Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Study finds emotional tweets by politicians don’t always win followers and can backfire with diverse audiences

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

Catonsville, MD, Oct. 15, 2025 – When a politician uses emotionality in social media to engage with his or her constituents, two things happen. One is the politician sees an increase in engagement with individual constituents and then at scale. The second outcome is that the politician may actually expand his or her following.

A new study, however, has shed light on just how much engagement can be expected from more emotionally charged communications, and whether this engagement actually leads to an expanded following or support base.

The research was published in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research in an article entitled, “Emotionality in Political Social Media Communications: The Moderating Role of Audience Diversity.” The study was conducted by Beth L. Fossen of Indiana University, and David A. Schweidel of Emory University.

The study found that while U.S. politicians who use emotional language on social media may see a bump in likes and shares, those posts do little to attract new followers. Such emotionally charged posts, though, are less effective when the audiences are politically diverse.

“One of the interesting findings of our research is that while content emotionality spurs engagement with followers, this can backfire with a diverse audience,” said Schweidel. “Content with less emotionality tends to yield more engagement with a diverse audience, while charged content resonates with a polarized audience”

Another major finding is that emotional content does not contribute to building a followership.

“The main drivers of followers are other substantive characteristics, such as the topic of the post,” said Fossen. “This means that distinct factors drive person’s decision to engage on social media when compared to the decision-making that goes into actually following an account.”

Their study is the first to show that content emotionality does not aid in attracting new online followers for politicians. It is also the first to introduce the concept of audience or stakeholder diversity to the political communications landscape.

To conduct their research, the study authors analyzed online political communications on Twitter (now X). The researchers analyzed more than 70,000 social media posts from U.S. senators during 2018. They studied net changes in followers and follower growth, as well as social media engagement measures such as retweets, relating these measures to post content and senator characteristics.

Reduced diversity within the stakeholder group will likely increase engagement. Tone matters as well. Negative emotions like anger and outrage are more likely to generate reactions on social media, while more positive emotions like happiness and excitement are less likely to generate a reaction from followers.

“Our study suggests that emotional political messaging can be a double-edged sword on social media,” added Schweidel. “It can be useful for rallying like-minded supporters, but less effective for winning over a broader, more diverse audience. More emotion is not always better,” said Fossen.

About INFORMS and Information Systems Research

INFORMS is the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics, data science and related disciplines, serving as a global authority in advancing cutting-edge practices and fostering an interdisciplinary community of innovation. Information Systems Research, an INFORMS journal, focuses on the utilization of information technology to enhance organizational efficiency. INFORMS helps its members advance research and practice through cutting-edge journals, conferences and resources. Learn more at www.informs.org or @informs.

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Journal

Information Systems

DOI

10.1287/isre.2022.0064

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Emotionality in Political Social Media Communications: The Moderating Role of Audience Diversity

Solar-powered lights keep sea turtles out of fishing nets

In a win-win for endangered sea turtles and the fishing industry, researchers at Arizona State University worked with fishers to develop a practical solution to drastically reduce bycatch in coastal gillnet fisheries, a new study finds

Arizona State University

image:

Felipe Cuevas Amador (left), ASU researcher Jesse Senko (middle), and Juan Pablo Cuevas Amador (right) measure a critically endangered East Pacific hawksbill turtle in Isla el Pardito, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. (Photo by Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock/Arizona State University)

Credit: Photo by Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock/Arizona State University

Studies have shown that lighted nets can reduce bycatch of sea turtles and sharks, but the idea has faced many hurdles to adoption. The batteries are short lived, expensive to replace and raise disposal concerns. The lights are too heavy and prone to snagging nets. Fishers find them difficult to work with.

To get past these hurdles, researchers at Arizona State University collaborated with a team of coastal gillnet fishers to develop solar-powered lights that function as buoys, like any others threaded onto the float line of a fishing net. The LED lights flash on and off to conserve energy and can stay active for over five days with no sunlight.

