Social Media Behavior Research Articles

Impact of Social Media advertisement and influencers on Compulsive Buying Mediated by Materialism: The Moderating Role of Narcissism

Purpose – This paper aims to: (1) examine the effect of social media advertisement and influencers on Compulsive buying, (2) investigate the role of materialism as a mediator and narcissism as a moderator on the relationship between social media advertisement and influencers on Compulsive Buying. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on 300 responses. Data of the responses was used for statistical analysis and hypothesis testing. The study uses Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to test all hypotheses. Findings – The study revealed insignificant relationships between social media advertisements and influencers, and compulsive buying. The findings provided evidence that materialism mediates the relationship between social media advertisements and compulsive buying. In contrast, materialism does not mediate the relationship between social media influencers and compulsive buying. The study failed to reveal a moderating role of narcissism on the relationship between materialism and compulsive buying. Research implications – Recommendations for marketing managers, scholars, and policymakers have been given adopting the marketing orientation that puts the consumers’ satisfaction of needs and wants first, based on the researchers’ faith that compulsive buying is not a virtue for consumers by all means. Originality/value – This paper investigates one of the most pressing issues regarding consumer behaviour in social media, consumer traits, and compulsive buying.

The active-passive dichotomy refined: How types of photo sharing and photo viewing coincide with adolescents’ mental health and body image

From both scholarly and public debate there is no clear-cut answer to the question of how social media use (SMU) coincides with mental health and body image. To explain mixed results, we suggest that the active–passive dichotomy should be further specified by the content types one creates or is exposed to (i.e., authentic, edited, intimate, and positive). This study focused on (self-)photo sharing, given the popular focus on appearance on social media. We designed a cross-sectional study to examine how various types of visual active self-presentation, and exposure thereto, coincide with mental health and body image among 408 adolescents (M = 14.07, SD = 1.64; 48.8 % female). Results demonstrated that it is not about being either active or passive on social media, but rather the content types one creates, or sees, that are important to understand how SMU behaviors coincide with mental health and body image. Social media behaviors do not uniformly relate to all mental health and body image indicators. Altogether, the current study emphasized that we should move away from the active–passive frequency dichotomy and follow a more detailed communication-centered approach emphasizing the content types.

Social Media and Suicidal Behavior in Youth: Slippery Slope or Simply Overstressed?

Social Media and Suicidal Behavior in Youth: Slippery Slope or Simply Overstressed?

Attacking Social Media via Behavior Poisoning

Since social media such as Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter) have permeated various aspects of daily life, people have strong incentives to influence information dissemination on these platforms and differentiate their content from the fierce competition. Existing dissemination strategies typically employ marketing techniques, such as seeking publicity through renowned actors or targeted advertising placements. Despite their various forms, most simply spread information to strengthen user impressions without conducting formal analyses of specific influence enhancement. And coupled with high costs, most fall short of expectations. To this end, we ingeniously formulate the task of social media dissemination as poisoning attacks, which influence specified content’s dissemination among target users by intervening in some users’ social media behaviors (including retweeting, following, and profile modifying). Correspondingly, we propose a novel poisoning attack, Influence-based Social Media Attack (ISMA) to generate discrete poisoning behaviors, which is difficult to achieve with existing attacks. In ISMA, we first contribute an efficient influence evaluator to quantify the spread influence of poisoning behaviors. Based on the estimated influence, we then present an imperceptible hierarchical selector and a profile modification method ProMix to select influential behaviors to poison. Notably, our attack is driven by custom attack objectives, which allows one to flexibly design different optimization goals to change the information flow, which could solve the blindness of existing influence maximization methods. Besides, behaviors such as retweeting are gentle and simple to implement. These properties make our attack more cost-effective and practical. Extensive experiments on two large-scale real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of our method as it significantly outperforms baselines, and additionally, the proposed evaluator’s analysis of user influence provides new insights for influence maximization on social media.

