Higher Numbers = More Important? Social Media Metrics and Their Agenda-Cueing Effects in Anti-Secondhand Smoke Persuasion

ABSTRACT

Social media metrics can exert persuasive influences. Integrating the agenda-cueing effect into the influence of presumed influence framework, the study explores how social media metrics influence individuals’ perceptions of others’ agendas, which further contribute to individuals’ engagement outcomes in the context of anti-secondhand smoke (SHS) health persuasion campaigns. A between-subject online experiment investigating three types of social media metrics (i.e., “views,” “likes,” and “shares and comments”) was conducted in China (N = 415). Results showed that higher “views” significantly increased perceived issue importance to important others, which consistently correlated with social media engagement but significantly correlated with anti-SHS policy support only among participants who ever smoked. “Likes” and “shares and comments” primarily impacted perceived issue importance to social media users, which was positively associated with anti-SHS policy support. Theoretically, this study unravels the nuances of social media metrics as agenda cues and differentiates perceived issue importance to two referent units. Practically, the findings suggest the utility of fostering sharing and commenting behavior in social media health campaigns and highlighting certain normative information during anti-SHS message tailoring.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the editor and the reviewers for their invaluable feedback and suggestions, which have significantly enhanced the quality of this paper. Their expertise and dedication to the peer-review process are deeply appreciated.

Disclosure Statement

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

Data Availability Statement

The data supporting this study’s findings can be accessed online at https://osf.io/c9h4b/.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2024.2366926.

Notes

1. There was an approximate two-month time lag between the timestamp in the stimuli (May 16, 2023) and the time the online experiment was conducted (mid-July 2023). Thus, participants may not think that low metrics numbers result from the content being newly posted.

2. Previous studies have shown that health-related posts on Sina Weibo exhibit low engagement rates on average. For instance, Liu et al. (2017) showed that doctors’ original health posts on Sina Weibo received an average of 67 likes, 51 comments, and 143 shares. Most of the posts on specific health topics (e.g., cancer) receive neither comments nor retweets, and posts generated by medical accounts and organizations have a lower virality rate than those generated by nonprofessional individuals (Wang et al., 2019). For smoking-related posts on Sina Weibo generated by verified accounts of the Tobacco Control Office and relevant education programs, as observed by researchers, single-digit likes, shares, and comments are very common. Therefore, it’s very likely for the participants to perceive the high numbers manipulated in the present study as truly high for SHS-related health-promoting posts.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.