Facebook and political engagement: A study of online political group membership and offline political engagement

In what ways do online groups help to foster political engagement among citizens? We employ a multi-method design incorporating content analysis of online political group pages and original survey research of university undergraduates (n = 455) to assess the relationship between online political group membership and political engagement—measured through political knowledge and political participation surrounding the 2008 election. We find that participation in online political groups is strongly correlated with offline political participation, as a potential function of engaging members online. However, we fail to confirm that there is a corresponding positive relationship between participation in online political groups and political knowledge, likely due to low quality online group discussion.     

Some of these things are not like the others: Examining motivations and political predispositions among political Facebook activity

Political engagement via social media has evolved, and web sites including Facebook continue to be a place for individuals, especially young ones, to engage politically. Because politics on social media is diverse, it makes sense that the reasons for participating in it vary. In addition, because current events information and political news is accessible via social media, the role of attention to traditional news sources in this type of political engagement is debatable. The study takes up the opportunity to address these questions by examining young people’s attention to television, print, and online news, their engagement with four Facebook political activities, and their psychological motivations for using the website politically just prior to the 2012 U.S. Presidential election. The results suggest that the primary motivations for using Facebook politically are not universal, and indeed vary by activity. They revolve around connecting with others socially, sharing information with others, and presenting oneself to others. In addition, attention to offline and online news largely do not matter. The study moves research forward by describing the variety of psychological predispositions some Facebook users bring to their political engagement with the web site, and how these predispositions vary across different Facebook political behavior.     

Social comparison on Facebook: Motivation,affective consequences,self-esteem,and Facebook fatigue

A growing body of research examines social comparison on Facebook, a social media environment where users can present optimized versions of themselves. To grasp the complexity of social comparison on Facebook, the researchers followed Helgeson and Mickelson’s (1995) functional approach, focusing on motives (i.e., self-enhancement, self-improvement, self-evaluation, and self-destruction) rather than fixed targets (i.e., downward, upward, and unilateral comparison) of social comparison. Social comparison motivations were explored in relation to self-esteem and affective consequences of comparison. A college-student sample (N = 267) reported engaging in social comparison frequently on Facebook and low-self-esteem (LSE) individuals were more likely than those with higher self-esteem (HSE) to compare themselves to others on Facebook for self-evaluation, self-enhancement, self-improvement, and self-destruction motives. Moreover, LSEs perceived increased levels of social comparison on Facebook, although the relationship between self-esteem and actual social comparison behavior proved non-significant. Significant moderating effects of self-esteem were observed in the relationship between motivation and affect. A self-improvement motive produced greater positive affect among HSEs compared to LSEs, while self-enhancement motives engendered positive affect more prominently among LSEs compared to HSEs. The paper also begins to distill a popular phenomenon, Facebook fatigue, in social comparison empirical work.     

Networked narratives on Humans of New York: A content analysis of social media engagement on Facebook

Humans of New York (HONY) is a popular Facebook page which has more than 13 million fans. The posts on HONY are termed as networked narratives, which are stories told on social media with technology affordances enabling story co-construction between the story tellers and the readers. A content analysis (N = 390) was conducted to examine the popular topics on networked narratives and its impact on social media engagement as represented by the number of likes, the number of shares, and likability of characters featured in the post. Results revealed a set of topics of the networked narratives were associated with social media engagement. Also, the tone and the length of posts were associated with social media engagement.     

Social media at work: The roles of job satisfaction,employment status,and Facebook use with co-workers

Limited research has studied workplace satisfaction in a computer-mediated context, particularly with the use of social media. Based on an analysis of an online survey of working adults (N = 512) in various companies and organizations in a metropolitan area in Southern California, we tested the relationships among time spent on Facebook interacting with co-workers, employment status, and job satisfaction. Results show that an employee's satisfaction at work is positively associated with the amount of time they spend on Facebook interacting with co-workers. Contrary to our initial predictions, results to the second and third hypotheses revealed that part time employees reported having spent the highest amount of time on Facebook with their co-workers, and contract employees reported the highest degree of job satisfaction at work. Results have implications for Facebook as a strategic platform for promoting employee satisfaction at work, and Facebook a social network/ing platform for part time employees seeking further social integration and professional connection.     

