Communicating philanthropy in the digital age: Sentimental engagement

Digital platforms are becoming central to contemporary philanthropic communication, particularly among younger, digitally native audiences who engage with prosocial content in ways that differ markedly from traditional donors. This fast transition leaves open questions about how message design and presentation might shape audience perceptions and sentimental engagement in digital philanthropy communications. While framing theory predicts that structural message cues should trigger differentiated cognitive and emotional appraisals, little is known about whether such mechanisms operate in philanthropic digital media. This study investigates how audiences emotionally respond to two structural framing types inBeast Philanthropy videos (monetary-outcome versus non-monetary-outcome communication) by analyzing comments made in specific time intervals since publication for fourteen YouTube videos sampled from 2021 to 2024. Using a fine-tuned transformer, we map emotional landscapes and temporal dynamics across framing conditions. Across all videos and timepoints, reactions were overwhelmingly positive and dominated by admiration, love, gratitude, and care. Contrary to classical framing expectations, monetary cues did not produce clearly distinct emotional profiles: both framing types elicited a hybrid of scale-appraisal and community-oriented emotions, with admiration emerging as the most persistent signal. Emotional polarity remained consistently high, with only a modest dip as broader audience centered the discourse several days post-release. These findings suggest that creator identity, parasocial relationships, and channel-level philanthropic norms may override title-level framing effects in digital stunt philanthropy. For practitioners this indicates that emphasizing either monetary outcomes or narrative-driven impact may both effectively foster positive emotional engagement, guiding strategies for communicating campaign success and sustaining donor support.