Interactivity between Candidates and Citizens on a Social Networking Site: Effects on Perceptions and Vote Intentions

Abstract

Voters and political candidates increasingly use social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook. This study uses data from an online posttest-only experiment (N = 183) in analyzing how exposure to supportive or challenging user comments on a fictional candidate's Facebook page influenced participants’ perceptions of and willingness to vote for the candidate, as well as whether candidate replies to each type of user comments affected these outcomes. Participants who viewed a page with supportive comments and “likes” reported more favorable perceptions of and greater support for the candidate, relative to participants who viewed a page with challenging comments. Thus, the appearance of interactivity between a candidate and other users on the candidate's Facebook page can shape the responses of those viewing the page. However, exposure to candidate replies to either supportive or challenging comments did not lead to significantly more favorable perceptions or a greater likelihood of voting for the candidate.

Emergency Physicians and Personal Narratives Improve the Perceived Effectiveness of COVID‐19 Public Health Recommendations on Social Media: A Randomized Experiment

“…However, participant likelihood to share a post has been shown to correlate highly with action in real life 26 . Furthermore, while the effects of user comments on social media were beyond the scope of this study, prior research has shown that user comments may have an additive effect on messaging impact 51,52 . Whether it will change reader behavior is unknown.…”

The Effect of Website Interactivity on Political Involvement

“…For instance, website interactivity leads to positive candidate evaluations, agreement with policy statements (Sundar et al, 2003), increased levels of political efficacy, positive attitude toward voting (Tedesco, 2007), increased recall, time spent on a website (Warnick, Xenos, Endres, & Gastil, 2005), positive feelings toward politics and increased political interest (Kruikemeier et al, 2013). Moreover, for social media it is demonstrated that politicians responding to voters' comments are evaluated positively (Utz, 2009), interactive communication on Twitter positively affects electoral support (Kruikemeier, 2014b), and interactivity on a candidates' Facebook page (comments and likes) leads to favorable perceptions and subsequently to more support for the candidate (Brewer et al, 2016).…”

“…More specifically, when social presence is operationalized as “perceived closeness” and “connectedness in mediated communication,” citizens are more positive about politics (Lee & Shin, 2012, p. 516). In this way, interactive communication functions as an information shortcut in the evaluation of politics (Brewer et al, 2016). Lee and Shin (2012) empirically tested this assumption and revealed that interactivity on Twitter leads to positive feelings of having a direct conversation with a politician (i.e., social presence) for people who usually avoid social interactions, which in turn had a positive effect on voting intentions.…”

“…Interactivity is the most distinct characteristic of online media (Sundar, Kalyanaraman, & Brown, 2003), and researchers realize that interactivity might play an important role in understanding why online media and its contents affect citizens (Spierings & Jacobs, 2014). Still, evidence showing that interactive use of online political platforms engages citizens remains limited (also for social media; Brewer et al, 2016) and the examination of underlying mechanisms and conditional factors has been generally neglected. The current study addresses these gaps.…”

Predicting Social Network Addiction Using Variant Sigmoid Transfer Feed-Forward Neural Networks (Fnn-Sna)

“…In this paper, a variant sigmoid transfer function was used to the training of FNN used in the prediction of social net-er, the proportion of people who experience negative consequences from an excessive use of the Internet and its specific online applications has been on the increase. SNS are virtual networks where people can create a profile and link that profile to others to form a vibrant personal network (Brewer et al, 2016;Shah et al, 2016). Social networking addiction is an integral part of Internet addiction operationally defined as behavioral addiction that involve human-machine interaction (Griths et al, 2014;Ifinedo, 2016;Carillo, Scornavacca, & Za, 2017).…”