Illusion of SNS influence: are popular SNS influential? Online publication date: Thu, 23-Dec-2021
by Dongback Seo; Martin P. Bügel
International Journal of Information Technology and Management (IJITM), Vol. 20, No. 4, 2021
Abstract: People influence each other in the environment of social networking sites (SNS). Some SNS have gained popularity. Practitioners and researchers assume that these popular SNS are influential. However, influence and popularity are two different concepts. This research aims to provide two clear concepts of influence and popularity as well as their relationship. Popularity is hypothesised that it is affected by elements in the surroundings (e.g. societal position of a SNS owner) of SNS based on a peripheral information processing mechanism, whereas influence is hypothesised that it is affected by core elements (e.g. quality of content on a SNS message) of SNS based on a central information processing mechanism. The results indicate that influence is solely affected by the central information processing mechanism, but popularity is affected by both central and peripheral information processing mechanisms. There is a relationship between influence and popularity but it is marginal. Therefore, it should not be assumed that popular SNS are influential and vice versa.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Information Technology and Management (IJITM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook