Emotional Dynamic and Opinion Cumulation on Social Networks in Kazakhstan

Social networks manifest themselves as educational and information resources as well as a discussion milieu that casts strong influence upon public opinion. Finding themselves in the social media environment, users with lower levels of critical thinking and/or media literacy may become more susceptible to transformation of his/her position on the issue discussed, often due to emotional, not rational effects. Thus, polarization of views in user talk is multi-reasoned, emerging on both rational-choice and emotional grounds, while the latter may also vary significantly in the intensity and polarity of sentiment (from, e.g., mild empathy to strong hatred). Recent studies demonstrate that not only emotional content but more complicated attitudes, such as openly expressed trust and distrust, affect patterns of opinion formation online. It is crucial not only to detect emotions via lexicon analysis but also map the public distrust via discovering the actors to whom distrust and negativity, as well as open trust, as directed. This allows for getting a bigger picture on how the emotional stance and emotion-based attitudes work in deliberative online milieus. The results of the study show that public sentiment reveals the distrust that has formed in the legal branch of government and the lack of confidence in the positive adoption of new laws that protect human rights. We reveal the inertia of government institutions in responding to public crises with cumulative emotional outbursts in user talk; the lack of official response to them gave rise to new emotional waves, no less disturbing to the public. At this background, though, a positive factor was the involvement of the Mazhilis of Parliament in public discussion of acute crisis events.