Engineered Outrage: How Platform Algorithms and Brands Exploit Moral Emotion for Engagement and Profit

The research paper aims to investigate how businesses exploit moral outrage to increase online engagement and generate commercial profit. It explores the psychological mechanisms that influence individual emotional responses and encourage interaction with controversial content, supported by research conducted by Berger and Milkman (2012), which discovered that evoking high arousal content was more likely to be shared online. Furthermore, the paper examines how businesses exploit these emotional responses as a marketing strategy to increase online engagement to potentially generate greater profit and consumer attention. Additionally, the paper explores how social media algorithms operate by prioritizing posts that generate high levels of engagement, yet it is significant to consider whether the concept of provoking negative emotion is a sustainable marketing strategy in the long term and ethical implications, specifically due to potential effects on consumer trust, brand reputation, and psychological well-being.