"The Emotional Undertone: How Emotions Embedded in Social Media Posts and Profiles Influence User Engagement"

Department INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT (ISOM)

Speaker : Reza ALIBAKHSHI, PhD candidate at HEC

Abstract:

With the emergence of social media (SM) profiles—the dedicated homepage of individuals and firms on SM platforms—users are now able to follow SM profiles over time. This enables “followers” to observe and track the evolution of the SM content posted on the specific profiles they follow. In such a scenario, followers’ engagement with an SM post on a particular SM profile might be influenced by (1) the emotions embedded within the specific SM post, and (2) the underlying emotional trajectory of the SM profile shaped through its prior SM posts. Building on Emotion Dynamics and Affect Theory of Social Exchange, we theorize an emotion-centric model for SM posts and profiles to assess the role of these two mechanisms in propelling user engagement. Accordingly, we examine the relative salience of ‘peak emotional expression’ through an SM post versus the emotional ‘variability’ and ‘inertia’ of its SM profile in driving the ‘magnitude’ and ‘duration’ of follower engagement. Our results obtained from a rigorous analysis of 57,000 posts over a period of 8 years, shows that peak emotional expression embedded in SM posts is positively associated with the magnitude and duration of follower engagement. In addition, we find that variability of emotions embedded in the SM posts on an SM profile fosters follower engagement through increased trust and attention. However, extreme emotional variability decreases follower engagement due to an increased perception of instability. We further find that high emotional inertia in SM profiles is ideal for increasing the duration of follower engagement through increased emotional predictability, but detrimental to the magnitude of follower engagement. We discuss the implications emerging from our study for sustained user engagement with SM profiles.