
The study also concluded that people belonging to moderate groups online rather than extreme social groups were more likely to get influenced by the rat race of likes and shares and were more influenced to post their feelings on certain matters, which clearly showed how moderate group of people were more likely to get politically radicalized just because they were getting hyped up by their moderate and unpolitical friend circle. It made them stand out among such people and gave them a sense that they were woke than others.
Apart from all this, what the research also concluded was the fact that posts that were emotional and were more likely to touch the feelings of others were the top trending ones and were worded in such ways which attracted users and made them open up the content to read it.
All this shows, how social media has the power to dictate some of our actions and how greatly it has impacted the way we live.
Photo: master1305 / Freepik
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The researchers concluded that during controversial or emotional events, users tend to upload more statuses expressing their thoughts and feelings. However, the case study was that did their outrage and feelings on events increased over time. The answer to their question was given after scanning through 12.7 million tweets from 7331 different users. It was concluded that social media’s incentives like the “Comments” and “likes” feature had a lot to do in motivating people to post about their say on particular matters whether political or controversial. Users who received a great back up and some good number of likes were more likely to get hyped up and post or debate on global matters online rather than people who did not receive enough likes and shares as per the online popularity norm.
The study also concluded that people belonging to moderate groups online rather than extreme social groups were more likely to get influenced by the rat race of likes and shares and were more influenced to post their feelings on certain matters, which clearly showed how moderate group of people were more likely to get politically radicalized just because they were getting hyped up by their moderate and unpolitical friend circle. It made them stand out among such people and gave them a sense that they were woke than others.
Apart from all this, what the research also concluded was the fact that posts that were emotional and were more likely to touch the feelings of others were the top trending ones and were worded in such ways which attracted users and made them open up the content to read it.
All this shows, how social media has the power to dictate some of our actions and how greatly it has impacted the way we live.
Read next: Data hacks have proven to affect customer loyalty by 15 percent in 2021