Social media behaviors and body type ideals predict weight loss and food tracking behaviors among recreational climbers

Social media behaviors and body type ideals predict weight loss and food tracking behaviors among recreational climbers

Adolescents and negligent social media use

Digital technology has evolved very quickly in a very short space of time, to the point at which it is now a personal technology that manages the information and communications of users who access the different services offered over the Internet - users who are increasingly younger and at greater risk. Negligent technology use is understood as use linked to the management of social media accounts and mobile apps that, while not intentionally harmful, may nevertheless place the user and/or others at risk. The study of negligent digital technology use during adolescence is vital to preventing risk behaviours through education. These types of behaviours range from anxiety to cyberbullying, device addiction, problems with self-perceptions of one's own body and depression, among others. In this context, the aim of the present study is to analyse negligent digital technology use among adolescents on social media, and to explore the perceptions of this population group regarding the seriousness of these actions and the possible relationship between the two variables. Participants were 2529 students aged between 10 and 17 years from seven regions in southern Europe spread across three countries (Spain, Italy and Greece). The instrument used to collect the data was an ad hoc questionnaire designed to measure, among other things, actions indicating negligent use, excessive use of social medial and perceptions of the seriousness of such social media behaviour. The results reveal that the most negligent actions carried out by minors are: arranging to meet people they met on a social media site; displaying personal information in their account; and giving their passwords to people other than their parents and/or teachers. The results also indicate that adolescents engage in those negligent actions that they perceive to be less serious more assiduously, and carry out those they perceive to be more serious more sporadically. One of the principal findings was the increase in negligent use among older adolescents, which suggests that education in this field needs to begin much earlier, ideally before the age of 12 years.

User-Centric Modeling of Online Hate Through the Lens of Psycholinguistic Patterns and Behaviors in Social Media

User-Centric Modeling of Online Hate Through the Lens of Psycholinguistic Patterns and Behaviors in Social Media

#Thisis40: Body image among adult women who post selfies

Prior research suggests that using photo-based social media may increase body image concerns among young women. Consumption of versus contribution to social media may moderate this relationship, and the type of content contributed (e.g., self-images or “selfies”) may further account for variations. A critical limitation of the extant scholarship is a lack of attention to understudied groups, such as older women. Using a cross-sectional sample of 238 midlife women (Mage = 50.92), this study investigated the relationship between social media behavior, perceived effects of social media use, and body image indices. Results indicated that our sample of midlife women contributed mainly photos of their current setting and family, contrasting with prior work among younger women. Results suggested that the type of content contributed may be more pertinent to body image than social media behavior generally, and highlighted complex relationships. Posting photos broadly was associated only with lower drive for youthfulness. However, selfie posting specifically was associated with greater facial satisfaction as well as greater positive (e.g., connectedness) and negative (e.g., appearance concerns) perceived effects of social media, but not drive for youthfulness. Results suggest that the type of content contributed to social media may be a particularly important factor for body image, and highlight complex relationships potentially influenced by unmeasured factors such as social media use motivations. Together, these findings contribute to a fuller understanding of social media and body image and call for further theoretically-driven work in this area to guide effective prevention resources.

Investigation of consumer behavior in social media in the handball

Social media exploded onto the scene roughly two decades ago, revolutionising the way we think about marketing communication and the way we think about information delivery. It has opened doors that were unprecedented. It can also be profitable for sports companies if they can deliver effective marketing communications to their existing and potential customers. To be effective in this environment, it is important to analyse consumer behaviour to identify the real needs of users and to meet those needs. We used an online questionnaire to assess the consumer needs of our respondents and the social media market from a marketing perspective. We conducted a handball specific research, excluding individuals who do not follow handball at any level from the study sample. We also looked at age differences, and device usage. Given our results, it can be stated that thorough market research is important for effective marketing communication by a handball club on different social media platforms.

