"Narco" Emotions: Affect and Desensitization in Social Media during the Mexican Drug War
Munmun De Choudhury, Andr\'es Monroy-Hern\'andez, and Gloria Mark

TL;DR
This study analyzes Twitter data over two years to explore how affective responses to violence in Mexican cities change, revealing signs of emotional desensitization amid ongoing conflict.
Contribution
It introduces a novel analysis of affect measures on social media to detect emotional desensitization in communities affected by prolonged violence.
Findings
Decline in negative affect expression during rising violence
Increase in activation and dominance in social media posts
Indicators of psychological desensitization observed over time
Abstract
Social media platforms have emerged as prominent information sharing ecosystems in the context of a variety of recent crises, ranging from mass emergencies, to wars and political conflicts. We study affective responses in social media and how they might indicate desensitization to violence experienced in communities embroiled in an armed conflict. Specifically, we examine three established affect measures: negative affect, activation, and dominance as observed on Twitter in relation to a number of statistics on protracted violence in four major cities afflicted by the Mexican Drug War. During a two year period (Aug 2010-Dec 2012), while violence was on the rise in these regions, our findings show a decline in negative emotional expression as well as a rise in emotional arousal and dominance in Twitter posts: aspects known to be psychological markers of desensitization. We discuss the…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMisinformation and Its Impacts · Public Relations and Crisis Communication · Mental Health via Writing
