Central to the study’s findings is the identification of what the authors term the “conflict entrepreneur” — a political figure who strategically employs personal attacks focused on the character, morality, or intellect of rivals rather than engaging on policy grounds. By examining the 118th United States Congress, convened from January 2023 to January 2025, the researchers analyzed an extensive database comprising over 2.2 million public statements, including floor speeches, press releases, newsletters, and social media communications. Leveraging advanced natural language processing via large language models, the team distinguished between legitimate policy critique and inflammatory personal invective, allowing for unprecedented granularity in understanding patterns of congressional rhetoric.

Intriguingly, the research reveals a pronounced asymmetry in the use of derogatory language between political parties. While both Democrats and Republicans engage in personal attacks to varying degrees, Republicans exhibit this behavior approximately 2.7 times more frequently. Furthermore, the incidence of such attacks is more prevalent in the House of Representatives as opposed to the Senate, with a 1.3-fold increase. These disparities point to systemic differences not only in partisan culture but also institutional norms that shape congressional interactions.

Perhaps the most striking insight from the study is the pronounced disjunction between conflict-driven communication styles and traditional markers of political success, such as fundraising prowess, electoral margins, legislative achievements, or personal wealth accumulation. Politicians dedicating a mere 5% of their discourse to personal attacks garner media attention on cable news networks comparable to peers whose discourse is overwhelmingly substantive. This disproportionate visibility is starkly evident in social media metrics: posts laced with insults enjoy nearly two and a half times more shares than those focusing on detailed policy discussions.

Nevertheless, this aggressive rhetorical style exacts tangible costs within the legislative domain. Lawmakers who habitually engage in personal invective tend to participate less in co-sponsoring legislation and receive fewer appointments to influential standing committees. This detachment from policymaking suggests that the pursuit of media attention may undermine traditional legislative roles and responsibilities, representing a strategic diversion from governance towards celebrity via conflict.

One of the study’s more unexpected findings challenges conventional wisdom linking incivility to the political leanings of legislators’ constituencies. The researchers found no statistically significant correlation between the extent of personal attacks and the level of partisan animus or polarization within electoral districts. In fact, many of the most vociferous conflict entrepreneurs represent electorates characterized by relative moderation. This decoupling implies that for a subset of political actors, objectives extend beyond traditional goals of reelection, legislative influence, or institutional power, gravitating instead towards maximizing media exposure.

The implications of these findings extend far beyond academic interest, illuminating the calibration of incentives in America’s burgeoning media ecosystem. The study underscores how the prevailing media attention economy rewards spectacle and conflict at the expense of deliberative policy debate, distorting political incentives toward incivility. Cable news and social platforms magnify the visibility of confrontational rhetoric, effectively incentivizing politicians to adopt aggressive communication tactics as a shortcut to national relevance.

Jacob and his colleagues caution that this burgeoning political communication strategy risks eroding foundational democratic norms by severing the link between visibility and accountability. As conflict entrepreneurs dominate airwaves and social feeds without corresponding legislative achievements or constituency representation, the integrity of democratic discourse faces unprecedented strain. The ascendancy of personal attacks threatens to normalize antagonism and reduce politics to entertainment spectacle.

The study’s sobering conclusion offers a dual mandate: political party leadership and media gatekeepers possess crucial agency in reshaping incentive structures. Leadership must champion policy-oriented discourse and curtail the tacit endorsement of incivility, while media organizations are called to critically evaluate what counts as newsworthy, prioritizing substantive governance over provocative personality clashes. Such corrective actions are essential to safeguarding the stability and health of American democracy in an era increasingly dominated by polarization and media saturation.

This research, conducted through the Polarization Research Lab, collaborates with scholars from Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, collectively advancing our understanding of political polarization and rhetorical strategies in contemporary governance. Their innovative integration of computational linguistic tools with large-scale political data establishes a new frontier in political science, blending empirical rigor with relevant real-world implications.

