New Study Analyses Users’ Emotional Responses To Content Shared On Different Social Sites

A recent study from Fractl and Buzzsumo has found that users’ emotional responses to shared items differ across the various social platforms, Marketing Charts reports. There are a number of different content categories that are shared on the different sites, with the new study analysing the million most-shared articles from the first six months of 2014 and looking into the emotional responses of users to the content.

The results found that some social sites featured more articles with negative sentiments, with some sites featuring more articles with a positive tone-of-voice. The study looked at five major social sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+.

Facebook accounted for 81.9% of the total shares generated within the time period, with only 36% of these shared generating a positive response from users. Almost half (47%) of the shares on the site were deemed to be negative, with the remaining 17% classed as neutral.

Twitter was also found to generate more negative responses to shared content from users than positive; 46% of shares recorded negative sentiment, with 40% positive and 14% neutral.

All the other sites – LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ all received more positive sentiment than negative, with 70%, 65% and 45% respectively. Despite LinkedIn only securing 2.3% of the total shares recorded during the period, and Pinterest claiming 3% of this metric, they stormed ahead in terms of positive sentiment from users. Both LinkedIn and Pinterest recorded only 18% negativity, with 12% and 17% listed as neutral.

One possible conclusion to be drawn from this could be that the more shares a social site boasts – such as the high amounts recorded by Twitter and Facebook – the more negative responses they tend to receive.