The net-illuminating gear is highly effective at preventing sea turtles from entanglement in gillnets, ASU marine biologist Jesse Senko and colleagues report in a new study published in Conservation Letters. In controlled experiments in Mexico’s Gulf of California, sea turtle bycatch rates were 63% lower in the solar-powered illuminated nets compared to unlit control nets. And the lighted buoys did not interfere with fishing success. The researchers recorded higher catch rates of targeted yellowtail fish in the illuminated nets, although the difference was not statistically significant.

“The results were pretty exciting,” said Senko, an assistant professor in the ASU School of Ocean Futures. He said the study is the first to show the effectiveness of harnessing solar energy and flashing light to deter sea turtles from fishing nets. “It's a win-win in the sense that you're getting a light that lasts significantly longer, and it also seems to reduce bycatch just as effectively as lights that require replaceable batteries.”

Fishing gear entanglement is a primary threat to endangered sea turtles, along with climate change, pollution, habitat loss and emerging diseases. Despite signs of recovery among some species, current population numbers remain a small fraction of the total that once existed.

“Sea turtles are important for maintaining healthy oceans, which are needed to sustain resilient fisheries,” Senko said. “They have been around for over a hundred million years, and they fulfill ecological roles that no other species fulfill.”

Senko has made it a priority in his lab to work with fishers to develop ways to make fishing gear less harmful to sea turtles, sharks and other threatened species. The goal is to develop practical solutions that can be widely deployed to reduce wasteful bycatch while maintaining productive fisheries.

In coastal North Carolina, where many forces have threatened the fishing way of life, Senko Lab members are collaborating with fishers to reduce bycatch in pound nets, bottom-anchored net systems that funnel fish into a trap. The ASU researchers are comparing the numbers of turtles, sharks and other species caught in nets on days with or without solar-powered lights. They are also gathering observations of sea turtle behavior never seen before using custom-designed underwater video cameras and data recorders.

Sustaining resilient fisheries

Small-scale coastal fisheries provide nearly half of the world’s seafood, Senko points out, and they are crucial to sustaining coastal communities with food, income, and livelihoods.

The idea for integrating solar-powered LED lights into buoys came from fishermen in Mexico, brothers Juan Pablo Cuevas Amador and Felipe Cuevas Amador, who are co-authors of the new study.

"They took us into account and gave us the freedom to give our opinions and make modifications,” said Juan Pablo Cuevas Amador. “For us, it's important that it be done in collaboration because with what they know and what we know, we can do quite interesting things.”

Senko said fisher-led ideas are “where the real magic happens; that's the meaningful innovation. Because their ideas went into it, they're more likely to want to use it and to share that information with their friends and their community and with neighboring communities.”

After completing the fishing experiments, the Cuevas Amador brothers asked Senko if they could keep the solar-powered lighted buoys. The gear made fishing easier because they no longer had to waste much time and effort removing turtles from nets.

“When I heard that, I knew we were onto something,” Senko said. “And they've been fishing with these lights ever since. As far as we know, they are the only fishers on the planet fishing with solar-powered lighted nets.”

Senko and colleagues are now working with a manufacturer, Fishtek Marine, to produce commercially available solar-powered lighted buoys for fishing nets. Senko said it’s possible to make them available for purchase within 2 to 3 years. Research on their effectiveness could encourage conservation organizations and government agencies to provide grants or subsidies to help fishers buy them. Senko has received funding for the research from Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, the Disney Conservation Fund, and the National Philanthropic Trust.

The researchers are pursuing future studies to understand the behavioral responses of sea turtles to flashing light, and use that knowledge to maximize the deterrent effects of net illumination.

“A 63% reduction in sea turtle bycatch is a magnificent starting point. However, there's no reason why that can't be improved, right?” Senko says. “My goal is how do we get that 63% reduction to a 95% reduction.”