Japanese National Basketball Association Fans and Social Media Acceptance: Exploring the Role of Brand Respect

This study explores the factors influencing satellite sport fans’ social media engagement, focusing on Japanese National Basketball Association (NBA) fans. Using the technology acceptance model and Brand Respect Scale, we analyzed the effects of perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and perceived trustworthiness on social media stickiness and investigated the mediating roles of brand trust, brand performance, brand acceptance, and brand reputation. A partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis of data from 813 Japanese NBA fans revealed that perceived usefulness and enjoyment significantly affected social media stickiness, while perceived trustworthiness indirectly influenced this stickiness through brand trust and acceptance. The study advances the theoretical understanding of social media behavior among satellite sport fans and provides practical implications for optimizing social media strategies to enhance fan engagement. Our findings offer valuable insights for sport teams and organizations seeking to strengthen their connection with geographically distant fans. In addition, this research paves the way for future studies to encompass diverse age groups, sports, and regions to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing satellite sport fans’ social media engagement.

To disclose or to protect? Predicting social media users’ behavioral intention toward privacy

PurposeIn the paradox of personalized services and privacy risks, what factors influence users’ decisions is considered an interesting issue worth exploring. The current study aims to empirically explore privacy behavior of social media users by developing a theoretical model based on privacy calculus theory.Design/methodology/approachPrivacy risks, conceptualized as natural risks and integrated risks, were proposed to affect the intention of privacy disclosure and protection. The model was validated through a hybrid approach of structural equation modeling (SEM)-artificial neural network (ANN) to analyze the data collected from 527 effective responses.FindingsThe results from the SEM analysis indicated that social interaction and perceived enjoyment were strong determinants of perceived benefits, which in turn played a dominant role in the intention to disclose the privacy in social media. Similarly, trust and privacy invasion experience were significantly related to perceived risks that had the most considerable effect on users’ privacy protection intention. And the following ANN models revealed consistent relationships and rankings with the SEM results.Originality/valueThis study broadened the application perspective of privacy calculus theory to identify both linear and non-linear effects of privacy risks and privacy benefits on users’ intention to disclose or protect their privacy by using a state-of-the-art methodological approach combining SEM and ANN.

Party competition on social media: Evidence from politicians' tweets

AbstractA blooming research agenda has begun examining the influence of party competition dynamics on politician social media behaviour. Most studies focus on the US context, generally finding little evidence that party competition dynamics influence which policy issues politicians attend to on these platforms. Instead, I turn to the Danish context and show how party competition dynamics exert a substantial influence on politicians' attention to issues in their tweets. First, I map the level of politician issue attention on Twitter across several years outside election campaigns. Second, I show that party issue ownership and the status of a party as a government or opposition party strongly influence politicians' attention to issues on the platform. Third, I provide novel insights into how the interplay between party issue ownership and internal party organisation influences politician issue attention on Twitter. The findings indicate that the tweets posted by politicians are an integral aspect of contemporary party competition.

Social media use among adolescents with acne: A cross-sectional survey study.

Social media is increasingly used by patients for the management of skin conditions like acne, despite the potential risk for low-quality information. This study surveyed 45 participants between the ages of 12 and 17 years to investigate factors that could be associated with social media use among adolescents with acne. The likelihood of social media use was not significantly increased by clinical severity of acne, more severe physical barriers (greater than or equal to 20 miles to the dermatology clinic), more severe temporal barriers (waiting 12 or more weeks for a first dermatology appointment), or worsened quality of life (assessed via the Skindex-Teen score). This study increases understanding of adolescents' social media behaviors, particularly as a way to seek information for skin conditions like acne.

Cyberbullying among secondary school students: Analyzing prediction and relationship with background, social status, and ICT use

