D I ALO G UE: A P L A N FO R THE 2 0 2 0 E L E C TI O N
promote their agendas and engage with
political issues. However, we might be
surprised at how few adults are driving
the conversation. According to a 2019
Pew Research report, only 22% of the
American public uses Twitter. “ The Twit-
ter conversation about national politics
among U.S. adult users is driven by a
small number of prolific political tweet-
ers. These users make up just 6% of all
U.S. adults with public accounts on the
site, but they account for 73% of tweets
from American adults that mention na-
tional politics.” 8
profiteers, marketers, and activist organi-
zations can spread moralized content by
capitalizing on natural tendencies of our
perceptional systems.” 9
#6. The language Democrats and Re-
publicans use to describe the charac-
ter traits of the opposing party has
grown worse since 2016. Pew Research
released new data in October 2019
showing that Republicans and Demo-
crats describe one another as closed-
minded, unpatriotic, immoral, lazy, and
unintelligent. The survey also found that
those who are highly attentive to politics
are most likely to express negative senti-
ments about the opposing party. 10
#5. Moral and emotional content on
social media is intentionally used to
capture our attention. A 2019 study
in Journal of Experimental Psychology,
researchers conclude social media con-
tent that has moral and emotional con-
tent will capture our attention more than
other content. The studies suggest “that
attentional capture is one basic psycho-
logical process that helps explain the
increased diffusion of moral and emo-
tional content during political discourse
on social media, and sheds light on ways
in which political leaders, disinformation
#7. When deepest beliefs are chal-
lenged, the brain turns on its self-
defense mode. A recent Vox article
explores Jonas Kaplan’s, USC’s Brain
and Creativity Institute, research that
studied brain activity in people when
their deepest beliefs were challenged.
Although the study is limited, Kaplan
concludes that when participants were
challenged, there was more activity in
the parts of the brain that correspond to
8. “Small Share of U.S. Adults Produce Majority of Political Tweets.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2 Jan.
2020, www.people-press.org/2019/10/23/national-politics-on-twitter-small-share-of-u-s-adults-produce-majority-of-
tweets/.
9. Brady, William J, et al. “Attentional Capture Helps Explain Why Moral and Emotional Content Go Viral.” Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology. General, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 5 Sept. 2019, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31486666.
10. “How Partisans View Each Other.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 31 Dec. 2019, www.people-press.
org/2019/10/10/how-partisans-view-each-other/.
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CSEE Connections
Summer 2020 Page 31