ASU researcher and conservation scientist Jesse Senko, right, deploys a solar-powered illuminated net in the Sea of Cortez. (Photo by Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock/Arizona State University)

Credit

Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock/Arizona State University

Caption

ASU marine biologist and conservation scientist Jesse Senko fishes a solar-powered illuminated net off the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico. (Photo by Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock/Arizona State University)

Credit

Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock/Arizona State University

Journal

Conservation Letters

DOI

10.1111/conl.13151

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Harnessing solar energy to reduce sea turtle bycatch

Article Publication Date

15-Oct-2025

New study finds that ALS and MS likely share an environmental cause

Research finds a phenomenon that may have been previously masked by the data

New York University

Figure 1: Geographic patterns of MS and ALS in the US — image:
Heat maps showing the geographic patterns of ALS and MS in the US.
view more
Credit: Melissa Schilling. Figure based on data from the US CDC Wonder database.

A new study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports indicates that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS) have an extremely high geographic association, even after controlling for race, gender, wealth, latitude, and access to neurological healthcare.

“The results of the study are surprising because previous studies have typically concluded there was no evidence for a mechanistic or genetic link between the two diseases,” explains study author Melissa Schilling, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business who specializes in analyzing large-scale datasets using econometrics.

Heat maps in accompanying Figure 1 show the geographic patterns of the diseases in the US.

The study also shows that the relationship between the two diseases has likely been overlooked until now because of a “Simpson’s Paradox”—a statistical phenomenon whereby a trend appears in different groups of data but disappears or reverses when the groups are combined.

In this case, the groups are based on gender: As shown in accompanying Figure 2, both women and men show a strong positive correlation (greater than 70 percent) in the geographic distribution of ALS and MS, but when the data are pooled across gender, these relationships are obscured because, on average, ALS is more common in men and MS is more common in women

For several decades researchers have noted a north-south gradient in the distribution of MS. This led to speculation that UV light or vitamin D might play a role in the disease, but studies that supplemented MS patients with UV light or vitamin D had minimal or inconsistent results.

The findings in the new Scientific Reports study indicate that MS and ALS have a much stronger geographic relationship with each other than with latitude, suggesting that both diseases may share a connection to a factor that varies imperfectly with latitude.

“I started gathering and analyzing every dataset I could find relevant to ALS about nine years ago when a friend with ALS asked me if I would take a look at the data,” says Schilling. “I was very surprised to find such a strong geographic pattern as most of the research on ALS does not emphasize the role of geography. I was even more surprised to find that ALS has a very strong association with the geography of MS.

“This finding is important because it suggests that an environmental factor likely plays a significant role in both diseases, and that could provide clues that help us determine what causes them and how they might be avoided or treated.”

Elements of the environment that vary imperfectly with the north-south gradient include natural things like viruses, parasites, algae, and molds, as well as human-made elements or practices like the use of heating oil, agricultural practices, industrial practices, mining, and chemical contamination of fisheries.

“The list of suspects is long, but comparing across geographies and, in particular, across outlier locations, such as the Faroe Islands, where MS increased strikingly after military troops arrived there in the 1940s, could significantly narrow the hunt,” observes Schilling.

The study combined mortality and demographic data obtained from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER database (in the US, the collection of mortality data is mandatory and standardized) with latitude data, economic data, and data on access to neurological healthcare. The primary results are based on US crude mortality rates at the state level. The analysis was then replicated at the global level using mortality data from the World Health Organization and obtained nearly identical results.

About New York University
Founded in 1831, NYU is one of the world’s foremost research universities (with more than $1 billion per year in research expenditures, it is ranked seventh among private research universities) and is a member of the selective Association of American Universities. NYU has degree-granting university campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai; has 13 other global academic sites, including London, Paris, Florence, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, and Accra, and US sites in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, CA, and Tulsa, OK; and both sends more students to study abroad and educates more international students than any other U.S. college or university. Through its numerous schools and colleges, NYU is a leader in conducting research and providing education in the arts and sciences, law, medicine, business, dentistry, engineering, education, nursing, the cinematic and performing arts, music and studio arts, public service, social work, public health, and professional studies, among other areas.

The blue line shows the trend line for men, the pink line shows the trend line for women, and the black line shows the trend line obtained for the pooled data.
Credit
Melissa Schilling. Figure based on data from the US CDC Wonder database.