This study explored the predictions of and relationships between background, social status, and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in cyberbullying among 2430 secondary school students from schools affiliated with Thailand's Office of the Basic Education Commission. The stratified sampling method was used along with the Cyberbullying Questionnaire, Sociometric Status Questionnaire, Perceived Popularity Questionnaire, and ICT Use Questionnaire and data were collected through the CU Smart Sociometry web application and Google Forms. Data analysis was conducted to determine 1) demographic data using descriptive statistics; 2) correlation analysis of students' backgrounds, sociometric status, and ICT use against cyberbullying using the chi-square test; and 3) variables that predict cyberbullying among secondary school students using multinomial logistic regression. Results showed a link between cyberbullying and secondary school students' backgrounds, social status, and ICT use. Students with different backgrounds (sex and academic performance), social statuses (social preference and perceived popularity), and ICT use partook in different cyberbullying roles. Independent variables of sex, academic performance, social preference, perceived popularity, and ICT use all predicted cyberbullying by 33.3 % with statistical significance. Male students were noted to have a higher likelihood of being cyberbullies than female students, whereas female students were more likely to be cybervictims and bystanders. Moreover, students with low academic performance were more likely to be cyberbullies and cybervictims than high-performing students, with rejected students having the highest likelihood of being cyberbullies. Interestingly, the higher a student's popularity, the higher was their likelihood of being cyberbullies. Finally, cyberbullies had the highest average daily internet use, and students who had never had their guardians monitor their internet usage were more likely to be cyberbullies; students with moderate and good social media behavior were mostly bystanders.

Unraveling the impact of self-esteem on the utilization of Instagram filters: the mediating role of fear of negative evaluation.

The popularity of social media platforms, such as Instagram, has given rise to a surge in photo editing and filtering practices among users. Understanding the underlying psychological factors that drive individuals to employ filters is crucial in comprehending the impact of such behavior on self-perception and online interactions. This study aims to investigate the influence of self-esteem on the importance attributed to the use of Instagram filters, with a particular focus on the mediating role played by the fear of negative evaluation. A sample of participants (N = 2,657) from diverse demographic backgrounds has been recruited to complete a series of questionnaires measuring self-esteem, fear of negative evaluation, and Instagram filter usage patterns. Mediation analysis has been employed to assess the extent to which the fear of negative evaluation mediates the relationship between self-esteem and filter usage importance. In line with the hypotheses, the results revealed that participants self-esteem negatively predicted fear of negative evaluation, which in turn had a positive effect on use of filters. Furthermore, fear of negative evaluation fully mediated the relationship between self-esteem and use of filters. Overall, the implications of this research extend to both theoretical and practical domains. The findings can contribute to the existing literature on self-esteem, social media behavior, and body image by shedding light on the factors influencing digital self-presentation.

A Study of Adolescents' Behavioral Responses to Public Events and Guidance Trends in Social Media Platforms

With the popularization and development of social media, adolescence has become an important platform for adolescents to express their views, exchange information and participate in society. The purpose of this paper is to explore in depth adolescents' behavioral responses to public events on social media and their guiding trends and to analyze adolescents' motivations for using social media, the manifestation of public events on social media, the application of social movement theories in social media research, and the modern transformation of public sphere theories. Using a mixed-methods design that combines quantitative and qualitative data analysis, this study provides a comprehensive picture of adolescents' behavioral patterns, motivations for participation, and social impact on social media, as well as their roles and challenges in public discourse. The study revealed that adolescents respond to a variety of types of public events, including posting, commenting, sharing, and engaging in hashtags. Adolescents' interactive behaviors on social media information diffusion, opinion formation, and social mobilization are important social impacts of adolescents' social media behaviors. They accelerate the spread of information through sharing and retweeting, participate in the discussion of public issues and have a direct impact on the formation of public opinion. In addition, social media has become an effective tool for mobilizing social action, and adolescents promote practical action and participation in public issues by interacting with and organizing online activities. This study proposes a series of coping strategies, including improving users' media literacy and information discernment, social media platforms to strengthen the regulation and auditing of information dissemination, and the government and the community to strengthen the regulation and governance of the social media field. This study provides new perspectives for understanding adolescents' social participation in the digital age, showing how social media, as a new public sphere, affects public discourse, social mobilization, and the formation of civic identity. The findings not only provide rich empirical material for sociological theories but also provide valuable insights for promoting social public participation, improving information quality, and advancing social progress. Future research can further explore the impact of social media on adolescents' social participation in different cultural and social contexts, as well as how to optimize the efficacy of social media as a platform for public discourse and social mobilization through educational and policy interventions.