Ultimately, this study signals a critical inflection point in American political communication. The choices political actors make today, amplified by media platforms hungry for conflict, will shape democratic norms and citizen engagement for years to come. As Marc Jacob summarizes, the path forward demands deliberate cultural and institutional reforms that restore respect for policy debate as the cornerstone of representative democracy, resisting the alluring but corrosive temptation of personal attacks for fleeting attention.

Subject of Research: People

Article Title: Entrepreneurs of conflict: A descriptive analysis of when and how political elites use divisive rhetoric

News Publication Date: 17-Mar-2026

Web References:

• PNAS Nexus Article

References:
Jacob, M., Lelkes, Y., & Westwood, S. J. (2026). Entrepreneurs of conflict: A descriptive analysis of when and how political elites use divisive rhetoric. PNAS Nexus. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag038

Image Credits: University of Notre Dame

Keywords: Democracy, Political process, Sociopolitical systems, Mass media, News media, Social media, Rhetoric, Verbal communication

At the heart of this study lies a sophisticated statistical framework designed to analyze the interconnectivity among members of the 117th U.S. Congress. Leinwand, in collaboration with mathematics professor Vince Lyzinski from the University of Maryland, amassed a dataset encompassing 475 congressional members who each posted at least 100 tweets between February and June 2022. Crucially, their model operated without prior knowledge of these politicians’ party affiliations or official standings. Instead, it relied solely on patterns of tweet interactions—both mentions and retweets—to construct a complex network map that grouped individuals by their digital engagement behaviors.

This model’s ingenuity is underscored by its capacity to infer political coalitions purely through connection data. The researchers identified three emergent communities: one predominantly composed of Senators, another consisting mostly of Democratic representatives, and the third largely Republican representatives. This natural segregation, achieved without labeling or bias, validates the hypothesis that political identity is often reflected in digital communication patterns. The findings confirm that politicians primarily engage with peers within their ideological clusters, reinforcing the online echo chambers that mirror offline party alliances.

Delving deeper, Leinwand elucidated the criteria for defining a “connection” within the network: if one politician tweeted at or retweeted another during the observation period, a directed link was established between them. This approach captures both proactive outreach and endorsement behaviors, embedding layers of political signaling into the interaction matrix. The model revealed a marked tendency for intra-group communication, with Republican and Democratic congresspeople engaging heavily within their own factions. Interestingly, Democratic representatives showed a slightly higher propensity to interact with Senate members compared to their Republican counterparts, possibly reflecting strategic alignment with the then Democratic-controlled Senate leadership.

Intriguingly, the analysis uncovered outliers – a small subset of twelve members whose digital behaviors diverged from their assigned groups. These individuals frequently engaged across group boundaries, tweeting and retweeting senators in ways that aligned more closely with the other coalition. Such deviations suggest early digital signals of political ambition or shifting alliances. Among these outliers, two Democratic congresspeople—Peter Welch of Vermont and Andy Kim of New Jersey—successfully transitioned to Senate seats in subsequent elections. Another, Chris Pappas, pursued a Senate bid, while David Trone attempted but did not secure a Senate race victory. These cases highlight the model’s potential to anticipate political mobility through network behavior alone.

The implications of these discoveries resonate beyond academic curiosity. Leinwand posits that congressional members who strategically position themselves by engaging with Senate figures on social media might cultivate perceptions of senatorial stature among voters, enhancing their prospects for higher office. While tweeting per se cannot secure electoral wins, the pattern of interactions reflects deliberate branding efforts, signaling ambition and alignment to politically engaged constituents. This phenomenon underscores the role of digital platforms as arenas for political identity construction and career strategy.

