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Bad News or Mad News? Sentiment Scoring of Negativity, Fear, and Anger in News Content

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  • Stuart Soroka
  • Lori Young
  • Meital Balmas

Abstract

This article examines the prevalence and nature of negativity in news content. Using dictionary-based sentiment analysis, we examine roughly fifty-five thousand front-page news stories, comparing four different affect lexicons, one for general negativity, and three capturing different measures of fear and anger. We show that fear and anger are distinct measures that capture different sentiments. It may therefore be possible to separate out fear and anger in media content, as in psychology. We also find that negativity is more strongly related to anger than to fear for each measure. This result appears to be driven by a small number of foreign policy words in the anger dictionaries, rather than an indication that negativity in U.S. coverage reflects “anger.†We highlight the importance of tailoring lexicons to domains to improve construct validity when conducting dictionary-based automation. Finally, we connect these results to existing work on the impact of emotion on political preferences and reasoning.

Suggested Citation

  • Stuart Soroka & Lori Young & Meital Balmas, 2015. "Bad News or Mad News? Sentiment Scoring of Negativity, Fear, and Anger in News Content," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 659(1), pages 108-121, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:659:y:2015:i:1:p:108-121
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716215569217
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Chong, Dennis & Druckman, James N., 2010. "Dynamic Public Opinion: Communication Effects over Time," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 663-680, November.
    2. Leonie Huddy & Stanley Feldman & Charles Taber & Gallya Lahav, 2005. "Threat, Anxiety, and Support of Antiterrorism Policies," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 593-608, July.
    3. Marcus, George E. & MacKuen, Michael B., 1993. "Anxiety, Enthusiasm, and the Vote: The Emotional Underpinnings of Learning and Involvement During Presidential Campaigns," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(3), pages 672-685, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Soohee Kim & Yong-Chan Kim, 2021. "Attention to News Media, Emotional Responses, and Policy Preferences about Public Health Crisis: The Case of Fine Dust Pollution in South Korea," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(24), pages 1-17, December.
    2. Claire E. Robertson & Nicolas Pröllochs & Kaoru Schwarzenegger & Philip Pärnamets & Jay J. Bavel & Stefan Feuerriegel, 2023. "Negativity drives online news consumption," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(5), pages 812-822, May.
    3. Christopher Adamo & Jeffrey Carpenter, 2023. "Sentiment and the belief in fake news during the 2020 presidential primaries," Oxford Open Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 2, pages 512-547.

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