The Emotional Power of Partisan Media: A Computer Vision Analysis of the 2020 Democratic Party Presidential Primaries

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

ABSTRACT Building on theories of emotional contagion and affective priming, the study assesses the emotional impact of the U.S. partisan media’s coverage of six leading political candidates’ images during the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic Party presidential primary. Results show that the partisan media’s representations of the candidates’ facial expressions of emotions are associated with the voters’ feelings toward the politicians in their desired directions. Additionally, the partisan-media-primed emotions among the voters consistently align with their voting decisions. Methodologically, the study combines state-of-the-art computer vision techniques and survey research conducted with a representative sample of New Hampshire voters.