Political anger seems to override inhibitions online, study finds

A new study gives clues as to why anger is so pervasive in political discussions on social media.

The desire to express political anger seems so strong that it overrides the instinct, found in older research, to control one’s anger in public, according to a new paper co-written by a University of Kansas associate professor of communication studies.

In “Emotion Work on Social Media: Differences in Public and Private Emotions about Politics and COVID-19 on Facebook” published in late 2023 in the journal Social Media + Society, KU’s Ashley Muddiman and Emily Van Duyn of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ran an experiment with 518 people, comparing how they expressed emotion online about the topic of COVID-19 versus politics in general. They also compared the participants’ expression of emotion about the two topics compared with their actual feelings. For example, did they outwardly express what they were feeling inside, or did they hide their feelings? The latter condition, Muddiman said, is known as performing “emotional work.”

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