Fostering netizens to engage in rumour-refuting messages of government social media: a view of persuasion theory

ABSTRACT

Government agencies have increasingly established their official accounts to disseminate information and publish rumourrefuting messages (RRMs) on social media platforms. However, little is known about what factors facilitate users to engage in RRMs posted by government accounts. To bridge this gap, our study borrows the lens of persuasion theory to frame a research model and unmask the precursors that foster social media users to engage in RRMs. By analysing RRMs published by 10 influential government official accounts spanning 9 years, a field study on Sina Weibo finds that the text length of an RRM is associated with a higher probability of liking, commenting on, and sharing the RRM, while the inclusion of links in RRMs is negatively linked to user engagement. The effect of the existence of photos and videos on user engagement in RRMs depends on different engaging behaviours. The inclusion of emojis in RRMs helps shorten users’ psychological distance from the authorities, thereby facilitating user engagement behaviours. Using rhetorical questions is associated with a higher level of user engagement (including liking and sharing) in RRMs by increasing personal relevance. This study offers new insights into online rumour governance and practical suggestions for promoting government social media publicity.

KEYWORDS:

• Government social media engagement
• rumour-refuting message
• persuasion theory
• psychological distance
• rhetoricals

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Associate Professor Yong Liu at Aalto University School of Business for providing constructive comments and suggestions for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 A literature search was performed on Google Scholar using the inquiry ‘social media engagement’ AND ‘user engagement’ AND (‘post feature’ OR ‘message feature’ OR ‘post characteristic’ OR ‘message characteristic’). The search was limited to journal and conference publications between 2010 and 2023. Subsequently, the retrieval records were screened by the second author, and a backtracking process was conducted accordingly.

Additional information

Funding

This study is partially supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (grant number 21BTQ101).