Social Media Reactions Research Articles

The Cost of Dying Exhibition: public, professional and political reactions to a visual exhibition depicting experiences of poverty at the end of life

Public health approaches to palliative care are internationally endorsed for their potential to improve the social determinants of dying such as energy costs, transport and housing. Enhancing public understanding of...

Pathos in Natural Language Argumentation: Emotional Appeals and Reactions

In this paper, we present a model of pathos, delineate its operationalisation, and demonstrate its utility through an analysis of natural language argumentation. We understand pathos as an interactional persuasive process in which speakers are performing pathos appeals and the audience experiences emotional reactions. We analyse two strategies of such appeals in pre-election debates: pathotic Argument Schemes based on the taxonomy proposed by Walton et al. (Argumentation schemes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008), and emotion-eliciting language based on psychological lexicons of emotive words (Wierzba in Behav Res Methods 54:2146–2161, 2021). In order to match the appeals with possible reactions, we collect real-time social media reactions to the debates and apply sentiment analysis (Alswaidan and Menai in Knowl Inf Syst 62:2937–2987, 2020) method to observe emotion expressed in language. The results point to the importance of pathos analysis in modern discourse: speakers in political debates refer to emotions in most of their arguments, and the audience in social media reacts to those appeals using emotion-expressing language. Our results show that pathos is a common strategy in natural language argumentation which can be analysed with the support of computational methods.

Hypocrites! Social Media Reactions and Stakeholder Backlash to Conflicting CSR Information

AbstractAt a time when firms signal their commitment to CSR through online communication, news sources may convey conflicting information, causing stakeholders to perceive firm hypocrisy. Here, we test the effects of conflicting CSR information that conveys inconsistent outcomes (results-based hypocrisy) and ulterior motives (motive-based hypocrisy) on hypocrisy perceptions expressed in social media posts, which we conceptualize as countersignals that reach a broad audience of stakeholders. Across six studies, we find that (1) conflicting CSR information from internal (firm) and external (news) sources elicits hypocrisy perceptions regardless of whether the CSR information reflects inconsistencies in results or motives, (2) individuals respond to conflicting CSR information with countersignals accusing firms of hypocrisy expressed in social media posts, (3) hypocrisy perceptions are linked to other damaging stakeholder consequences, including behavior (divestment, boycotting, lower employment interest), affect (moral outrage), and cognition (moral condemnation), and (4) firms with higher credibility are more likely to experience adverse effects of conflicting CSR information. These findings advance theory regarding the effects of conflicting CSR information as it relates to the role of credibility and different forms of hypocrisy. Importantly, damaging social media posts and stakeholder backlash can arise from hypocrisy perceptions associated with inconsistent CSR results as well as inconsistent motives, and strong firm credibility only makes a firm more vulnerable to this backlash.

Analyzing social media reactions to the FTX crisis: Unraveling the spillover effect on crypto markets

AbstractIn this study, we analyzed social media conversations during the unfolding of the FTX crisis, the biggest cryptocurrency scandal in United States history. Drawing on the accessibility‐diagnosticity framework, we examined the negative spillover effect of the crisis using a natural language processing approach. We specifically assessed whether there was a negative spillover from FTX to other crypto entities with different levels of diagnostic attribute similarity. We collected a large corpus of Twitter conversations related to the FTX collapse in 2022 and used the association rule analysis to determine the association between FTX and other crypto entities. Our analysis revealed that the number of tweets mentioning FTX and other crypto entities changed in line with a series of real‐world events during the FTX crisis. The negative spillover of the FTX crisis occurred primarily during the first 10 days as the FTX scandal unfolded. The results indicated that the FTX crisis spilled over to highly accessible and diagnostic crypto entities, such as Binance, Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency industry in general. On the other hand, less accessible and less diagnostic crypto entities/currencies like Ethereum and Coinbase did not experience negative spillover from the scandal.

Social Media Marketing at Islamic Higher Education: Reactions, Posts, and Brand Post Contents

Social media have used by Higher Education Institution (HEI) for marketing communication and promotion purpose. Thus, some studies show that social media as a marketing tool in universities has not been widely practiced in predominantly Muslim countries. This paper aims to show Islamic universities in Muslim countries in various regions use social media as marketing tools, with focus on platforms utilization, engagement with users, and content analysis based on brand post categories. The data collected from the number of social media followers, reactions, and posts from top 12 Islamic universities in Muslim countries based on rank released by UniRank in 2021 and analyse with the software FanpageKarma. The time frame (2021) was chosen because the pandemic Covid-19 at that time has risen the social media usage by users. This papers also offers information about content analysis for social media posts on Instagram and Facebook, and describe it based on the experience brand posts, brand community, and brand resonance.

