The Generativity of Social Media: Opportunities, Challenges, and Guidelines for Conducting Experimental Research

ABSTRACT

Human–computer interaction research on online social media has mainly focused on the use of single platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. However, this context is not entirely representative of the ever-increasing number of ways that social media manifests. A rising number of online services combine features and data that originate from multiple sources and platforms, including social media. In this article, we present an expanded view of social media by examining hybrid social media networks, defined as the combinatorial arrangements that result from connecting social media to other non-social platforms. We explain why they are important and how to study them using an experimental approach. Our conclusions and recommendations are illustrated by two case studies.

Notes

¹ Experiments can be categorized according to a continuum that oscillates between artificiality (i.e., high abstraction of reality) and realism (i.e., high contextual richness). Laboratory experiments are strongly associated with artificiality and high control while field experiments favour realism and are less stringent on control. Natural experiments (i.e., when the experimental variables are not artificially manipulated by researchers and subjects do not know that they are in an experiment) suggest that artificiality and realism are not necessarily orthogonal. Accordingly, Harrison and List (2004) specified six criteria to help characterize experiments with more nuances: The nature of the subject pool, the nature of the information that the subjects bring to the task, the nature of the commodity, the nature of the task or trading rules applied, the nature of the stakes, and the environment in which the subjects operate.

² Of the 386 participants who completed the review phase, 34 did not allow us to contact them again or were identified as survey speeders.

³ The 2013 Local Consumer Review Survey (2100 respondents in the US, Canada, and UK) found that restaurants were the category that attracted the most searches from online consumers. http://www.brightlocal.com/2013/06/25/localJconsumerJreviewJsurveyJ2013/#business.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Camille Grange

Camille Grange is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Technology at HEC Montréal. Her research interests include the investigation of how individuals interpret, use, and leverage information technologies for desired outcomes, especially in the electronic commerce and social media contexts.