TY - CHAP A1 - Hagemann, Linus A1 - Abramova, Olga T1 - Crafting audience engagement in social media conversations BT - evidence from the U.S. 2020 presidential elections T2 - Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences N2 - Observing inconsistent results in prior studies, this paper applies the elaboration likelihood model to investigate the impact of affective and cognitive cues embedded in social media messages on audience engagement during a political event. Leveraging a rich dataset in the context of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections containing more than 3 million tweets, we found the prominence of both cue types. For the overall sample, positivity and sentiment are negatively related to engagement. In contrast, the post-hoc sub-sample analysis of tweets from famous users shows that emotionally charged content is more engaging. The role of sentiment decreases when the number of followers grows and ultimately becomes insignificant for Twitter participants with a vast number of followers. Prosocial orientation (“we-talk”) is consistently associated with more likes, comments, and retweets in the overall sample and sub-samples. KW - mediated conversation KW - big data KW - engagement KW - sentiment analysis KW - social media Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-0-9981331-5-7 SP - 3222 EP - 3231 PB - HICSS Conference Office University of Hawaii at Manoa CY - Honolulu ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hagemann, Linus A1 - Abramova, Olga T1 - Sentiment, we-talk and engagement on social media BT - insights from Twitter data mining on the US presidential elections 2020 JF - Internet research N2 - Purpose Given inconsistent results in prior studies, this paper applies the dual process theory to investigate what social media messages yield audience engagement during a political event. It tests how affective cues (emotional valence, intensity and collective self-representation) and cognitive cues (insight, causation, certainty and discrepancy) contribute to public engagement. Design/methodology/approach The authors created a dataset of more than three million tweets during the 2020 United States (US) presidential elections. Affective and cognitive cues were assessed via sentiment analysis. The hypotheses were tested in negative binomial regressions. The authors also scrutinized a subsample of far-famed Twitter users. The final dataset, scraping code, preprocessing and analysis are available in an open repository. Findings The authors found the prominence of both affective and cognitive cues. For the overall sample, negativity bias was registered, and the tweet’s emotionality was negatively related to engagement. In contrast, in the sub-sample of tweets from famous users, emotionally charged content produced higher engagement. The role of sentiment decreases when the number of followers grows and ultimately becomes insignificant for Twitter participants with many followers. Collective self-representation (“we-talk”) is consistently associated with more likes, comments and retweets in the overall sample and subsamples. Originality/value The authors expand the dominating one-sided perspective to social media message processing focused on the peripheral route and hence affective cues. Leaning on the dual process theory, the authors shed light on the effectiveness of both affective (peripheral route) and cognitive (central route) cues on information appeal and dissemination on Twitter during a political event. The popularity of the tweet’s author moderates these relationships. KW - social media KW - engagement KW - data mining KW - big data Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-12-2021-0885 SN - 1066-2243 VL - 33 IS - 6 SP - 2058 EP - 2085 PB - Emeral CY - Bingley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hagemann, Linus A1 - Abramova, Olga T1 - Emotions and information diffusion on social media BT - a replication in the context of political communication on Twitter JF - AIS transactions on replication research N2 - This paper presents a methodological and conceptual replication of Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan’s (2013) investigation of the role of sentiment in information-sharing behavior on social media. Whereas Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan (2013) focused on Twitter communication prior to the state parliament elections in the German states Baden-Wurttemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz, and Berlin in 2011, we test their theoretical propositions in the context of the state parliament elections in Saxony-Anhalt (Germany) 2021. We confirm the positive link between sentiment in a political Twitter message and its number of retweets in a methodological replication. In a conceptual replication, where sentiment was assessed with the alternative dictionary-based tool LIWC, the sentiment was negatively associated with the retweet volume. In line with the original study, the strength of association between sentiment and retweet time lag insignificantly differs between tweets with negative sentiment and tweets with positive sentiment. We also found that the number of an author’s followers was an essential determinant of sharing behavior. However, two hypotheses supported in the original study did not hold for our sample. Precisely, the total amount of sentiments was insignificantly linked to the time lag to the first retweet. Finally, in our data, we do not observe that the association between the overall sentiment and retweet quantity is stronger for tweets with negative sentiment than for those with positive sentiment. KW - Twitter KW - information diffusion KW - sentiment KW - elections Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17705/1atrr.00079 SN - 2473-3458 VL - 9 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 19 PB - AIS CY - Atlanta ER -