The latest study by Gabriella Szabó, Eszter Farkas, Orsolya Ring, and Timm Beichelt examines the strategic use of anger in political communication on social media during the 2019 and 2024 European Parliamentary elections in Germany and Hungary.

Since anger is typically classified as an emotion characterized by the intersection of high arousal and negative valence, the authors argue that expressing anger can help newcomer parties compensate for their limited resources in attracting voters' attention on Facebook. Using fine-tuned XLM-RoBERTa models, they compare the social media content of newcomer and established parties and politicians. The study investigates whether newcomer actors rely more frequently on anger-related communication—particularly as election day approaches—and whether Hungarian parties exhibit higher levels of anger in their communication than their German counterparts. It also examines whether anger-related content generates greater user engagement and functions as a form of digital equalizer.

The findings show that newcomer parties initially use anger effectively to increase engagement—especially in Hungary's polarized political environment. However, this effect diminishes over time, suggesting that differences between parties in their use of anger-related campaign messages gradually narrow.

The study is available here:
 

Szabó, Gabriella, Farkas, Eszter, Ring, Orsolya, & Beichelt, Timm (2026). Rage to

reach: Anger as a political resource for newcomer parties–Facebook communication

of German and Hungarian parties and politicians during the 2019 and 2024 European

parliamentary campaigns. Communications. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2025-0128