Astrology as emotional discourse in digital public space: A sentiment analysis of social media conversations

Astrology has become a visible and normalized element of contemporary digital public spaces, where it functions less as a system of belief and more as a medium for emotional expression, identity narration, and everyday sense-making. This study conceptualizes astrology-related communication not as an epistemic claim requiring validation, but as a form of emotional discourse embedded in platformed public life. Drawing on Affective Publics theory and Uses and Gratifications, the study examines how astrology circulates emotionally within digital environments and how users engage with such content at both collective and individual levels. Using a large-scale computational content analysis, the study analyzes 112,800 English-language astrology-related posts collected from the X platform (formerly Twitter). Sentiment classification was conducted using a transformer-based language model fine-tuned for social media text, complemented by lexicon-based measures of subjectivity and evaluative polarity. The findings reveal that astrology-related discourse is dominated by neutral and positive sentiment, with negative sentiment representing a relatively small proportion of overall communication. Positive expressions exhibit higher levels of subjectivity and evaluative intensity, indicating strong personal engagement, while negative expressions tend to be more restrained and less personally invested. Moreover, emotionally defensive patterns are rare, indicating that astrology functions as a low-conflict communicative space largely insulated from polarized legitimacy struggles. The study contributes to research on digital culture and emotion by showing how emotionally resonant yet low-stakes discourse sustains participation and affective alignment without polarization, positioning astrology as a salient case of affective publicness in digital media.