Why social media users like sharing negative news

It’s long been recognised that news-related social media posts that use negative language are re-posted more, so that in turn rewards users who create negative content through greater exposure. But is negative material from external news sites also introduced to social media through more user posts, which may offer journalists an incentive to adopt a negative tone? 

Research co-authored at Cambridge Judge Business School – based on analysing articles from 4 major news outlets alongside related Facebook and Twitter (now X) posts – finds that social media users are 1.91 times more likely to share news articles that are negative rather than positive. The study is based on 95,282 articles between 2019 and 2021 in the UK-based Daily Mail and Guardian and the US-based New York Times and New York Post, and 579 million posts on Facebook and Twitter. 

Further, the research finds that users are more likely to post negative content about political groups they oppose (referred to as ‘out-groups’). Additionally, Facebook users were found to write 98% more posts about negative articles than positive ones, a substantially higher figure than for Twitter users, who post 34% more about negative articles. 

The spread of negative news beyond social media

“These findings suggest a higher prevalence of negatively toned articles on Facebook and Twitter compared to online news sites,” says the research. “Should journalists respond to the incentives created by the heightened sharing of negative articles to social media platforms, this could even increase negative news exposure for those who do not use social media.” 

The research, in the journal Scientific Reports, was co-authored by Joe Watson, Senior Psychometrician at the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School; Sander van der Linden of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge; Michael Watson of the Department of Informatics at King’s College London; and David Stillwell, Professor of Computational Social Science and Academic Director of the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge Judge.

We asked co-authors Joe Watson and David Stillwell of Cambridge Judge to comment on select aspects of the research: 

From global news to sports: despite reluctance to share negative content is still shared more often 

Joe Watson: The research focuses on how negativity influences sharing behaviour by social media users, so we are observing how the tone of an article – positive or negative – prompts readers to share articles on social media. Our findings vary somewhat based on the topic of the article: global news, local news, family, home and political news are shared more, with negative sports articles shared a little less. However, the overall result is generally consistent across all topics in that negative articles are generally shared more often. 

David Stillwell: We were very aware going into our research that people are more likely to pay attention to and to read negative news, but we wanted to find out something different: whether they would share such negative external news articles more to social media. One might argue that many individuals would be reluctant to share negative articles on social media because they don’t want to come across as a downer to people they know, but the results suggest that any such reluctance is overcome when people sit down at their keyboards or pick up their mobile phone to post to social media. 

How bias and the feedback loop of negativity affect online behaviour 

Joe Watson: We know from previous research that there is a negativity bias when it comes to news consumption, driven by an innate tendency to ascribe greater significance to negative information compared to positive information. In fact, greater consumption of negative news has even been observed among news readers who express a personal preference for more news media positivity – suggesting that this negativity bias is a very strong pull. 

David Stillwell: The research quantifies how much more likely people are to share negative articles, which could suggest the presence of a feedback loop of negativity. If a journalist writes a negative article, readers are more likely to share it to social media, and other users are more likely to engage. Social media algorithms would then be more likely to include such articles at the top of newsfeeds, and more clicks on such prominently displayed articles could incentivise journalists to produce more negative articles. News outlets often encourage their journalists to amplify articles through social media, and we note that even those journalists not active on social media can notice that their negatively toned articles are spread more on social media.  

The impact of demographics and algorithms on sharing across social platforms

Joe Watson: Social media posts can be engaged with, such as through retweets. Our research found that tweets sharing negative news articles were more likely to be retweeted than those sharing positive articles. Moreover, when considering both tweets and retweets as part of sharing, the impact of negativity on Twitter sharing increases – from 34% to 61% more shares. 

David Stillwell: The far greater likelihood of Facebook users to share negative news articles, compared to Twitter users, may reflect differences in demographics and usage patterns: a previous study we cite found that women tend to use Facebook more often than men, and vice-versa, and that people with lower educational attainment are more active on Facebook. We also speculate that the difference in algorithms used by the two platforms may lie behind at least part of the disparity. 

Joe Watson: Our findings show that people are more likely to share negative articles about political out-groups than about in-groups, highlighting the disproportionate attention given to content that criticises political opponents. This suggests that greater engagement with out-group content is driven by animosity.