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Emotional content in Wikipedia articles on negative man-made and nature-made events

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungPeer-Review

Autorschaft

Externe Organisationen

  • Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM)
  • Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Seiten (von - bis)267-287
Seitenumfang21
FachzeitschriftJournal of Language and Social Psychology
Jahrgang37
Ausgabenummer3
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - Juni 2018
Extern publiziertJa

Abstract

Wikipedia emphasizes the objectivity of content. Yet, Wikipedia articles also deal with negative events that potentially elicit intense emotions. Undesirable outcomes (e.g., earthquakes) are known to elicit sadness, while undesirable outcomes caused by others’ actions (e.g., terrorist attacks) are known to elicit anger. Internet users’ emotional responses are likely to end up in Wikipedia articles on those events as characteristics of Internet users spill over to Wikipedia articles. Therefore, we expected that Wikipedia articles on terrorist attacks contain more anger-related and less sadness-related content than articles on earthquakes. We analyzed newly created Wikipedia articles about the two events (Study 1) as well as more current versions of those Wikipedia articles after the events had already happened (Study 2). The results supported our expectations. Surprisingly, Wikipedia articles on those two events contained more emotional content than related Wikipedia talk pages (Study 3). We discuss the implications for Wikipedia and future research.

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Emotional content in Wikipedia articles on negative man-made and nature-made events. / Greving, Hannah; Oeberst, Aileen; Kimmerle, Joachim et al.
in: Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Jahrgang 37, Nr. 3, 06.2018, S. 267-287.

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungPeer-Review

Greving H, Oeberst A, Kimmerle J, Cress U. Emotional content in Wikipedia articles on negative man-made and nature-made events. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 2018 Jun;37(3):267-287. doi: 10.1177/0261927x17717568
Greving, Hannah ; Oeberst, Aileen ; Kimmerle, Joachim et al. / Emotional content in Wikipedia articles on negative man-made and nature-made events. in: Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 2018 ; Jahrgang 37, Nr. 3. S. 267-287.
Download
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