Toxic Tweets: Correlating Politicians’ Emotion with Feedback on Twitter

Abstract

As one of the most popular social media platforms, Twitter attracts many journalists and politicians. This popularity is concerning because traditional journalism adapts to its medium, and the growing polarization of American politics seems to be facilitating a toxic environment on Twitter. By over-relying on Twitter trends and discussion for their stories, journalists could be perpetuating a feedback loop that rewards negativity among American politicians. By psychometrically analyzing the tweets of twelve United States senatorial candidates campaigning in swing states throughout 2020, I found a statistically significant positive correlation between negative emotion and all forms of Twitter feedback and a statistically significant negative correlation between positive emotion and all forms of Twitter feedback. These findings support my theory that politicians are rewarded for toxic behavior on the platform, which should discourage journalists from fixating on Twitter-based stories. To leverage the positive qualities of Twitter without validating the toxic behavior encouraged among politicians on the platform, journalists should primarily use Twitter as a networking platform.