Researchers at KTU explore hardly measurable emotions in war-related media content

The war in Ukraine is a hot topic in Lithuania because a big part of the society is actively following the crisis. Intense involvement in large-scale military actions evokes strong emotions, which can significantly impact daily lives and relationships. Research on such emotions reveals the complex nature of the human brain, as media content is one of the factors shaping human psychology.

 In their project, researchers at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) analyse human reactions to war-related media content using linguistic and eye-tracking research methods. The project aims to identify and categorise emotional reactions and contribute to more complex research on human emotions.

“We believe that our research data can contribute to the familiarisation with the human brain and emotions and understanding of human behaviour in specific cultural or political contexts, especially when those emotions are closely linked to war-related tragedies,” said Ramunė Kasperė, the professor and the head of the Project of Postdoctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities (FSSAH).

Eye-tracking and emotions

Kasperė says that Lithuania is one of Ukraine’s largest providers of military aid. Therefore, many Lithuanians are emotionally invested in the military actions taking place in Ukraine.

According to the professor, the emotional impact of war is studied widely. Researchers often analyse mental health problems, which soldiers and their families deal with.

Lately, it has been focused on the emotional impact of war. One of the most important aspects of war-related media content is the outburst of negative reactions, especially on social media, and its impact on relationships between humans and nations.

Researchers notice that the rampant spread of hate, humiliation, and powerlessness can negatively contribute to societal values and the mental health of those, who face the direct and indirect impacts of war. In some ways, it can pose threats to global peace and security.

“We chose the emotion-oriented perspective, as emotionsplay the main role in military actions,” says the researcher at KTU.

She says that the motivation behind this project is the core role of emotions in human existence and their abundance in military actions. Besides, even though eye-tracking is becoming one of the most popular research methods, it is relatively new in emotion identification.

The application of a multimodal emotional recognition approach—identifying correlations between eye-tracking data and the emotional linguistic content —ensures the project’s reliability.

“Anonymous users usually express themselves more freely and emotionally on social media. Because of this, it is easier to analyse emotional reactions in comments and posts on social media platforms,” says Kasperė.

Eye-tracking data, such as pupil dilation, pupil fixation duration, and saccades (sudden movements of the eye that result in looking in a different direction without processing information in that moment), are often used in studies of emotional reactions. According to the professor, this research method is not popular in Lithuania. Its focus is on the analysis of visual and text acceptability.

“The research combining analysis of eye-tracking and textual data is almost non-existent in Lithuania,” says Kasperė.

The first data

Kasperė says that during the research, war-related headlines and comments from social media and news platforms are analysed. First, the analysis of linguistic data is carried out. Later, the study group reads text segments using eye-tracking equipment.

This is a way of analysing the readers’ reactions to the lexical units, similes, metaphors, and other stylistic details.

The professor explains that eye-tracking studies use textual and linguistic data, which includes topics related to the war in Ukraine on social media and mass media. “Subjects are likely to be sensitive to the war-related texts. Therefore, careful selection of the material and avoiding war-related trauma topics is crucial. We are preparing to begin testing and piloting the eye-tracking experiment,” says Kasperė.

Dr Jelena Kirejeva, a Research Fellow at KTU, reports that the initial analysis of linguistic data leads to preliminary conclusions. The primary findings suggest that internet users are actively responding to the military actions in Ukraine and openly discuss topics related to war.

Such negative emotions as hate, disgust, and anger are expressed intensively. An abundant amount of examples show that internet users often wish to get rid of or even physically deal with the object of negative emotions. It has also been noticed that emotions are rarely named directly. They are often expressed through figures of speech and visuals.

“Those negative emotions are directed towards the russian president, russian soldiers and citizens, and russians in Lithuania,” says Jelena Kirejeva.

According to Kirejeva, multimodal data analysis reveals that the immeasurability and complexity of emotions require a precise choice of analytical instruments. She also stresses that the military actions in Ukraine remain a sensitive topic, which has a significant impact not only on individual internet users, but also on the Lithuanian society as a whole.

One of the most important steps awaiting in the project is to plan, develop, and conduct the eye-tracking experiment for emotion identification and analysis of the data. In the final stage of the project, the researchers at KTU will be trying to establish a connection between linguistic analysis and eye-tracking data results.

The project “Readers’ Emotional Engagement with War-related Media Content: a Linguistic and Eye-tracking Data Study” is funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (RCL). Project no.: S-PD-24-30.