The Relationship Between Cyberbalkanization and Opinion Polarization: Time‐Series Analysis on Facebook Pages and Opinion Polls During the Hong Kong Occupy Movement and the Associated Debate on Political Reform

Online activity is often cyberbalkanized, but it remains unclear whether this phenomenon leads to polarization of public opinion or if the relationship works in the reverse direction. This study tested the temporal association between cyberbalkanization and opinion polarization during the debate on political reform in Hong Kong. Online communities were constructed by a post‐sharing network of 1,644 Facebook pages (101,410 shares); the differences between intra‐ and inter‐community shares were derived, and a cyberbalkanization index was computed. A time‐series analysis showed that the index temporally preceded the opinion polarization, i.e., most of the opinion poll's respondents gave extreme ratings to government leaders, but not vice versa. The index was particularly predictive of polarization among youth.     

Social Media Use for News and Individuals' Social Capital,Civic Engagement and Political Participation

Recently, scholars tested how digital media use for informational purposes similarly contributes to foster democratic processes and the creation of social capital. Nevertheless, in the context of today's socially‐networked‐society and the rise of social media applications (i.e., Facebook) new perspectives need to be considered. Based on U.S. national data, results show that after controlling for demographic variables, traditional media use offline and online, political constructs (knowledge and efficacy), and frequency and size of political discussion networks, seeking information via social network sites is a positive and significant predictor of people's social capital and civic and political participatory behaviors, online and offline.     

Habitual Facebook Use and its Impact on Getting Deceived on Social Media

There are a billion Facebook users worldwide with some individuals spending 8 hours each day on the platform. Limited research has, however, explored the consequences of such overuse. Even less research has examined the misuse of social media by criminals who are increasingly using social media to defraud individuals through phishing‐type attacks. The current study focuses on Facebook habits and its determinants and the extent to which they ultimately influence individual susceptibility to social media phishing attacks. The results suggest that habitual Facebook use, founded on the individual frequently using Facebook, maintaining a large social network, and being deficient in their ability to regulate such behaviors, is the single biggest predictor of individual victimization in social media attacks.     

Improving social media measurement in surveys: Avoiding acquiescence bias in Facebook research

Social media measurement relies heavily on self-report survey research. Hence, known biases in how individuals answer survey questions can introduce systematic errors into the social media literature. In particular, many common social media measures are prone to acquiescence response bias, an error that occurs due to individuals' tendency to agree with agree–disagree questions. The current study tests a series of techniques to both detect and overcome acquiescence bias in the context of Facebook measurement. Controlling for individuals' tendency to agree with agree–disagree questions, we find evidence that acquiescence has inflated the reliabilities and factor loadings of many Facebook use scales, and has altered correlations both among Facebook use measures and between those measures and related covariates. Further, when the individual-level tendency to agree with questions is controlled, Facebook measures demonstrate greater criterion validity in their relations to items that do not use agree–disagree scales. Having identified the presence of acquiescent responding, we test three methods for mitigating this response bias: the use of balanced scales, item-specific questions, and statistical correctives. All three methods appear to reduce the bias introduced by acquiescence. Thus, the results provide comparative evidence on strategies to alleviate the consistent impact of an important method bias in social media measurement and thereby contribute to improving the validity of social media research at large.     

Going Private in Public: A study on shift in behavioral trend using Facebook

The growth of social media has open a new dimension of research in the domain of human Psychology. The data generated by virtue of various available social media platforms is enormous, dynamic, unstructured, imprecise and most of the time uncertain. Facebook has emerged as one of the most successful media of social interaction and thus, contributing a lot to understand various aspects of human behavior. In this paper, a specific and crucial aspect of human nature is being explored- “Going Private in Public”. This aspect deals with some unexploited trend of human psychology and the research work presented in this paper is planned such as to investigate the data that eventually helps to understand this aspect to a great extent. A questionnaire to capture some behavioral trends of Facebook user was designed and filled up using both online and offline mode. The questionnaire included sets of non-identifying demographic questions, Facebook Intensity scale, Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adult, Perceived Stress Scale and NEO-PI-R model. Filling of the forms was made voluntarily and anonymously to avoid any biasing. A total of 312 responses were received and analyzed using Independent-Sample t-test, Cronbach's alpha test, Exploratory factor analysis, and MANOVA etc.     

