Sentiment Analysis of YouTube Comments on This Is America

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: How do Digital Technologies and New Media Influence Collective Action?

Abstract

Development of social media enables emotion to transcend national borders, making emotion management an important tool for mobilizing activism (Morant, 2011). Music can evoke different emotional responses through rhetorical devices and music video content, while social media provide a transnational platform for self-expression (Morant, 2011). One can infer that the global dissemination of music via social media influence listeners' emotions and mobilize people to activism. In fact, the literature on social movement notes the power of music to mobilize people for collective action, but we don’t know how it accomplishes that. To fill this gap, this study investigates how music facilitates the regulation of emotions to mobilize engagement in social activism.
With an analysis of 709,726 YouTube comments on Childish Gambino’s song This Is America, this study finds music video can facilitate listener’s emotional experience, self-expression, collective deliberations leading to collective action. Specifically, anger-related sentiment scores total 81,348.97, while fear-related scores amount to 27,403.95, highlighting the significant role of these emotions in driving engagement with social issues. The study seeks to uncover the mechanisms through which music evokes different kinds of emotion and facilitate activism.

Authors

• Xinyue Ma, Senshu University

• Xinshi Wang, Senshu University