The Meaning of Numbers: Effect of Social Media Engagement Metrics in Risk Communication

ABSTRACT

Using the health risks of nuclear plant accident as a context of enquiry, this study focuses on how peoples’ reactions to a piece of online news are affected by social media engagement metrics associated with the story. Based on the bandwagon heuristic, it assumes that online news with a high social media engagement metrics – high-sharing, -liking, and -commenting, show direct and mediated effects on respondents’ online news consumption and news sharing behavioral intention. Findings suggest that high engagement metrics show more considerable influences on willingness to read the full news story, bandwagon perception, and perceived newsworthiness than low engagement metrics. Also, news readership, bandwagon perception, and perceived newsworthiness served as mediators of the relationship between social media engagement metrics and news-sharing behavioral intention while there is no significant direct association found at the statistical level. The findings, however, indicate that social media engagement metrics affect when conditions are low-risk. The discussion highlights the theoretical implications of this research.

KEYWORDS:

• Engagement metrics
• bandwagon heuristics
• online news consumption
• news sharing
• nuclear accident
• risk message

Notes

1. On March 11, 2011, on the coast of Japan the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 occurred. An 8.4 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami produced a series of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that led to the loss of power at the plant’s cooling system, to nuclear meltdowns, and the escape of radioactive material.

2. This study chose Facebook as an outlet of news stories for the following reasons: As of 2014, the social media site had approximately 1.23 billion monthly active users (Facebook, 2014); it has become one of the leading sites for referring Internet users to news and media sites (Hopkins, 2010); and it enables people to engage in content distribution by offering the option to “share” content (Nisbet & Kotcher, 2009).

3. Several rounds of manipulation checks were conducted with four people to ensure that the interface of the manipulation and the social media engagement metrics depicting how many users had liked, shared, or commented were realistic and valid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jiyoun Kim

Jiyoun Kim, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. She earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research is broadly concerned with science, health and risk communication. She is particularly interested in how we can harness the power of communication to design and deliver effective messaging to help the public have more meaningful conversations about science and health issues in order to help the public make more informed decisions.