Engagement on online social networks during a social crisis: effect of anonymity level Online publication date: Thu, 12-Nov-2020
by Natalie Gerhart; Mehrdad Koohikamali
International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing (IJSHC), Vol. 3, No. 3/4, 2020
Abstract: Recent social movements have increasingly used online social networks (OSNs) to spread information and organise activists. Unfortunately, using an OSN during a social crisis also allows for uncertainties and rapid dissemination of misinformation. During the fall of 2015, a student activist group protested and received nationwide attention. At the time, two OSNs were very popular: Twitter, a traditional OSN, and Yik Yak, an anonymous OSN. In this research, we performed a sentiment analysis on datasets from each of these platforms during the social crisis. Our findings suggest that the two platforms are used differently during a social crisis. Posts on traditional OSNs receive more engagement if they have a high total sentiment, but are not overly positive or negative. Anonymous OSN posts see increased engagement with longer messages that are positively or negatively charged. These findings indicate a need for divergent theorising for anonymous OSNs.
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