Affective Design: The Influence of Facebook Reactions on the Emotional Expression of the 114th US Congress

Political communication is critical for democracy, but polarized emotions in communication may make careful deliberation difficult. Much of modern political communication occurs on social media, which may exacerbate these challenges. This study examines how the design of social media features impact political communication. We examined how the introduction of Facebook Reactions influenced the posts of the 114th US Congress on the platform. We start by analyzing the emotional content of posts, finding that politicians generally increased their usage of negative emotions in their posts after the feature’s launch. Further analysis showed that increased user engagement preceded the rise in negative emotions, suggesting that politicians were making adjustments based on user feedback. Our results show that the design features of social media can shape online political communication.