Understanding the majority opinion formation process in online environments: An exploratory approach to Facebook

被引：42

作者：

Lee, Sangwon ^{[1
]}

Ha, Taehyun ^{[1
]}

Lee, Daeho ^{[1
]}

Kim, Jang Hyun ^{[1
]}

机构：

[1] Sungkyunkwan Univ, Dept Interact Sci, Seoul, South Korea

来源：

INFORMATION PROCESSING & MANAGEMENT | 2018年 / 54卷 / 06期

基金：

新加坡国家研究基金会;

关键词：

Online social network; Majority opinion; Bandwagon effect; Social affordance; SOCIAL NETWORK SITES; BEHAVIOR; MANAGEMENT; BANDWAGON; DYNAMICS; SHARE; MEDIA; WORD;

D O I：

10.1016/j.ipm.2018.08.002

中图分类号：

TP [自动化技术、计算机技术];

学科分类号：

080201 [机械制造及其自动化];

摘要：

Majority opinions are often observed in the process of social interaction in online communities, but few studies have addressed this issue with empirical data. To identify an appropriate theoretical lens for explaining majority opinions in online environments, this study investigates the skewness statistic, which indicates how many "Likes" are skewed to major comments on a Facebook post; 3489 posts are gathered from the New York Times Facebook page for 100 days. Results show that time is not an influential factor for skewness increase, but the number of comments has a logarithmic relation to skewness increase. Regression models and Chow tests show that this relationship differs depending on topic contents, but majority opinions are significant in overall. These results suggest that the bandwagon effect due to social affordance can be a suitable mechanism for explaining majority opinion formation in an online environment and that majority opinions in online communities can be misperceived due to overestimation.

引用

页码：1115 / 1128

页数：14

共 66 条

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