Title: Engagement on online social networks during a social crisis: effect of anonymity level

Authors: Natalie Gerhart; Mehrdad Koohikamali

Addresses: Department of Business Intelligence and Analytics, Creighton University, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, Nebraska, 68178, USA ' Computer Information Systems Department, Cal Poly Pomona, 3801 W Temple, Pomona, California, 91768, USA

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.

Keywords: information spread; social crisis; online social networks; OSNs; anonymity; Yik Yak; Twitter; social movement; sentiment analysis; engagement; social computing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSHC.2020.111178

International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing, 2020 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.270 - 289

Received: 29 May 2019
Accepted: 28 Mar 2020
Published online: 12 Nov 2020 *

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