Social feedback amplifies emotional language in online video live chats.

ABSTRACT: A growing share of human interactions now occurs online, where the expression and perception of emotions are often amplified and distorted. Yet, the interplay between different emotions and the extent to which they are driven by external stimuli or social feedback remains poorly understood. We calibrate a multivariate Hawkes self-exciting point process to model the temporal expression of six basic emotions in YouTube Live chats. This framework captures both temporal and cross-emotional dependencies while allowing us to disentangle the influence of video content (exogenous) from peer interactions (endogenous). We find that emotional expressions are up to four times more strongly driven by peer interaction than by video content. Positivity is more contagious, spreading three times more readi

SUBMITTER: Luo Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12753739 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature