Great dissection of a viral tweet. Emotion is always the key to getting responses. But we also need to examine why their is an emotional response. In this case, injustice. But with right wing viral tweets, it taps into something else: 1) sense of loss (something lost by the person receiving it; or 2) sense of insecurity that leads to a desire to denigrate the different group being being highlighted.
I see it everyday in working in policy and regulatory matters in the power and gas industry. All interests have their code language to invoke emotions via injustice, loss, or insecurity. Fascinating to try and use more neutral or less emotionally loaded language and see people get uncomfortable.
This is exactly right, and one of the things I’m hoping to explore in this series are the various tactics and tropes that people use to elicit emotional responses. Of course, some events/issues *should* provoke an emotional reaction, but I’m more interested in how people provoke those same reactions for the purpose of engagement. Often, this is done by drawing sharp group boundaries, and getting members of one’s in-group to blame some out-group for societal or personal problems. It’s a lot easier to do this on social media, in part because it’s easier to dehumanize and demonize.
Depends on who you ask. Some people think of influencers in a marketing sense, as people who have the ability and the reach to influence consumer behavior and trends by mentioning or recommending a brand or product. Others would say an influencer is someone who has developed a public reputation as an expert in a particular domain. I use a broad definition — basically, anyone with the ability and reach to influence (indirectly or directly) group behavior and trends on social media.
Great dissection of a viral tweet. Emotion is always the key to getting responses. But we also need to examine why their is an emotional response. In this case, injustice. But with right wing viral tweets, it taps into something else: 1) sense of loss (something lost by the person receiving it; or 2) sense of insecurity that leads to a desire to denigrate the different group being being highlighted.
I see it everyday in working in policy and regulatory matters in the power and gas industry. All interests have their code language to invoke emotions via injustice, loss, or insecurity. Fascinating to try and use more neutral or less emotionally loaded language and see people get uncomfortable.
This is exactly right, and one of the things I’m hoping to explore in this series are the various tactics and tropes that people use to elicit emotional responses. Of course, some events/issues *should* provoke an emotional reaction, but I’m more interested in how people provoke those same reactions for the purpose of engagement. Often, this is done by drawing sharp group boundaries, and getting members of one’s in-group to blame some out-group for societal or personal problems. It’s a lot easier to do this on social media, in part because it’s easier to dehumanize and demonize.
What makes someone an "influencer"?
Depends on who you ask. Some people think of influencers in a marketing sense, as people who have the ability and the reach to influence consumer behavior and trends by mentioning or recommending a brand or product. Others would say an influencer is someone who has developed a public reputation as an expert in a particular domain. I use a broad definition — basically, anyone with the ability and reach to influence (indirectly or directly) group behavior and trends on social media.
And there's the rub. It appears most frequently (in my experience) as someone with a lot of followers on Facebook or any other social media app.