Interplay between Public Attention and Public Emotion toward Multiple Social Issues on Twitter

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 12; no. 1; p. e0167896
• Main Authors: Peng, Tai-Quan, Sun, Guodao, Wu, Yingcai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 12.01.2017; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Analysis; Attention; Behavior; Biology and Life Sciences; Cognition & reasoning; Communication; Computer and Information Sciences; Decision making; Emotions; Game theory; Humans; Hypotheses; Information processing; Intelligence; Medicine and Health Sciences; Models, Theoretical; Researchers; Science; Social aspects; Social Behavior; Social Media; Social networks; Social Sciences; Studies
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167896

This study aims to elucidate the intricate interplay between public attention and public emotion toward multiple social issues. A theoretical framework is developed based on three perspectives including endogenous affect hypothesis, affect transfer hypothesis, and affective intelligence theory. Large-scale longitudinal data with 265 million tweets on five social issues are analyzed using a time series analytical approach. Public attention on social issues can influence public emotion on the issue per se. Social issues interact with one another to attract public attention in both cooperative and competitive ways. Instead of a direct transfer from public emotion to public attention, the public emotion toward a social issue moderates the interaction between the issue and other issue(s).