Students’ self-presentation on Facebook: An examination of personality and self-construal factors

The present research seeks to extend existing theory on self-disclosure to the online arena in higher educational institutions and contribute to the knowledge base and understanding about the use of a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook, by college students. We conducted a non-experimental study to investigate how university students (N = 463) use Facebook, and examined the roles that personality and culture play in disclosure of information in online SNS-based environments. Results showed that individuals do disclose differently online vs. in-person, and that both culture and personality matter. Specifically, it was found that collectivistic individuals low on extraversion and interacting in an online environment disclosed the least honest and the most audience-relevant information, as compared to others. Exploratory analyses also indicate that students use sites such as Facebook primarily to maintain existing personal relationships and selectively used privacy settings to control their self-presentation on SNSs. The findings of this study offer insight into understanding college students’ self-disclosure on SNS, add to the literature on personality and self-disclosure, and shape future directions for research and practice on online self-presentation.     

Control your Facebook: An analysis of online privacy literacy

For an effective and responsible communication on social network sites (SNSs) users must decide between withholding and disclosing personal information. For this so-called privacy regulation, users need to have the respective skills—in other words, they need to have online privacy literacy. In this study, we discuss factors that potentially contribute to and result from online privacy literacy. In an online questionnaire with 630 Facebook users, we found that people who spend more time on Facebook and who have changed their privacy settings more frequently reported to have more online privacy literacy. People with more online privacy literacy, in turn, felt more secure on Facebook and implemented more social privacy settings. A mediation analysis showed that time spend on Facebook and experience with privacy regulation did not per se increase safety and privacy behavior directly, stressing the importance of online privacy literacy as a mediator to a safe and privacy-enhancing online behavior. We conclude that Internet experience leads to more online privacy literacy, which fosters a more cautious privacy behavior on SNSs.     

Beyond Facebook: The generalization of social networking site measures

PurposePrevious research on social networking sites (SNSs) suggests several factors that contribute to SNS use. However, the factors were specific to a particular website. We wished to know if similar factors could predict the use of a new SNS in terms of usefulness and satisfaction with the goal of creating factors that would generalize across SNSs.ResultsParticipants reported their SNS Diet and performed five tasks using a new SNS. Then, participants reported which of the five tasks was most frustrating. Participants also reported if the usefulness of the SNS would affect their future use of the site. Participants with a high SNS Diet used SNSs once a day or more. The SNS Diet was predictive of a participant’s satisfaction rating and a participant’s perception of usefulness.ConclusionThe differences suggest that different groups of social networking users will respond differently based on their SNS Diet. This study finds support for both the Rational Actor Perspective and the Web Acceptance Model. We outline a new continuous measure of SNS use which generalizes across different social networks.     

The Janus face of Facebook: Positive and negative sides of social networking site use

There is an increasing awareness that social networking site (SNS) use includes a socio-psychologically positive and a negative side. However, research remains largely silent on which side dominates in driving SNS use. To address this gap and to better understand the nature of SNSs we examine the positive and negative drivers of SNS use in parallel. We draw on the uses and gratifications theory and place social enhancement and interpersonal connectivity as the socio-psychologically positive gratifications and exhibitionism and voyeurism as the adverse gratifications predicting SNS use. We further link these gratifications to two key psychological needs, namely self-presentation and the need to belong. We conceptualize our dependent variable, SNS use, as a multi-dimensional second-order construct that consists of content production, content consumption, amount of usage, and comprehensiveness of one's profile information. We use longitudinal data from Facebook users to test our research model. The results show that exhibitionism, voyeurism and interpersonal connectivity predict SNS use. Furthermore, the number of friends in the SNS decreases the effect of exhibitionism and increases the effect of social enhancement. Altogether, the role of exhibitionism and voyeurism in predicting SNS use underscores the need for increased awareness of the socio-psychologically dark side of SNSs.     

Reactions to other-generated face threats on Facebook and their relational consequences

Impression management refers to an individual's deliberate efforts to cultivate a particular image. Sometimes impression management occurs in reaction to a face threat—an incident or behavior that could create an impression inconsistent with one's desired self-image. On social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, where content can be shared widely and is often persistent, studies have repeatedly shown that people are vulnerable to face threats resulting from other-generated content. While there has been much documentation of face threats occurring in the context of SNSs and how people react to them, we know very little about the relational consequences of carrying out a particular reaction. This paper reports on a survey (N = 150) of adult Facebook users examining how certain reactive strategies and the severity of the face threat affect perceived changes in closeness between the victim and offender.     

