Election night’s alright for feeling: emotional appeals by British political parties on Facebook during and outside election campaigns

This study investigates the use of emotional appeals by British political parties on Facebook during and outside election campaigns, and the relationship between emotions and engagement. Drawing on theories of emotion from political psychology, I conduct a manual content analysis of parties’ posts (N = 1,710) across long and short campaigns, post-election, and routine periods. Results reveal widespread and strategic use of emotional appeals: appeals to enthusiasm and anger were more frequent than fear, with patterns varying across parties and periods. The relationship between emotions and engagement differs by type of interaction and across periods. Enthusiasm predicted likes, anger predicted shares and comments, and fear showed no significant association with any engagement form. The association between emotions and engagement also varied across periods, indicating their context-dependent nature. The findings are consistent with Facebook’s nature as an arena for partisan mobilization and raise normative concerns about the limited space for deliberative engagement in political discourse on the platform.