Is it Positive to be Negative? How Politicians (Shouldn’t) Present Themselves on X

What effects should politicians expect from particular communicative strategies on social media, and to what extent do sentiment and emotion independently shape public reception? This study explores whether sentiment – a broad evaluative measure of positive or negative tone – and emotion, encompassing specific affective states here distinguished as joy, anger, disgust, sadness, fear and surprise, are complementary or interchangeable in online political communication, as often proposed in political science research. The dominant theory of negativity bias suggests that negative sentiment captures attention and engages audiences more effectively than positive sentiment. However, diverging responses to different types of negative language and the unique impacts of specific emotions suggest a closer examination of these assumptions is necessary, as different emotions evoke varying cognitive and behavioural responses. Utilizing a dataset of 719,603 Tweets from UK politicians, this study implements a detailed analysis of sentiment and emotional expressions to reveal nuanced insights into how distinct emotions interact with sentiment in shaping social media engagement. Results reveal a complex interaction that challenges traditional expectations: while neutral messages are most common, positive sentiments can resonate well with the public, contradicting the belief that negativity is inherently more effective. Emotions like joy and disgust significantly influence tweet popularity, yet these effects do not align consistently with positive and negative sentiment. For example, while disgust—typically associated with negative sentiment—leads to high engagement, fear-based messages are the least engaging, suggesting that specific emotions drive engagement in ways that sentiment alone does not capture. This study’s fixed-effects analysis, controlling for variables such as politician identity, policy topics, and tweet timing, emphasizes the role of emotional nuance: certain emotions elicit strong audience responses, even when sentiment is held constant. The finding of this study suggest that sentiment is a broader evaluative component shaped by factors beyond emotion, concluding that sentiment and emotion should be viewed as complementary yet distinct in understanding public responses to political communication. The approach in this study quantifies emotions at scale, revealing patterns that sentiment-based approaches alone overlook and emphasizes the impact on likes as an immediate feedback mechanism, which traditional political campaigns lack. For instance emotions which we imagine to be of positive sentiment such as joy or surprise are sometimes expressed in negative ways. Examples are when joy combines with a negative tone to create schadenfreude, but conversely, when disgust and positivity come together the author can express irony. Similarly, gallows humour might combine sadness and positive sentiment. This research shows that effective political communication depends not just on polarity (positive or negative) but on aligning sentiment with the specific emotion expressed. Emphasizing the effects of emotions in combination with sentiment offers deeper insight into audience engagement and public reception of political messages. These findings reexamine the effectiveness of negativity bias in online political discourse and suggest that researchers and practitioners should consider the distinct yet interconnected roles of sentiment and emotion.