Study Finds Emotional Tweets by Politicians Don’t Always Win Followers and Can Backfire with Diverse Audiences

Catonsville, MD, Oct. 15, 2025 – When a politician uses emotionality in social media to engage with his or her constituents, two things happen. One is the politician sees an increase in engagement with individual constituents and then at scale. The second outcome is that the politician may actually expand his or her following.

A new study, however, has shed light on just how much engagement can be expected from more emotionally charged communications, and whether this engagement actually leads to an expanded following or support base.

The research was published in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research in an article entitled, “Emotionality in Political Social Media Communications: The Moderating Role of Audience Diversity.” The study was conducted by Beth L. Fossen of Indiana University, and David A. Schweidel of Emory University.

The study found that while U.S. politicians who use emotional language on social media may see a bump in likes and shares, those posts do little to attract new followers. Such emotionally charged posts, though, are less effective when the audiences are politically diverse.

“One of the interesting findings of our research is that while content emotionality spurs engagement with followers, this can backfire with a diverse audience,” said Schweidel.  “Content with less emotionality tends to yield more engagement with a diverse audience, while charged content resonates with a polarized audience”

Another major finding is that emotional content does not contribute to building a followership.

“The main drivers of followers are other substantive characteristics, such as the topic of the post,” said Fossen.  “This means that distinct factors drive person’s decision to engage on social media when compared to the decision-making that goes into actually following an account.”

Their study is the first to show that content emotionality does not aid in attracting new online followers for politicians. It is also the first to introduce the concept of audience or stakeholder diversity to the political communications landscape.

To conduct their research, the study authors analyzed online political communications on Twitter (now X). The researchers analyzed more than 70,000 social media posts from U.S. senators during 2018. They studied net changes in followers and follower growth, as well as social media engagement measures such as retweets, relating these measures to post content and senator characteristics.

Reduced diversity within the stakeholder group will likely increase engagement. Tone matters as well. Negative emotions like anger and outrage are more likely to generate reactions on social media, while more positive emotions like happiness and excitement are less likely to generate a reaction from followers.

“Our study suggests that emotional political messaging can be a double-edged sword on social media,” added Schweidel. “It can be useful for rallying like-minded supporters, but less effective for winning over a broader, more diverse audience. More emotion is not always better,” said Fossen.

About INFORMS and Information Systems Research

INFORMS is the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics, data science and related disciplines, serving as a global authority in advancing cutting-edge practices and fostering an interdisciplinary community of innovation. Information Systems Research, an INFORMS journal, focuses on the utilization of information technology to enhance organizational efficiency. INFORMS helps its members advance research and practice through cutting-edge journals, conferences and resources. Learn more at www.informs.org or @informs.

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