Exploring the use of emotional sentiment to understanding market response to unexpected corporate pivots

This article studies the influence of social media sentiment on stock prices, focusing on significant shifts by Eastman Kodak. Utilising a unique emotion-based lexicon, the research indicates that social media sentiment immediately reflects stock market responses to major corporate changes. The sentiment techniques used align with the timeline of Kodak’s announcements. Excitement was found to have the greatest impact on Kodak’s prices. However, emotions like anxiety, panic, and revulsion indicated a notable negative social media reaction. The study cautions against the potential volatility in the market when many investors react to the same dubious information. These findings emphasise the significance of adhering to legal and regulatory standards in corporate governance and advocate for transparency and accountability in policy-making for a more reliable financial system.

Graduation Resources in News Discourse: Calls for the British Museum to Return Chinese Cultural Artefacts

Using a discourse approach, this study examines online news and opinion pieces about calls for the British Museum to return Chinese artefacts. We examine the interpersonal meanings conveyed by the linguistic choices made in these texts. This study uses the appraisal system in the systemic functional linguistic (SFL) framework to examine how news discourse addresses the issue and constructs interpersonal meanings. Graduation resources, as a subcategory of appraisal system, can underpin the degree of meanings and perspectives, allowing writers to adjust the gradability of attitudinal meanings conveyed to readers. This research first examines how the writer’s voice is embedded in graduation resources, and later, how these graduation resources are used in online news articles calling for the return of the artefacts. This study also examines how online newspapers covered a short film by vloggers called “Escape from the British Museum”, which sparked massive social media reactions, offering new perspectives on how social media and traditional news organisations interact to construct meanings through language. The results show that quantification and fulfilment (completion) resources are the two most common subcategories of graduation resources. The findings shed light on the language strategies used in news and social media discourse, as well as the interpersonal meanings behind such requests for cultural heritage repatriation.

Examining media's coverage of COVID-19 vaccines and social media sentiments on vaccine manufacturers' stock prices.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a widespread public health and financial crisis. The rapid vaccine development generated extensive discussions in both mainstream and social media, sparking optimism in the global financial markets. This study aims to explore the key themes from mainstream media's coverage of COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook and examine how public interactions and responses on Facebook to mainstream media's posts are associated with daily stock prices and trade volume of major vaccine manufacturers. We obtained mainstream media's coverage of COVID-19 vaccines and major vaccine manufacturers on Facebook from CrowdTangle, a public insights tool owned and operated by Facebook, as well as the corresponding trade volume and daily closing prices from January 2020 to December 2021. Structural topic modelling was used to analyze social media posts while regression analysis was conducted to determine the impact of Facebook reactions on stock prices and trade volume. 10 diverse topics ranging from vaccine trials and their politicization (note: check that we use American spelling throughout), to stock market discussions were found to evolve over the pandemic. Although Facebook reactions were not consistently associated with vaccine manufacturers' stock prices, 'Haha' and 'Angry' reactions showed the strongest association with stock price fluctuations. In comparison, social media reactions had little observable impact on trading volume. Topics generated reflect both actual events during vaccine development as well as its political and economic impact. The topics generated in this study reflect both the actual events surrounding vaccine development and its broader political and economic impact. While we anticipated a stronger correlation, our findings suggest a limited relationship between emotional reactions on Facebook and vaccine manufacturers' stock prices and trading volume. We also discussed potential technical enhancements for future studies, including the integration of large language models.

Challenges in the spread of feminism on social media: A case study on Barbie’s dissemination and promotion on Rotten Tomatoes

This study investigates the challenges of disseminating feminist messages on social media, focusing on the film Barbie as an example. Feminism has gained significant academic attention, intersecting with various social, political, and economic domains. The study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methods to conduct a comprehensive analysis of social media reactions and feedback horn platforms such as Twitter. Facebook, and Instagram. The findings reveal a complex landscape where Barbie is both praised for its progressive portrayal of female empowerment and criticized for superficial engagement with deeper feminist issues. Utilizing word clouds to identify dominant themes, the research provides a detailed understanding of public perceptions. The study highlights the evolving nature of feminist discourse in the digital age and underscores the critical role of media in shaping public perceptions of gender equality.

