MIAMI – Whether they support a cause or a candidate, online petitions must have a positive tone in their messages and move away from complaining and moralizing in order to succeed, research from Florida International University’s College of Business (FIU Business) finds.
“Today, campaign messages are overwhelmingly negative, but people don’t like negative messages, and these reduce the chance for actual success of petitions,” said Yan Chen, the assistant professor of information systems and business analytics at FIU Business who co-authored the study. “Petitions should be clear and should have a positive attitude to get more support.”
Chen also noted that as petitions have moved from in-person canvassing to online and social media, “there is no longer a face-to-face connection. You don’t have in-person interactions with facial expressions or body language, and you can’t control the atmosphere of where the petition is presented and signed,” Chen said. “In today’s world, written text is a main form of communication.”
Published in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems in March 2019, the study found that projecting strong moral beliefs, imposing moral obligations, or introducing assertive arguments related to social norms, rules, culture, and religion may backfire due to the diversity of internet users. These may also irritate users with different moral values.
Researchers examined 45,377 online petitions collected from Change.org, which reports more than 200 million users and launches over 1,000 petitions daily in the U.S. The study analyzed how cognitive, emotional, and moral linguistic factors within the texts of online petitions influence their success.
They found that online petitions with low numbers of signatures, those in the bottom 25 percentile, contained many more moral cues such as “right” and “God” than those with high numbers of signatures, in the top 25 percentile.
Additionally, petitions with high numbers of signatures, in the top 25 percentile, used significantly fewer overstatement words such as “large” and “enormous” versus petitions with low numbers of signatures, those in the bottom 25 percentile.
Researchers also found that petitions containing too much data and exaggerated or vague comments are less likely to succeed. The study also indicates that petitions with a breaking news style and tone are more appealing to participants.
“Although language expressing anger and frustration may attract attention to the severity of the underlying issues, a petition cannot be simply a complaint,” Chen noted. “It should focus more on the positive outcomes that could be accomplished by the proposed change.”
The paper was co-authored by Chen along with business professors Shuyuan Deng, Grand Valley State University; Dong-Heon Kwak, Kent State University; Ahmed Elnoshokaty, Northern Michigan University; and Jiao Wu, Northern Illinois University.
