Mad as Hell: Campus Protests in the United States and Communicating Outrage via Facebook

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis research focuses on the student campus protests at three campuses in the United States between September 2015 and January 2016. The authors apply Berry and Sobieraj‘s work on “outrage industry” to study Facebook posts and comments of supporters and critics of the protests. Outrage language was divided into five categories: insulting and emotional language, name-calling, character assassination, mockery, and ideologically extreme language. A quantitative analysis revealed the pervasiveness of outrage language and words with 76.5 per cent of posts and comments containing some or many forms of outrage language. Critics used more outrage language than supporters. The authors derived two dominant themes from the language: “mad as hell” and “polarisation.”