Communications of the ACM
Janusz Holyst—how Technology Can Influence People's Emotions
The EU Cyberemotions project studied the role of collective emotions in creating, forming, and dismantling online communities.
Credit: affdex.com
In an interview, Cyberemotions project coordinator and Warsaw University of Technology professor Janusz Holyst discusses the potential implications of using emotions on the Internet.
Completed last year with European Union funding, Cyberemotions studied the role of collective emotions in creating, forming, and dismantling e-communities. Holyst says the project examined how Internet users express emotions and how these emotions become collective. Negative emotions are more readily expressed than positive emotions in many online communities. Although negative emotions can drive the group, when sentiments drop below a certain level the group will break apart, Holyst says.
In addition, the researchers found an emotional transfer that occurs in online communities, in which comments are likely to mirror the emotional tone of the preceding comment. Holyst says online communities are vulnerable to emotional manipulation, which could be carried out by bots sending messages targeting specific groups by exploiting psychological profile information.
The Cyberemotions project also developed a Sentistrength program to automatically detect emotions. Holyst says the tool could eventually be used as an "emotional spell checker" within text editors or mail programs to help users control the emotional tone of their communications. He says Sentistrength also could be used to help companion robots appear empathetic and to serve as cyber advisers in online communities.
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