Quantifying the evolution of negative language in U.S. politics (2008–2020). (a) The black points show the fraction of negative emotion words, averaged monthly over all quotes from all 18,627 quoted politicians. The red vs. blue background shows the quote share of Trump vs. Obama (if Trump had T quotes and Obama had O quotes in a given month, the respective red bar covers a fraction of the full y-range). Whereas the frequency of negative emotion words had decreased continuously during the first 6.5 years of Obama’s tenure, it suddenly and lastingly increased in June 2015, when Trump’s primary campaign started and his quote share began to surpass Obama’s. (b) Regression analysis: The black points again show the fraction of negative emotion words, but now as z-scores (i.e., after subtracting the pre-campaign mean and dividing by the pre-campaign standard deviation). In red, we plot regression lines for the periods before and after June 2015. Credit: Scientific Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-36839-1
Oct. 19, 2023 (Phys.org) -- A new tool, Quotebank, has helped researchers provide the first large-scale data-driven evidence of a drastic shift towards a more negative political tone beginning at the start of Donald Trump's primary campaign in June 2015.
A vast majority of Americans believe that the tone and nature of political debate in the United States has become more negative in recent years and more than half have the impression that Donald Trump is responsible.
But do these subjective impressions reflect the true state of U.S. political discourse? As politics impacts nearly every aspect of our personal lives the answer to this question comes with important societal implications, including the level of support for, and perceived legitimacy of, political institutions resulting in a decrease of trust in political processes.
To date, data-driven evidence regarding the perceived shift towards a more negative political tone has been scarce, partly due to the difficulty of obtaining a comprehensive, longitudinal record of what politicians say. Now, researchers have developed a new database, Quotebank, that they used to analyze how the tone of U.S. politicians' language, as reported in online media, evolved between 2008 and 2020.
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