Three point system:
Emotional Appeal
Overview:
Media—whether designed to inform, persuade, or rally—functions through the universal mechanism of provoking audience response. Social media, though often dismissed as trivial or purely recreational, operates no differently. Beneath layers of memes and sensational headlines lie purposeful messages shaped by emotional triggers and rhetorical techniques—used by posters, publishers, or platform voices to influence opinion or maximize engagement. To keep our evaluation straightforward yet effective, we use two complementary systems: a three-point emotional framing scale that gauges the intensity of emotional appeal in a trend, and a set of defined emotional trigger labels that categorize the specific feelings being targeted. Together, these tools help us better understand not just what the content conveys—but how its originators intend for us to react.
Medium Emotional Framing - use of emotive language or imagery to draw and affective response with heavier appeals to emotion often to raise awareness, inspire thought, or highlight relevance. Often features dramatized storytelling or personal anecdotes
High Emotional Framing - Clear use of moral framing (consistent/reoccuring metric of good vs bad), fear appeals, outrage amplification. Usually aimed at persuading, polarizing, or mobilizing.
Low Emotional Framing - posts/media are neutral and minimally expressive, relying mostly on logic/reason with intent to inform rather than influence - often fixates on generating engagement above any other agenda
Common Emotional Triggers:
Research
In developing these metrics, we grounded our approach in the idea that emotional triggers and appeals play a key role in driving social media engagement. This is supported by research such as Katherine Ognyanova’s COVID States Project, which explored how emotional messaging shaped public response during the pandemic. We also drew from studies by Solovev and Fan respectively, which demonstrated that emotionally charged content—particularly that evoking anger, fear, or moral judgment—spreads more rapidly and broadly across social media platforms than neutral or fact-based posts.
Works Cited:
Solovev, Kirill, and Nicolas Pröllochs. “Moral Emotions Shape the Virality of COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media.” arXiv, 8 Feb. 2022, arxiv.org/abs/2202.03590.
Fan, Rui, Ke Xu, and Jichang Zhao. “Higher Contagion and Weaker Ties Mean Anger Spreads Faster Than Joy in Social Media.” arXiv, 12 Aug. 2016, arxiv.org/abs/1608.03656.
Ognyanova, Katherine, et al. “The COVID States Project: Partisanship, Health Behavior, and Policy Attitudes in the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The COVID States Project, 2021, https://osf.io/j4kzb/.