Negativity and Elite Message Diffusion on Social Media

Social media has become a common feature in American politics, with more frequent use among the masses and elites alike. With this increased salience, researchers have explored various aspects of social media use and its impact on political outcomes. While we know a great deal about elite adoption and use of social media platforms, we know comparatively less about why some of these social media messages ‘go viral,’ while others receive little to no attention. Drawing on research from the political science literature on emotional appeals, as well as work in marketing and psychology, we argue that elite messages will spread when they contain strong emotional language. Using both human and automated coding of senators’ tweets, we demonstrate that elite messages that are more negative and those that contain political attacks are more likely to spread on social media. Our findings suggest that politicians have an incentive to engage in more negativity online, which might further increase affective polarization in American politics.