Cultural values and Facebook use among Palestinian youth in Israel

Culture is a set of values that influences attitudes and social behavior. Despite the role of culture in shaping attitudes and motivations, most of the extensive research literature on the determinants and patterns of social media use has focused on psychological and social factors. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by investigating the role of cultural values in perceptions of privacy, trust and motivations for using Facebook among young Palestinians in Israel. We relied on Hall’s concept of high and low communication contexts and three of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions: collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Data from a survey of Arab high school students (N = 567) established that variations in the adoption of cultural values are associated with the motivation for using Facebook through their effect on trust and on privacy concerns. We discuss the findings and their implications.     

Political mobilization through social network sites: The mobilizing power of political messages received from SNS friends

Recent political communication scholarship has examined whether social network sites (SNSs) contribute to political participation. Regarding SNSs’ mobilization effect, however, mixed results have been reported. This study, relying on representative survey data from the 2012 South Korean general election, investigates interplay between three factors influencing electoral participation: (1) type of SNS use (i.e., political versus nonpolitical use), (2) user characteristics (i.e., past voters versus nonvoters), and (3) directionality of SNS messages (i.e., messages received from versus those sent to SNS friends). Results indicate SNSs’ mobilization effect emerges when conditions are met. Voting intention is increased among past nonvoters who use SNSs through political messages received from their SNS friends. Theoretical and practical implications of SNSs’ mobilization effect are discussed.     

The relationship between passive and active non-political social media use and political expression on Facebook and Twitter

Departing from the conventional approach that emphasizes civic and political motives for political engagement, this study investigates how political social media behaviors—political expression—might emerge out of everyday, non-political use of the sites from an interpersonal communication perspective. Using two separate adult samples of Facebook (n = 727) and Twitter users (n = 663), this study examines how non-political, passive (NPP, consuming non-political content) and non-political, active (NPA, producing non-political content) social media use relate to expression of political voice on the sites. Findings show that only NPA use is positively associated with increased political expression, and this relationship is partially explained by political efficacy. The patterns of findings are consistent across Facebook and Twitter.     

Your post is embarrassing me: Face threats,identity, and the audience on Facebook

While Facebook is a popular venue for sharing information about ourselves, it also allows others to share information about us, which can lead to embarrassment. This study investigates the effects of shared face-threatening information on emotional and nonverbal indicators of embarrassment using an experiment (N = 120) in which pairs of friends posted about each other on Facebook. Results show that face-threatening information shared by others produces a powerful emotional and nonverbal embarrassment response. However, it is not the content of the face-threatening post that produces this effect. Rather, the level of embarrassment depends primarily on whether that information violates the individual's identity and if they perceive that unknown members of their audience can see it. In response, individuals were most likely to joke about the post, although those who were most embarrassed were more likely to delete it. These results inform our understanding of how the process of embarrassment works online. The emotional embarrassment response is similar to offline, but is affected by the features of these sites, such as a large, invisible audience, and the need for ideal self-presentation. This finding has important implications for treating online social networks and their effects to be as “real” as those offline.     

Cultural differences in social comparison on Facebook

Delving into motivations for and the impact of social comparison among students in the U.S. and South Korea, the present study examined cross-cultural differences in social comparison on Facebook. Following Helgeson and Mickelson [1995. “Motives for social comparison.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21 (11): 1200–1209. doi:10.1177/01461672952111008.]’s framework, social comparison was studied both offline and online based on a range of motivations rather than targets of social comparison. Results suggested an insignificant effect of culture on orientation toward social comparison. However, significant cultural differences were observed in motivations for social comparison. The U.S. participants, compared to their South Korean counterparts, demonstrated a greater propensity both offline and online to engage in social comparison motivations of self-enhancement and altruism. On Facebook, South Korean participants’ social comparison motivations for self-improvement, common bond, and self-destruction were higher than those of the U.S. participants. The U.S. participants generally felt more positive and less fatigued after making comparisons on Facebook. Factors influencing post-comparison affect were also investigated between the two countries.