Corporate Reputation and Crisis Management in Social Media: The Patiswiss Case Study

The present study has taken the case analysis of Patiswiss, a leading brand that was faced a major crisis, to understand the influence of social media on corporate reputation and crisis management. More precisely, this research work is going to delve into how public perception and the overall reputation were affected during the crisis concerning social media platforms. The study adopts a qualitative approach, analyzing social media reactions, media coverage, and the company’s crisis response strategies. Key findings reveal that Patiswiss’s initial response was inadequate, leading to a rapid spread of negative sentiment across social media, which further exacerbated the crisis. This analysis brings out the critical aspects of timely and transparent communication in crises management and brand reputation retention within a digital world. Comparisons to similar cases within other companies provide additional insights into effective crisis management strategies. The research deepens the knowledge of the dynamic interplay among social media and corporate crisis management, providing valuable lessons on how businesses should maintain reputation in light of the challenges brought to them by the digital environment.

Online Social Media Reactions to the Overturn of Roe v. Wade: Public Health Implications and Policy Insights

Online Social Media Reactions to the Overturn of Roe v. Wade: Public Health Implications and Policy Insights

Communication aimed at engendering trustworthiness: An analysis of CSR messages on Twitter

AbstractA growing body of research is exploring corporate communication in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on social media (SM). Nonetheless, while these studies have shown that SM communication may be an effective tool for reaching and engaging various stakeholders, how the design of corporate CSR communication engenders trustworthiness has yet to be examined. To address this gap, we suggest that SM communication may include important signals related to trust; thus, we investigate whether companies use sources of trustworthiness (reputation, performance, and appearance) while communicating with stakeholders and the response of the latter to such communication. Our empirical analysis is based on a database containing over 66,000 CSR‐related messages from eight companies focusing on communication extracted from Twitter. These data are coded according to three sources of trustworthiness and two dimensions of CSR communication (social and environmental). Our findings indicate that all three attributes of trustworthiness are used by companies in their CSR social media communication. We also document how corporate efforts to use CSR communication that engenders trustworthiness influence stakeholder engagement. Our study therefore contributes to the literature on trust in relation to CSR by illustrating the importance of signaling that includes different sources of trustworthiness or their combination in corporate communication. By analyzing how the various trust attributes included in CSR communication affect SM reactions, we also identify which attributes lead to greater stakeholder engagement overall, particularly for the two analyzed dimensions of CSR communication.

What would a Swedish mine be without a party? On metals, minerals, and love during the “green” transition: Climate propaganda in The Swedish Mine advertising campaign

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the growing field of critical studies about the visual politics of the green transition by highlighting the role of communication and the creative industries in promoting “green” ideologies. “The Swedish Mine” advocacy advertising campaign, launched in 2021, is presented as a case study to illustrate how lifestyle advertising genres are used to leverage the emotional engagement of progressive, mining-sceptical urban audiences to increase the social acceptance of intensified mining despite increasing climate awareness. Using visual culture studies, feminist, and critical race theory approaches to analyse the campaign materials, I explore how the campaign aestheticises “green” industrial progress by tokenising multiculturalism, fetishising consumption, and romancing national identity. As a counterpoint, I examine how social media reactions and activist responses illustrate tensions between mining acceptance and mining resistance in Swedish society. I conclude by positioning the campaign rhetoric in various forms of climate propaganda and highlighting the limits of the engineering of public consent for a “green” transition when such attempts use emotions as sites of “cognitive extraction” to cover technological and capitalist imperatives that ultimately promote Sweden as a leading mining nation.

Analysis of Government Policy Sentiment Regarding Vacation during the COVID-19 Pandemic Using the Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers (BERT)

To address the COVID-19 situation in Indonesia, the Indonesian government has adopted a number of policies. One of them is a vacation-related policy. Government measures with regard to this vacation policy have produced a wide range of viewpoints in society, which have been extensively shared on social media, including YouTube. However, there has not been any computerized system developed to date that can assess people’s social media reactions. Therefore, this paper provides a sentiment analysis application to this government policy by employing a bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BERT) approach. The study method began with data collecting, data labeling, data preprocessing, BERT model training, and model evaluation. This study created a new dataset for this topic. The data were collected from the comments section of YouTube, and were categorized into three categories: positive, neutral, and negative. This research yielded an F-score of 84.33%. Another contribution from this study regards the methodology for processing sentiment analysis in Indonesian. In addition, the model was created as an application using the Python programming language and the Flask framework. The government can learn the extent to which the public accepts the policies that have been implemented by utilizing this research.

