University of Twente Student Theses
Impact of high-arousal emotions on German social media users to participate in online firestorms : an extension of problem-solving and collective predictors of online firestorm participation.
Kock, J. (2022) Impact of high-arousal emotions on German social media users to participate in online firestorms : an extension of problem-solving and collective predictors of online firestorm participation.
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| Abstract: | Social media empower individuals to express their discontent about societal issues they perceive as intolerable. The expression of such discontent can quickly intensify, spread across social media platforms and spill over to mainstream media. The result is a virtual public outrage, known as an online firestorm. While current research on the role of participants’ intentions in the emergence and spread of online firestorms is scarce, this study attempts to contribute to filling this gap in the literature by extending the theoretical model on online firestorm participation (Gruber et al., 2019) with high-arousal emotional predictors. A quantitative online survey was distributed via snowball sampling confronting respondents with a real online firestorm stimulant. Based on the data of 222 German participants using social media sites frequently, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to determine the drivers of participatory intentions towards online firestorms and assess the extent to which high-arousal emotions change the variation in the dependent variable, ‘motivation to participate in online firestorms’. The sense of belonging to a community, the moral obligation to warn others of a perceived misconduct and the need to vent negative emotions positively predicted motivation to engage in online firestorms while a non-anonymous online environment constrained it. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 05 communication studies |
| Programme: | Communication Studies MSc (60713) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/89806 |
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