Emotional Comments Research Articles

Online political participation and attitudes: Analysing election user-generated videos in Singapore

During the 2011 Singapore General Election (GE2011), user-generated videos (UGV) emerged as a new means for online political participation and discussion. This study first employed keyword searches for GE2011 UGVs and observed their content characteristics, and then selected 143 edited videos for textual analysis. Instead of a campaigning tool, GE2011 UGVs were primarily created by voters to share participatory experiences in elections or express their political opinions. In terms of content characteristics, the election UGVs can be categorised into ‘uncut recording UGVs’ and ‘edited UGVs’. The analyses show the former records participation in political events, while the latter reveals strong political attitudes and sensationalism. Sarcastic and controversial edited UGVs such as parodies tend to receive lots of view counts and emotional comments. In the context of one-party ruling and tight mass media control, the majority of active authors and GE2011 UGV content supported opposition parties and comments usually showed strong affirmative attitudes. UGVs, a second-tier alternative media, serve as an echo chamber for impressions and emotions when a small number of enthusiasts selectively expose themselves to like-minded political perspectives, which is likely to increase cynicism towards the government.

When Do People Post a Comment to a News Story on the Internet?

In reading news stories online, people are exposed to others’ comments to a news story. In spite of popularity of comments to a news story online, the understanding of why and who posts a comment is still lacking. To complement scarcity and have a better understanding of comment-posting online, this study examined psychological factors which affect the likelihood of posting a comment to a news story online. In particular, three variables were considered: The first variable was communication efficacy, that is, an individual’s belief about communication practices and systems, under the supposition that the people who have greater levels of communication efficacy are more likely to post a comment. The second variable was perception of public opinion, to test that when and if people judge their position of the issue as favored by the majority, they tend to post a comment. And finally, the tone of existing comments was included, to test if the tone of comments affects the willingness to post a comment. The results showed that firstly, people at a high level of communication efficacy are more likely to post a comment compared to people at the low level of communication efficacy. Secondly, the perception of public opinion partly influenced the willingness to post a comment. Especially, when people believe communication systems contribute to develop society and also when judged that their opinion is the majority’s opinion, they are more likely to post a comment. Finally, the tone of the comments influenced the willingness to post a comment only on the condition that people are confident of the communication practice and are exposed to emotional comments.

Dynamics of bloggers’ communities: Bipartite networks from empirical data and agent-based modeling

We present an analysis of the empirical data and the agent-based modeling of the emotional behavior of users on the Web portals where the user interaction is mediated by posted comments, like Blogs and Diggs. We consider the dataset of discussion-driven popular Diggs, in which all comments are screened by machine-learning emotion detection in the text, to determine positive and negative valence (attractiveness and aversiveness) of each comment. By mapping the data onto a suitable bipartite network, we perform an analysis of the network topology and the related time-series of the emotional comments. The agent-based model is then introduced to simulate the dynamics and to capture the emergence of the emotional behaviors and communities. The agents are linked to posts on a bipartite network, whose structure evolves through their actions on the posts. The emotional states (arousal and valence) of each agent fluctuate in time, subject to the current contents of the posts to which the agent is exposed. By an agent’s action on a post its current emotions are transferred to the post. The model rules and the key parameters are inferred from the considered empirical data to ensure their realistic values and mutual consistency. The model assumes that the emotional arousal over posts drives the agent’s action. The simulations are preformed for the case of constant flux of agents and the results are analyzed in full analogy with the empirical data. The main conclusions are that the emotion-driven dynamics leads to long-range temporal correlations and emergent networks with community structure, that are comparable with the ones in the empirical system of popular posts. In view of pure emotion-driven agents actions, this type of comparisons provide a quantitative measure for the role of emotions in the dynamics on real blogs. Furthermore, the model reveals the underlying mechanisms which relate the post popularity with the emotion dynamics and the prevalence of negative emotions (critique). We also demonstrate how the community structure is tuned by varying a relevant parameter in the model. All data used in these works are fully anonymized.

Beyond “Political” Communicative Spaces: Talking Politics on the Wife Swap Discussion Forum

ABSTRACT Net-based public sphere researchers have examined online deliberation in numerous ways. However, most studies have focused exclusively on political discussion forums. This article moves beyond such spaces by analyzing political talk from an online forum dedicated to reality television. The purpose is to examine the democratic quality of political talk that emerges in this space in light of a set of normative criteria of the public sphere. The analysis also moved beyond an elite model of deliberation by investigating the use of expressives (humor, emotional comments, and acknowledgments). The findings reveal that participants engaged in political talk that was often deliberative. It was a space where the use of expressives played a significant role in enhancing such talk.

A quantitative analysis of anaesthetist–patient communication during the pre‐operative visit

Previous communication research in general medical practice has shown that effective communication enhances patient compliance, satisfaction and medical outcome. It is expected that communication is equally important in anaesthesia, since patients often suffer from anxiety and lack of knowledge about anaesthetic procedures. However, little is known about the nature of communication during routine anaesthetic visits. The present study of 57 authentic anaesthetic visits provides the first results on the structure and content of communication in the pre-operative setting using the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS). Patient-centred communication behaviours of anaesthetists and the extent of patient involvement were particularly investigated. From the 57 pre-operative visits, 18 267 utterances were coded. The mean (SD) [range] duration of the visit was 16.1 (7.8) [3.7-42.7] min. Anaesthetists provided 169 (68) and patients 153 (82) utterances per visit (53.5% vs. 46.5%). Physician and patient gender had no impact on the distribution of utterances and the duration of the visit. Conversation mainly focussed on biomedical issues with little psychosocial discussion (< 0.1% of all anaesthetist utterances). However, anaesthetists quite frequently used emotional comments toward patients (7%) and involved them in the conversation. The use of facilitators, open questions and emotional statements by the anaesthetist correlated with high patient involvement. The amount of patient participation in anaesthetic decisions was assessed with the Observing Patient Involvement Scale (OPTION). Compared with general practitioners, anaesthetists offered more opportunities to discuss treatment options (mean (SD) OPTION score 26.8 (16.8) vs. 16.8 (7.7)).

The Role of Social Networks in the Maintenance of Schizophrenic Patients

SUMMARY The levels of social support available to the nearest relatives of a sample of 45 outpatient schizophrenics are measured in terms of both the structure of their social networks and the quality of their network relationships. It is hypothesized that the level of social support available to the closest associate of the schizophrenic patient is linked to the level of functioning found in the patient. Good social performance in the patient is found with the structural aspects of the nearest relative's social network whereas good clinical performance in the patient is related to the interactional aspects of the relative's network. The results indicate that a view of maintenance in schizophrenic patients which incorporates both social and clinical functioning needs to consider the structural as well as the interpersonal characteristics of the networks of their closest associates. In recent years increasing attention has been paid to the influence that family members might have on the course of schizophrenia. Initial findings on the role played by the living group to which the long stay schizophrenic patient was discharged revealed that those patients who adjusted most successfully were those who returned to live alone, in lodgings or to distant relatives. Those most likely to relapse and require hospital readmission were those who returned to the close emotional ties of a spouse or parents (Brown, 1959). More careful examination of the families to which schizophrenic patients were discharged focussed on the different levels of expressed emotion (EE) which relatives revealed when talking about the patient and it was shown that relatives conveying high levels of expressed emotion (as measured by emotional overinvolvement, hostility and critical comments when talking about the patient) were much more likely to have a patient relapsing in the nine months following his discharge than relatives whose level of expressed emotion was low (Brown et al. 1972; Vaughn and Leff, 1976). Additionally, spending less than 35 hours per week in face to face contact with the relative and taking medication were found to reduce