Bratislava, May 19, 2024 – After the assassination of the prime minister, the level of anger in comments on social networks in online discussions was 52.75% higher than the monthly average. Anxiety also increased by 49.6%. Conversely, positivity fell by 30.90% compared to the average of the observed period. Expressions of sadness decreased by 32.14% and also expressions of kindness decreased by 56.49%. This is reported by the technological startup elv.ai, which focuses on moderating the online space.

The company analyzed more than 600,000 comments from more than 60 profiles of media and public institutions in Slovakia. Approximately 30,000 of these were comments that were posted under posts about the assassination of the prime minister. The remaining comments were collected between 01.05. until 17.05.

„We have been monitoring how social events influence online discourse for a long time. According to our measurements, increased levels of anger, anxiety and uncertainty are often associated with political events. Despite this, we see a dramatic increase in negative emotions that have shaken our online space,” says CEO of elv.ai, Jakub Šuster.

Fighting hateful comments isn’t just about removing them, it’s about understanding them

„The fight against hateful comments is not just about removing them. We need to try to understand what people feel and how the information affects them. We have therefore introduced enhanced monitoring of human emotions into our services to help us understand this. We also analyzed all comments for the monitored period with this technology. Thanks to this technology, we will also be able to better identify trends in social discourse in the future and potentially avoid dangerous situations in online discussions,,” explains Šuster.

Comparison of emotions with the terrorist attack in Prague

With the help of AI, elv.ai can identify emotions such as anger, happiness, anxiety, sadness, kindness, uncertainty from comments. Users’ emotions can be compared over time to identify trends in discussions. To analyze society’s response to tragic events, the shooting at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University on December 21, 2023, was selected as a case study.

“If we compare the assassination of the Slovak prime minister with the terrorist attack on the Prague university last December, we see different reactions in the comments. After the shooting in Prague, we observed a significant increase in sadness and kindness in the comments, while in the case of the shooting of Robert Fico, these expressions decreased compared to the average,” adds Šuster.

How does emotion analysis technology work?

We collaborated with CulturePulse on the emotion analysis feature. CulturePulse technology focuses on more than 90 dimensions of human psychology and culture, including morality, conflict and social issues.

“Based on my experience monitoring social conflicts, we should not assume that increased anger necessarily signals more violence. A warning sign of violence is usually when interactions are dominated by anxiety. People get angry as a reaction to something in the past, they don’t get angry about something that hasn’t happened yet. However, people act when they are worried and believe that something bad may happen in the future,“

The basis of their AI model focuses not only on traditional machine learning processes, but also on shared evolutionary patterns that occur in different cultures. The algorithm uses over 30 years of clinically proven cognitive science to decode the beliefs that influence people’s behavior.