Emotional Contagion and Hostility: National Humiliation on Chinese Social Media

• In Event: International Orders in East Asia

Abstract

Researchers have linked a variety of emotions including anger, hatred, fear, and humiliation to inter-group conflict attitudes. National humiliation has particularly come under scrutiny because of its influence on China's and Russia's foreign policies. How do emotions spread socially to become politically relevant? Do emotional expressions of humiliation cause advocacy of hostile foreign policy positions and shape foreign policy debates? To answer these questions, I use supervised machine learning to measure the prevalence of narratives of national humiliation as well as the foreign policy positions taken in a large (more than 1.6 billion posts), representative data set of Chinese social media posts. I find that national humiliation spreads through emotional contagion both when group members express national humiliation and when they express support for policies associated with national humiliation. I further find that Weibo posts invoking narratives of national humiliation are more likely to support using military force, maintaining disputed territorial claims, and raising trade barriers.

Author

• Michael Masterson, Missouri State University