The study, titled “ACRONYM: Augmented Degree Corrected, Community Reticulated Organized Network Yielding Model,” was published in the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics in October 2025. The ACRONYM model extends traditional community detection frameworks by incorporating degree correction and reticulation mechanisms, allowing nuanced capture of heterogeneous connectivity patterns within political networks. This methodological advance facilitates more precise inference of community structure in complex social systems, even when external labels or affiliations are concealed.

Leinwand and Lyzinski emphasize that their research is exploratory, designed to detect rhythmic patterns in online political behavior rather than prescribe deterministic predictions. They advocate for further analytical refinement and diverse methodological applications to deepen understanding of political communication dynamics. Nonetheless, their findings affirm the premise that behavioral patterns encoded in digital interactions can serve as proxies for ideological positioning and future political trajectories.

This fusion of network science and political analysis illuminates the transformative impact of social media on governance and electoral strategy. As politicians harness the power of online platforms to forge connections and signal identities, computational models like ACRONYM provide critical tools to decode these complex, dynamic interactions. Such capacity not only enriches political science scholarship but may inform campaign strategists, analysts, and the public about the subtle mechanisms driving modern political ecosystems.

Moreover, the study spotlights a critical shift in political communication from traditional media and physical campaigning toward data-driven, network-conscious digital engagement. Future research inspired by Leinwand’s approach could expand to examine the effects of these patterns on voter behavior, misinformation dissemination, and legislative collaboration. Understanding the interplay between online social network structures and real-world political outcomes represents a frontier with substantial implications for democracy and governance.

Ultimately, this research contributes to a growing body of knowledge demonstrating that beyond policy positions and rhetoric, the architecture of political relationships as manifested online embodies significant informational value. By mapping and analyzing these connections, researchers can gain predictive insights and reveal underlying strategies that shape the trajectory of political figures. The digital footprints left by elected officials are not mere noise but signals rich with meaning—signals that may forecast changes in political landscapes and leadership.

Benjamin Leinwand’s work exemplifies how interdisciplinary approaches combining mathematics, computer science, and political science can yield novel understanding of contemporary political phenomena. In an era marked by information overload and partisan divides, identifying coherent structures within chaotic digital data is both a scientific challenge and a democratic imperative. This study marks a step forward in decoding the intricate dance of political communication in the 21st century.

Subject of Research: Political communication networks and community detection using social media interactions among U.S. Congress members.

Article Title: ACRONYM: Augmented Degree Corrected, Community Reticulated Organized Network Yielding Model

News Publication Date: November 4, 2025

Web References:
– https://www.stevens.edu/profile/bleinwan
– https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10618600.2025.2540356

References:
Leinwand, Benjamin, and Vince Lyzinski. “ACRONYM: Augmented Degree Corrected, Community Reticulated Organized Network Yielding Model.” Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, October 7, 2025.

Image Credits: Stevens Institute of Technology

Keywords: Mathematics, Network Science, Political Communication, Social Media Analysis, Community Detection, Computational Statistics

Conducted by researchers Beth L. Fossen of Indiana University and David A. Schweidel of Emory University, the study systematically examined more than 70,000 social media posts by U.S. senators during 2018 on the platform formerly known as Twitter, now rebranded as X. By analyzing engagement metrics such as retweets and likes alongside follower growth data, the authors sought to uncover the nuanced effects of emotional content in political messaging. Their findings challenge some widely held assumptions about social media tactics in politics.

The study confirms that emotional posts do indeed heighten engagement among existing followers. Politicians who infuse their social media messaging with emotionality—whether through language reflecting anger, outrage, or even enthusiasm—tend to see increased immediate reactions like shares and likes. This amplification, however, appears almost exclusively confined to audiences that are politically homogenous. When audiences comprise diverse political orientations, highly charged emotional content can backfire, curbing engagement and potentially alienating moderate or oppositional followers.

One of the most compelling revelations from this research is that emotionality in posts does not translate into an increase in followers. Unlike the spike in engagement, follower growth depends primarily on other substantive qualities of posts, particularly the topic itself. This divergence underlines that while emotional appeals may energize existing supporters to react and share, they are insufficient as a mechanism to expand a politician’s reach or influence a broader electorate. In other words, getting people to respond is not the same as motivating them to commit by following an account.

