Media Format Matters: User Engagement with Audio, Text and Video Tweets

Abstract

ABSTRACT A dataset of shortform audio-only tweets with video and text controls is used to analyze whether a tweet’s media format and topic influence user engagement with the tweet. Audio tweets were more engaging than text or video tweets by the same users, linking engagement to media format. Highly engaging audio tweets may have had different topics than highly engaging text or video tweets and different content characteristics than low engaging audio tweets. This suggests audio-based social media networks lead to higher user engagement than text and identifies content categories that users can profitably focus on to attract and engage followers.