New studies about engagement with congressional Facebook posts and hyper-partisan Facebook pages show that information shared by partisan sources is increasingly leading to angry reactions.
A new study from Pew Research Center finds:
- The proportion of reactions from Facebook audiences to Democratic officials' posts that used the "angry" button more than tripled after the election.
- Republicans' "angry reactions" stayed pretty much the same before and after the election, hovering around 10%.
The analysis mimics findings from NewsWhip, a social analytics company, that show a high proportion of "angry face" reactions to likes for these hyper-partisan political pages on Facebook. These publishers "are highly adept" at getting their followers to react with strong emotion rather than just a like, per NewsWhip.