Emotional Reactions in Information Dissemination Through the Lens of SOR Theory

Social media has changed the readers' consumption of news. Traditionally, news reports must be neutral and objective. However, digital news is inundated with emotion-laden clickbait, which increases the likelihood of users being exposed to a negative news environment. As such, this study explores the chain effect of information sentiment dissemination in relation to the generation characteristics of news text content. News is collected from mainstream media and a BERT model is trained to classify the headlines that influence readers and listeners' emotions. In addition, stimulus-organism-response theory is used to understand the stimuli effects of online news in social media on audiences, including if readers are willing to turn psychological stimuli into action reposts, subsequent emotional expression or discussion of topics, and other stimuli-response chain reactions. Results show that the sentiment in news headlines significantly affects the readers' dissemination behavior and subsequent emotional responses. This study allows journalism and their readers to understand the challenges they face in the digital news environment.