An exploratory study of anti-Black racism in social media behavior intentions: Effects of political orientation and motivation to control prejudice.

An exploratory study of anti-Black racism in social media behavior intentions: Effects of political orientation and motivation to control prejudice.

From empathetic hearts to digital hands: A study of compassion and donation behavior in social media advertising

In an era of global humanitarian challenges, an understanding of compassion and supportive behaviors is paramount. This study conducted an online experiment involving social media users within the United States, examining the interplay between compassion, empathetic concern, perceived impact, anticipated affect, and intentions to donate time and money. Structural equation modeling revealed that compassion influenced empathetic concern, perceived impact, and anticipated affect. Specifically, empathetic concern influenced intentions to donate time and money, while perceived impact primarily influenced monetary donations. Moreover, place attachment moderated these relationships, indicating that emotional bonds to a specific place can play a crucial role in shaping potential donors’ responses to compassion-based appeals. Our findings contribute to an understanding of how place attachment and compassion intersect in the digital age, informing innovative strategies for philanthropic campaigns on social media platforms.

The influence of social media on public attitudes and behaviors towards cosmetic dermatologic procedures and skin care practices: A study in Saudi Arabia.

Social media has fostered a landscape where trends, ideals, and beauty standards have significantly proliferated. Images of flawless skin, sculpted features, and curated aesthetics inundate user feeds, potentially shaping their self-perceptions and aspirations. The rise of influencers, dermatologist social media engagement, and beauty campaigns sharing skincare routines and product recommendations wield substantial influence over individual appearance-related decisions. The main aim of this study is to determine the pattern of behavior in using social media to seek dermatological procedures and skin care routine. We conducted a nationwide, online cross-sectional study targeting the general Saudi population. Our survey aimed to understand participant social media behaviors and gather insights into skincare products, cosmetic procedures, and makeup habits. Gender-related differences emerged in seeking skincare advice. Females preferred dermatologists on social media (p < 0.001) and beauty influencers (p < 0.001), whereas men leaned towards pharmacists (p < 0.001). Women displayed stronger engagement with dermatologist social media reputation regarding non-cosmetic concerns (p < 0.001), education (p < 0.001), and social media impact on cosmetic decisions (p = 0.001). They frequently sought dermatologists on social media before appointments (p = 0.001), whereas men emphasized dermatologists' fame (p = 0.024). Common cosmetic barriers included high costs (62.5%), complications (40.3%), and trust issues (40.2%). Women underwent various cosmetic procedures (p < 0.05), influenced by social media in their decisions and skincare routines. Our study reveals significant gender-based disparities in seeking skincare advice. Women rely on social media, clinics, friends, and beauty influencers, whereas men prefer pharmacists. Additionally, women depend on dermatologists' social media reputation and conduct thorough pre-appointment research. Their heightened social media engagement links to skincare practices and influences cosmetic procedure considerations based on age and usage frequency.

"What are you doing, TikTok?" : How Marginalized Social Media Users Perceive, Theorize, and "Prove" Shadowbanning

Shadowbanning is a unique content moderation strategy receiving recent media attention for the ways it impacts marginalized social media users and communities. Social media companies often deny this content moderation practice despite user experiences online. In this paper, we use qualitative surveys and interviews to understand how marginalized social media users make sense of shadowbanning, develop folk theories about shadowbanning, and attempt to prove its occurrence. We find that marginalized social media users collaboratively develop and test algorithmic folk theories to make sense of their unclear experiences with shadowbanning. Participants reported direct consequences of shadowbanning, including frustration, decreased engagement, the inability to post specific content, and potential financial implications. They reported holding negative perceptions of platforms where they experienced shadowbanning, sometimes attributing their shadowbans to platforms' deliberate suppression of marginalized users' content. Some marginalized social media users acted on their theories by adapting their social media behavior to avoid potential shadowbans. We contributecollaborative algorithm investigation : a new concept describing social media users' strategies of collaboratively developing and testing algorithmic folk theories. Finally, we present design and policy recommendations for addressing shadowbanning and its potential harms.