Fear-anger contests: governmental and populist politics of emotion

Journal article

This article explores how political actors use the emotions of fear and anger in what we call fear-anger contests. Our theory distinguishes between governmental and populist actors and posits that, in a contest for media attention and the hearts and minds of citizens, populists pursue a politics of anger whereas governmental actors pursue a politics of fear. To evaluate the theory, we examine two episodes of contentious politics: the 2016 Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in the same year. We rely on automated sentiment analysis, using machine learning and emotion dictionaries to examine a dataset of social media posts on Twitter. In the case of Brexit, we find a fear-anger contest between Remain (“Project Fear”) and Leave (“Project Anger”). In the case of the 2016 US presidential election, we find a negativity contest where both parties reinforce each other's negative emotions.

Authors: Friedrichs, J; Stoehr, N; Formisano, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Online Social Media and Networks
• Volume: 32
• Article number: 100240
• Publication date: 2022-12-05
• Acceptance date: 2022-11-17
• DOI: 10.1016/j.osnem.2022.100240
• EISSN: 2468-6964
• Language: English
• Keywords: Brexit; fear; anger; populism; Trump; FFR; sentiment analysis