Abstract
Moving on from literature that focuses on how consumers use social media and the benefits of organizations utilizing platforms for health and risk communication, this study explores how specific characteristics of tweets affect the way in which they are perceived. An online survey with 251 participants with self-reported food hypersensitivity (FH) took part in an online experiment to consider the impact of tweet characteristics on perceptions of source credibility, message credibility, persuasiveness, and intention to act upon the presented information. Positioning the research hypotheses within the framework of the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Uses and Gratifications Theory, the study explored motivations for using social media and tested the impact of the affordances of Twitter—(1) the inclusion of links and (2) the number of social validation indicators (likes and retweets). Having links accompanying tweets significantly increased ratings of the tweets’ message credibility, as well as persuasiveness of their content. Socially validated tweets had no effect on these same variables. Parents of FH children were found to utilize social media for social reasons more than hypersensitive adults; concern level surrounding a reaction did not appear to alter the level of use. Links were considered valuable in obtaining social media users to attend to useful or essential food health and risk information. Future research in this area can usefully consider the nature and the effects of social validation in relation to other social media platforms and with other groups.
Highlights
As the structure and function of online media has developed to enable more active citizen involvement, understanding why we use and respond to social media is of increasing interest to scholars exploring online behavior [1]
We focus on Twitter as a widely used and researched social media platform that [6] in a context where social media is increasingly used by risk communicators around food issues [7]
Having noted the increasing ubiquity of social media for communicating food risk and the particular salience of this for those that are seeking to avoid allergens, we introduce two theoretical frameworks that are used to [1] situate our consideration of how social media is used by FH individuals (UGT) and [2] how the affordances of Twitter might shape responses to information encountered
Summary
As the structure and function of online media has developed to enable more active citizen involvement, understanding why we use and respond to social media is of increasing interest to scholars exploring online behavior [1]. FH Consumers and Twitter the credibility and persuasiveness of social media information and intentions to act upon it are affected by structural elements of the social media communication. We focus on Twitter as a widely used and researched social media platform that [6] in a context where social media is increasingly used by risk communicators around food issues [7]. We address this with a group that has particular reason to consider the veracity and provenance of information about food—food-hypersensitive (FH) consumers that are seeking to avoid food that contains particular allergens. Twitter is a useful tool for this community for gathering or sharing important and useful information as well as seeking social support [8]
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