Searching for traces of Kama Muta Examining viewers' responses to online videos

The past decades have seen a rise in scholarly interest in the concept of eudaimonic entertainment experiences, resulting in multiple conceptualizations of the term. Recently, one such experience is Kama Muta (“moved by love”), which is typically measured through self-reports. However, it remains unclear to what extent Kama Muta is reflected in individuals’ spontaneous reactions to media content. This study examines viewers’ spontaneous responses to online videos (e.g., likes, comments) and compares these to their self-reported experiences of Kama Muta. Results show that viewers’ experiences of Kama Muta are mostly unrelated to the number of reactions that they post. Furthermore, topic modeling shows that Kama Muta is reflected in viewers’ comments to a limited extent. We conclude that making computational methods sufficiently efficient to detect abstract constructs such as Kama Muta in short texts requires additional methodological advancements.