Theorizing Reactive Democracy

The diffusion of social media has profoundly transformed the nature and form of the contemporary public sphere, facilitating the rise of new political tactics and movements. In this article, I develop a theory of the social media public sphere as a “plebeian public sphere” whose functioning is markedly different from the traditional public sphere, described by Jürgen Habermas. Differently from Habermas’ critical-rational publics, this social media public sphere is dominated by online crowds that come together in virtual gatherings made visible by a variety of social media reactions and metrics that measure their presence. It can be best described as a “reactive democracy,” a plebiscitary form of democracy in which reactions are understood as an implicit vote indicating the mood of public opinion on a variety of issues.

‘Are Di would of loved it’: reanimating Princess Diana through dolls and AI

ABSTRACT Princess Diana is a secular saint whose fame spans generations and borders and has never dimmed. Fiction, fashion, relatability and a diverse and fervent fandom keep Diana current and relevant over 25 years since her death. In this article, I argue that Diana’s death and persisting celebrity give fans the freedom to own and play with her image and persona, and to relate to her in new ways informed by an ironic yet emotionally intense online milieu. I demonstrate that these new ways of relating to Diana prove that her digital life after death is not limited to her appearance and demise, but extends towards her attitude to social issues, rendering Diana fandom a political act. To do so, I combine analysis of Diana, digital fandom, dolls and the creation of AI animations. First, I analyse Diana’s portrayal in traditional and social media. Second, using a new creative methodology I call ‘social media reaction capture’, I create images using AI to test audience responses. Finally, I discuss how emerging technologies and cultures enable dead celebrities to live on while handing control of their image and personae to irreverent new audiences, arguing that ironic fandom and playfulness make Diana’s sainthood persist.

The Good, the Bad, and the Social Media: Financial Implications of Social Media Reactions to Firm-Related News

ABSTRACT Firms and investors often react to financial news on social media. However, how they react to news of different nature and whether their reactions influence the stock market is far from clear. Employing data on financial news, tweets posted by firms and investors, and daily stock prices, we find that firms are more responsive to news with positive sentiment and low uncertainty, whereas investors are more responsive to news with high uncertainty. Moreover, the increased tweeting activities of firms and investors can improve the stock returns of firms. We further show that investors’ social media reactions to news and the subsequent influence on stock returns depend on firm size. This paper provides a fuller picture of how firms, investors, and the stock market react to financial news, and reveals the nuanced interactions among them. We discuss how firms and investors can better leverage social media to improve stock performance.

Social Media Reactions to Festival Cancellation Announcements

There are many reasons organizations cancel a festival. Regardless of the rationale, the organization's reputation can be preserved by communicating this crucial message in an appropriate way and by understanding people's perception of a cancellation announcement. The purpose of this research is to find out how festival administrators communicate a festival cancellation on social media and how the attendees, who will ultimately determine the success or failure of a festival, react to this message. Between January–June 2018, we collected 47 festival cancellation messages on Facebook and the 8,886 replies to these messages. We undertook a content analysis of both the cancellation message and the comments on the Facebook cancellation post. We found that most of the organizers used a primary response strategy, characterized by accepting blame to communicate the cancellation of the festival. This kind of response has a significant positive association with the comments characterized by building relationships. The sentiments in the cancellation posts were mainly shame and sadness and the comments on these posts were most often negative with sad and disgusted sentiments. Findings were somewhat consistent with past research and recommendations provide insight for further theoretical development.

#StrongTogether? Qualitative Sentiment Analysis of Social Media Reactions to Disaster Volunteering during a Forest Fire in Finland

The transformation of disaster volunteering has been highlighted in academic literature. This study examined that transformation via a big data approach. The context for the study was provided by a forest fire in Finland, which sparked a debate on volunteering. The data (806 social media messages) were analyzed using qualitative sentiment analysis to (1) identify the sentiments relating to a variety of volunteers and (2) understand the context of and tensions behind those sentiments. The data suggested that the prevailing view of disaster volunteering is a rather traditional one, while the observations on the transformation remain largely latent. The positive sentiments reflected a view of the co-production of extinguishing forest fires as an activity of formal governmental and nonprofit emergency management organizations and volunteers from expanding and extending organizations. Unaffiliated volunteers were seen as extra pairs of hands that could be invited to help in an organized way and with limited tasks, only if required. Sentiments with a more negative tone raised concerns about having sufficient numbers of affiliated volunteers in the future and the rhetorical level of appreciation of them. The data revealed a dichotomous relationship between “professionals” and “amateurs” and the politicization of the debate between different actor groups.

A lure or a turn-off: social media reactions to business model innovation announcements

A lure or a turn-off: social media reactions to business model innovation announcements