Emotional content in Wikipedia articles on negative man-made and nature-made events

authored by: Hannah Greving, Aileen Oeberst, Joachim Kimmerle, Ulrike Cress
Abstract: Wikipedia emphasizes the objectivity of content. Yet, Wikipedia articles also deal with negative events that potentially elicit intense emotions. Undesirable outcomes (e.g., earthquakes) are known to elicit sadness, while undesirable outcomes caused by others’ actions (e.g., terrorist attacks) are known to elicit anger. Internet users’ emotional responses are likely to end up in Wikipedia articles on those events as characteristics of Internet users spill over to Wikipedia articles. Therefore, we expected that Wikipedia articles on terrorist attacks contain more anger-related and less sadness-related content than articles on earthquakes. We analyzed newly created Wikipedia articles about the two events (Study 1) as well as more current versions of those Wikipedia articles after the events had already happened (Study 2). The results supported our expectations. Surprisingly, Wikipedia articles on those two events contained more emotional content than related Wikipedia talk pages (Study 3). We discuss the implications for Wikipedia and future research.
External Organisation(s): Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM)
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Type: Article
Journal: Journal of Language and Social Psychology
Volume: 37
Pages: 267-287
No. of pages: 21
ISSN: 0261-927X
Publication date: 06.2018
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Education, Anthropology, Social Psychology, Language and Linguistics, Sociology and Political Science, Linguistics and Language
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927x17717568 (Access: Closed)