Emotions in Wikipedia

The role of intended negative events in the expression of sadness and anger in online peer production

authored by: Hannah Greving, Joachim Kimmerle, Aileen Oeberst, Ulrike Cress
Abstract: The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has strict guidelines for ensuring the objectivity of its content and unbiased language of its articles. Wikipedia also provides articles on negative events such as disasters. Depending on the event, the Wikipedia community may express certain emotions when writing Wikipedia articles on those events. So far, it is unclear which psychological mechanisms are reflected in the potential emotional expressions. Based on appraisal theories of specific emotions and on previous research on intentional harm, we investigated whether intentional negative events such as terrorist attacks elicited different emotional expressions than unintentional negative events, such as natural or man-made disasters. We analysed N = 330 Wikipedia articles with automatic linguistic text analyses and found that Wikipedia articles on man-made attacks (e.g. terrorist attacks, shooting rampages) contained more anger-related content than Wikipedia articles on man-made disasters (e.g. ship accidents, train accidents) and natural disasters (e.g. hurricanes, flooding); F (2, 327) = 127.78, p
External Organisation(s): Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM)
University of Tübingen
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Type: Article
Journal: Behaviour & Information Technology
Volume: 38
Pages: 796-806
No. of pages: 11
Publication date: 2019
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Social Sciences(all), Developmental and Educational Psychology, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Human-Computer Interaction
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2018.1554702 (Access: Closed)

BibTeX

@article{9f2514f74db24b9993a65322dd2a85a6,
title = "Emotions in Wikipedia: The role of intended negative events in the expression of sadness and anger in online peer production",
abstract = "The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has strict guidelines for ensuring the objectivity of its content and unbiased language of its articles. Wikipedia also provides articles on negative events such as disasters. Depending on the event, the Wikipedia community may express certain emotions when writing Wikipedia articles on those events. So far, it is unclear which psychological mechanisms are reflected in the potential emotional expressions. Based on appraisal theories of specific emotions and on previous research on intentional harm, we investigated whether intentional negative events such as terrorist attacks elicited different emotional expressions than unintentional negative events, such as natural or man-made disasters. We analysed N = 330 Wikipedia articles with automatic linguistic text analyses and found that Wikipedia articles on man-made attacks (e.g. terrorist attacks, shooting rampages) contained more anger-related content than Wikipedia articles on man-made disasters (e.g. ship accidents, train accidents) and natural disasters (e.g. hurricanes, flooding); F (2, 327) = 127.78, p ",
keywords = "anger, disasters, emotions, man-made attacks, sadness, Wikipedia",
author = "Hannah Greving and Joachim Kimmerle and Aileen Oeberst and Ulrike Cress",
note = "Funding Information: The authors are very grateful to Laura Hertner and Anne Kon-rad for their help with data assessment and documentation.",
year = "2019",
doi = "10.1080/0144929x.2018.1554702",
language = "English",
volume = "38",
pages = "796--806",
journal = "Behaviour & Information Technology",
issn = "1362-3001",
publisher = "Taylor and Francis Ltd.",
number = "8",
}