Rude speeches by politicians have reduced interest in what they say
(ORDO NEWS) — When a person chosen to be the “voice of the people” behaves in a rude and ill-mannered way, it may initially attract public attention. But the price of such behavior will be a complete loss of people’s interest.
Rudeness from the lips of politicians will not surprise anyone for a long time: both from the rostrum and from personal pages on social networks, tons of dirt are literally pouring against political opponents, critics and colleagues from other countries.
To find out how such behavior ultimately affects a politician’s popularity, two Canadian researchers from the University of Toronto and Wynne University studied messages containing rude and derogatory language on the social media profiles of former US President Donald Trump and current US leader Joe Biden.
Scientists analyzed more than 32,000 messages published from Trump’s Twitter account over five and a half years. Most people subscribed to the president’s page on days when his messages were especially polite: up to 43,000 new subscribers against 16,000 on days when Trump was rude.
In the case of Biden, the researchers analyzed just over seven thousand messages from 2012 to June 2021. During this time, the number of his subscribers increased from five to 32 million.
Again, the most people, up to 45,000, signed up for the account when the president’s messages were polite, while on “rough” days their number dipped noticeably to 11,000.
According to Matthew Feinberg, Biden’s sharper jumps in the number of subscribers are due to the fact that people expected more civilized behavior from him than from his predecessor.
After conducting additional research and interviewing almost two thousand people, the scientists were convinced of their conclusions: even if the respondent was from the same political party as the current president, the impolite statements of the leader of the country only attracted attention at first, but later caused moral disapproval and loss of interest.
Given the results, why do politicians continue to “step on the rake” and throw “dirty grenades” at each other? Perhaps this is done in order to tarnish the reputation of the opponent or to attract, albeit temporarily, the attention of the public. Or these people simply do not think about the consequences.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.