The moderating effect of audience diversity is a pivotal but previously underexplored factor that this study brings to light. When followers represent ideologically diverse groups, emotionally charged posts often generate polarization instead of unity. Schweidel emphasizes that moderate emotional content actually performs better in such cases, fostering wider engagement across a fragmented audience. This insight is critical for politicians who wish to maintain or build bridges across political divides rather than deepen them.

Furthermore, the tone of emotion in political social mediated posts proves significant. Posts expressing negative emotions like anger and outrage are more potent in eliciting immediate reactions on social media platforms. By contrast, emotions such as happiness or excitement, while positive, tend to generate less visible engagement. This phenomenon reinforces the idea that social media platforms inherently reward controversy and conflict more than optimism, a crucial consideration for any political communications strategy.

Fossen highlights the distinction between engagement and following as two separate psychological and behavioral endpoints in social media interaction. The choice to engage with a post—through retweets, shares, or likes—is often a quick, reactive decision driven by emotional state and current context. Conversely, deciding to follow a political account is a more deliberate commitment, influenced by the relevance and substance of the topics covered rather than the emotional tone alone. This subtle but important difference guides how political campaigns should frame their messaging to achieve specific outcomes.

These findings also underscore the strategic complexity politicians face when navigating social media landscapes. Deploying emotional content is a double-edged sword: it can galvanize fervent support among existing bases but risks alienating moderate or undecided voters needed for broader electoral success. As Schweidel poignantly states, “More emotion is not always better.” Political communicators must therefore carefully calibrate emotional tone depending on the targeted audience’s ideological composition and the overarching campaign goals.

Methodologically, this study is distinguished by its large-scale data analysis, combining text mining of post content with robust statistical models to correlate emotionality with key social media metrics. By controlling for senator characteristics and post topics, the research isolates the specific impact of emotional content itself. Such granular analytical rigor advances the academic understanding of political communication dynamics in the digital age, providing a model for future interdisciplinary research combining political science, data analytics, and behavioral psychology.

This research offers practical implications for political advisors, campaign strategists, and public relations professionals. An over-reliance on emotionally charged rhetoric constitutes a high-risk strategy that may energize the base but diminish chances of cross-group appeal and long-term follower growth. Instead, a balanced approach that pairs substantive content with measured emotional expression appears more likely to sustain engagement and nurture a diverse, expanding supporter base on social media platforms.

Beyond its immediate political context, the study opens avenues for broader exploration of emotional messaging in digital communication. How emotional content influences behavior across different stakeholder groups could shape the design of future algorithms, content moderation policies, and targeted messaging in a democratic society increasingly mediated through digital platforms. As social media continues to evolve, understanding these dynamics will be indispensable for both political actors and the platforms themselves.

In conclusion, the INFORMS-published research by Fossen and Schweidel decisively demonstrates that emotionality in political social media communications yields mixed outcomes. While it can boost immediate engagement among partisan audiences, it struggles to attract new followers or resonate with a politically diverse constituency. The strategic challenge for politicians lies in tailoring emotional content to audience composition, employing it as a tool for reinforcement rather than expansion. This nuanced understanding absent from popular discourse guides smarter social media practices in political communication for the digital era.

Subject of Research: People
Article Title: Emotionality in Political Social Media Communications: The Moderating Role of Audience Diversity
News Publication Date: October 15, 2025
Web References: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/isre.2022.0064
References: Fossen, B. L., & Schweidel, D. A. (2025). Emotionality in Political Social Media Communications: The Moderating Role of Audience Diversity. Information Systems Research.
Keywords: Political science, social media, political communication, emotionality, audience diversity, follower growth, online engagement, political polarization, digital communication strategies