How Politicians Weaponize Greed for Likes
You’re probably aware of the idea that social networks amplify outrage. When people see content that makes them angry, they’re more likely to engage with and share that content. This incentivizes fueling more outrage online, which ultimately perpetuates a growing bubble of back-and-forth insults, accusation, abuse, and hate. Sound familiar?
New research is showing that one particular type of content may be trumping the others in driving outrage and engagement. People seem to get particularly worked up when they notice that someone is being greedy. If you’re a politician trying to boost your profile among your base, one good strategy is to fire off a tweet highlighting an opponent’s alleged greed.
What happens when a senator tweets about greed?
In a study published in March 2023, researchers at the University of British Columbia scraped all tweets from US senators between 2013 and 2021. In order to analyze the text in those tweets, they developed a “greed descriptive dictionary”—a group of words and phrases related to greed that included “money-grub”, “exploit”, and “lavish”.
The researchers looked for an association between how often a senator tweeted about greed and how much engagement they got on their tweets.
