EMOTIONAL REGULATION ANALYSIS IN ONLINE POLITICAL DISCOURSE WITH RESPONSE TIME METRICS

Abstract

In terms of digital political engagement and new digital discourses, emotional regulation operates as an important agent of influence, helping to shape form, quality, and trajectory of online communication. This project examined emotional regulation responses during online political conversations or discussions in multiple digital spaces, including a response time measure as a proxy for cognitive-emotional processing. The data were collected from online political forums, social media threads, and moderated discussion forums, consisting of timestamps and text tagged for sentiment. The timestamps and text tagged for sentiment were coded with psycholinguistic principles and computational approaches. Response times were able to demonstrate impulsivity versus deliberation, capturing the experience of emotional regulation in contingent political contexts. Results show a significant association between emotional-regulated responses taking longer than non-regulated responses and emotional-regulated responses where impulsive responses are associated with greater affective language. Each of the opportunities and digital discourses we examined demonstrated patterns that differentiated the platform effects on discussion quality, highlighting how the architecture of the discourse may shape the overall quality. Overall, this study contributes to not only methods for studying emotional regulation in online spaces, but also design strategies for fostering healthier political communication spaces.