Anger, Fear, and Echo Chambers: The Emotional Basis for Online Behavior

• Main Authors: Dag Wollebæk, Rune Karlsen, Kari Steen-Johnsen, Bernard Enjolras
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2019-04-01
• Series: Social Media + Society
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119829859

Emotions, such as anger and fear, have been shown to influence people’s political behavior. However, few studies link emotions specifically to how people debate political issues and seek political information online. In this article, we examine how anger and fear are related to politics-oriented digital behavior, attempting to bridge the gap between the thus far disconnected literature on political psychology and the digital media. Based on survey data, we show that anger and fear are connected to distinct behaviors online. Angry people are more likely to engage in debates with people having both similar and opposing views. They also seek out information confirming their views more frequently. Anxious individuals, by contrast, tend to seek out information contradicting their opinions. These findings reiterate predictions made in the extant literature concerning the role of emotions in politics. Thus, we argue that anger reinforces echo chamber dynamics and trench warfare dynamics in the digital public sphere, while fear counteracts these dynamics.