Emotionality in Political Social Media Communications: The Moderating Role of Audience Diversity

The emotionality expressed in social media posts is a crucial driver of social media engagement. Limited work, however, has considered how features of the target audience moderate the effectiveness of content characteristics such as emotionality. In the political domain, understanding the impacts—and potential limitations—of emotionality in political communications has taken on new urgency because multiple stakeholders stand to benefit from decreased political emotionality. In this research, we investigate how the emotionality expressed in social media posts relates to engagement and follower building for U.S. senators. Although emotionality can spur increased engagement, our analyses show that it does not attract followers. Moreover, valence and audience diversity moderate the impact of emotionality on engagement. Notably, emotionality spurs less engagement when the senator’s audience is more diverse. Overall, our investigation furthers our understanding of how emotionality, valence, and audience diversity relate to social media engagement and follower building, and it showcases when political communications benefit from curbing emotionality.

History: Paul Pavlou, Senior Editor; Wenjing Duan, Associate Editor.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.0064.