Is Swearing Contagious Online? Public vs Interpersonal Swearing in Response to Donald Trump’s 2016 YouTube Campaign Videos

• In Event: Social Media Sharing and Swearing in the 2016 U.S. Election

Abstract

Is aggressive commenting contagious? The current study explores aggressive text-based social interactions from the lens of emotional and social contagion. The YouTube comments posted in the official channel for a presidential candidate Donald Trump are examined, particularly highlighting the contagion of swearing, defined as a linguistic mannerism that conveys anger or frustration to a varied degree. Drawn upon two mechanisms of emotional and social contagion –mimicry and social interaction effect –we examine non-random incidences of two types of swearing online: public and interpersonal. Finding suggests that a parent-comment’s public swearing tends to trigger chains of interpersonal swearing in children-comments, whereas the sequentially preceding comment’s swearing is contagious only across the same swearing type (public or interpersonal). Based on the findings, we conclude that aggressive emotional state is contagious through textual communication.

Authors

• K. Hazel Kwon, Arizona State U

• Anatoliy Gruzd, Ryerson U