Impact and Diffusion of Sentiment in Political Communication - An Empirical Analysis of Political Weblogs
Abstract
In this paper, we examine whether sentiment of political blog entries is associated with increased feedback in terms of the quantity of triggered comments and whether the diffusion of sentiment might take place in the political blogosphere. Based on a data set of approximately 17,000 blog entries from the 60 most important German political blogs, we find that blog entries with either more positive or more negative overall sentiment tend to receive significantly more comments compared to sentiment-neutral or mixed-sentiment entries. Furthermore, our results show that positive as well as negative emotions might diffuse in the subsequent comments to corresponding blog entries.
Keywords
Social media; Blogs; Sentiment
Cite as
Dang-Xuan, L., & Stieglitz, S. (2012). Impact and Diffusion of Sentiment in Political Communication — An Empirical Analysis of Political Weblogs. In Proceedings of the 6th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), Dublin, Ireland, 427–430.Details
Publication type
Research article in proceedings (conference)
Peer reviewed
Yes
Publication status
Published
Year
2012
Conference
6th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM)
Venue
Dublin, Ireland
Start page
427
End page
430
Language
English