Challenge Accepted! Evaluating the Personality and Social Network Characteristics of Individuals Who Participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a popular campaign on Facebook for raising awareness and money for the research of ALS. Given its unprecedented success, it is important to identify the personality and individual difference characteristics that distinguished participants from non-participants. Using an online survey of Facebook users (N = 261), this study investigates the influence that the Big Five personality variables, narcissism, altruism, online social capital, and online opinion leadership have on participation in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Results indicated that extraversion, openness to experience, and altruism positively predict bridging social capital on Facebook. Facebook users with higher social capital were found to have greater opinion leadership on Facebook, which in turn made them more likely to participate in the ALS Ice Bucket challenge. These findings have important implications for predicting which individuals will participate in future online social campaigns, which may help organizers target these audiences

Who Posted That Story? Processing Layered Sources in Facebook News Posts

With social media platforms becoming primary news sources, concerns about credibility judgments and knowledge grow. This study (N = 233) experimentally tests the effects of multiple source cues on Facebook news posts on credibility and knowledge. Judgments of story credibility were directly influenced by media source cues, but not friend source cues. Involvement in the source topic moderated the effects of these source cues, such that particular combinations influenced credibility differently, and also influenced cognitive elaboration about the topic. Theoretical implications for cognitive mediation model of learning from the news and the heuristic-systematic model of information processing are presented

Examining Twitter Content of State Emergency Management During Hurricane Joaquin

Those tasked with disseminating life-protecting messages during crises have many factors to consider. Social media sites have become an information source for individuals during these times, and more research is needed examining the use of specific message strategies by emergency management agencies that may elicit attention and retransmission. This study examines Twitter content concerning Hurricane Joaquin. Content analysis of tweets from state emergency management accounts was performed to provide an overview of the content and stylistic elements used in tweets associated with the event. The findings are discussed in the context of both past research on the matter and implications for emergency management agencies responding to high-consequence events

The Clickwrap: A Political Economic Mechanism for Manufacturing Consent on Social Media

The clickwrap is a digital prompt that facilitates consent processes by affording users the opportunity to quickly accept or reject digital media policies. A qualitative survey analysis was conducted ( N  = 513), assessing user interactions with the consent materials of a fictitious social media service, NameDrop. Findings suggest that clickwraps serve a political economic function by facilitating the circumvention of consent materials. Herman and Chomsky’s notion of the “buying mood” guides the analysis to analogize how social media maintain flow to monetized sections of services while diverting attention from policies that might encourage dissent. Clickwraps accomplish this through an agenda-setting function whereby prompts encouraging circumvention are made more prominent than policy links. Results emphasize that clickwraps discourage engagement with privacy and reputation protections by suggesting that consent materials are unimportant, contributing to the normalization of this circumvention. The assertion that clickwraps serve a political economic function suggests that capitalist methods of production are successfully being integrated into social media services and have the ability to manufacture consent

Supplemental Material, twitter_credibility_convergence_r2_appendix_(1) - For the birds: Media sourcing, Twitter, and the minimal effect on audience perceptions

<p>Supplemental Material, twitter_credibility_convergence_r2_appendix_(1) for For the birds: Media sourcing, Twitter, and the minimal effect on audience perceptions by Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, Mike Schmierbach, Alyssa Appelman, and Michael P Boyle in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies</p