In the face of adversity, positivity and solidarity boost social media engagement, regardless of political affiliation, a new study has found.
Research from the University of Cambridge, set to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences later this week, reveals that in times of political upheaval, users momentarily shift away from outrage and gravitate towards messages of unity.
Dr Jon Roozenbeek, Lecturer in Psychology at Cambridge University and senior author of the study, said: “We didn’t know whether moments of political rather than existential crisis would trigger solidarity in a country as deeply polarised as the United States. But even here, group unity surged when leadership was threatened.
“In times of crisis, ingroup love may matter more to us than outgroup hate on social media.”
The university’s Social Decision-Making Lab analysed more than 62,000 posts from the Facebook accounts of US politicians, commentators and media outlets before and after major crises, researching how they shifted online behaviour.
After US President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt, Republican-aligned posts that signalled unity and shared identity had 53 per cent more engagement, an increase of 17 per cent compared to just before the shooting.
In contrast, Republican posts that attacked the Democrats saw a drop of 23 percentage points from a few days prior.
The same trends could be seen with the Democrats, whose posts expressing solidarity after their leader Joe Biden dropped out of the election race, received 91 per cent more engagement than those that didn’t – a 71 percentage point jump over the period before his exit.
The same Cambridge Lab published a study in 2021 that revealed how hostile social media posts against a rival ideological side typically received twice as many shares as those that promote one’s own side.
Malia Marks, PhD candidate in Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and lead author of the study, said: “Negative emotions such as anger and outrage, along with hostility towards opposing political groups, are usually rocket fuel for social media engagement. You might expect this to go into hyperdrive during times of crisis and external threat.
“However, we found the opposite. It appears that political crises evoke not so much outgroup hate but rather ingroup love.”
Last year, the Cambridge team published a study that looked at 1.6 million Ukrainian social media posts in the months before and after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
It identified a similar trend, seeing a spike for “ingroup solidarity” posts after the invasion, which got 92 per cent more engagement on Facebook and 68 per cent more on Twitter. Posts that were hostile to Russia received little extra engagement.
“Researchers argue that the findings from the latest study are even more surprising, given the gravity of the threat to Ukraine and the nature of its population,” the report said.
Yara Kyrychenko, study co-author and PhD candidate in Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab, said: “Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are increasingly seen as creating toxic information environments that intensify social and political divisions, and there is plenty of research now to support this”
“Yet we see that social media can produce a rally-round-the-flag effect at moments of crisis, when the emotional and psychological preference for one’s own group takes over as the dominant driver of online behaviour.”
