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A paper that examines the psychological motivations behind facebook sharing (literature review) with an effort to understand how "good deeds" can be made more shareable by mission-driven organizations. Feel free to contact me at jon_katz [at] mba.berkeley.edu. My linked in profile is here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/katzjon
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Katz Sharing altruistic behavior… 1
Sharing altruistic behavior on Facebook
Jonathan Katz1
University of California at Berkeley
May, 2012
1 jon_katz [at] mba.berkeley.edu, http://www.linkedin.com/in/katzjon
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1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3 2. The importance of sharing ...................................................................................................... 3 3. Limitations of the study .......................................................................................................... 4 4. Motivations for using FB ......................................................................................................... 5 5. Sharing types and motivations ............................................................................................... 7 5.1. WOM ................................................................................................................................. 7 5.2. Disclosure .......................................................................................................................... 9 5.3. Damage control ................................................................................................................. 9
6. Factors mitigating sharing success ......................................................................................... 9 6.1. Identity creation and maintenance ................................................................................ 10 6.2. Relationship management .............................................................................................. 19 6.3. Information and entertainment ..................................................................................... 20 6.4. Differences among users ................................................................................................ 23
7. Study ...................................................................................................................................... 24 7.1. Method ........................................................................................................................... 24 7.2. Results ............................................................................................................................. 26 7.3. Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 28
8. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 29 8. References ................................................................................................................................ 31
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1. Introduction
It is now widely accepted that peer influence is a powerful tool in determining consumer behavior. New forms of peer influence are developing online with novel formats, unmatched speed, and new breadth of topics. Links to interesting content or products are sent through email, reviews are given through services like Yelp and Netflix, and on social networks, primarily Facebook (FB), links are shared, statuses are updated, and any verb or noun can be liked. What is shared or liked has impact on the behavior of the recipients: a shared item is more likely to be consumed, adopted, or reshared by a recipient, whether it be a style an opinion, media content, or a physical product. Sharing online, in other words, is a powerful tool for disseminating cultural norms and behaviors. A quick glance at FB shows that much of what is shared is only personally relevant, inane, or indirectly boastful. A study in 2004, found that 48% of all email forwards were jokes. At the bottom of the list at 0.1%: good deeds (Phelps et al., 2004). Not a lot has changed. Much of the sharing today involves conspicuous consumption, such as photos of somebody’s new gadget or vacation. There is a dearth, however, of sharing altruistic behaviors and intention: whether they are donations, volunteer work, civic engagement, or reduced consumption. Given the importance of sharing on transmitting culture, this creates an obstacle to any organization attempting to encourage and spread altruistic behavior. This paper attempts to understand the mechanism behind the reluctance to share altruistic behavior online and identify means by which this reluctance can be overcome. The solutions focus on how organizations seeking to promote altruistic behaviors or ideas can improve the rate at which it is shared on FB. The primary research method was a review of the existing literature and a quantitative study of altruistic sharing behavior and motivations. Despite evidence that online disclosure does not differ from offline disclosure, the majority of the review is of online behavior (Nguyen et al., 2012).
2. The importance of sharing
Sharing our actions or opinions online (henceforth generalized as sharing) is important primarily because it is a direct or indirect statement of the sharer’s beliefs or actions. The acts and thoughts of our peers have tremendous influence on our own opinions and behavior. It is helpful to think of it in the two ways offered by Thaler and Sunstein in Nudge (2008).
The first is informational: we have evolved to learn from others, because what others do might contain clues for how we should live our lives. This corresponds to both modeling optimal behavior and the curation of content. The second is what is traditionally thought of as peer pressure: we behave as others do to gain or protect our social status. Thaler and Sunstein, present a slew of academic studies showing
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the powerful effects of peer influence. Holding everything else constant, it has been shown that peer groups have an impact on such varied attributes as a person’s weight, the grades they earn, or the music they listen to. The impact of peers is not just wide, but deep. In the infamous Asch conformity study and its multiple replications, 20-‐40% of people go along with confederates who have the wrong answer to a simple question with an obvious answer (“Match the lines of identical length”). When this was anonymous, the number dropped significantly, showing that pressure created a powerful impact (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).
Importantly for this paper, the power of peer influence can also impact political choices and altruistic behavior. Nudge cites studies showing that federal judges from either the right or left would vote closer to the political lean of their bench mates, and in politics it is well known that the perception that a candidate is the most favored has a strong impact on subsequent votes. A study found that volunteers were likely to stop volunteering immediately after just one person had stopped (Linardi & McConnell, 2011). Presumably they all wanted to stop earlier, but didn’t want to be the first, proving that social pressure can be used to reinforce altruistic behavior. In addition, environmental, antismoking, and anti drinking campaigns that shifted from decrying the prevalence of bad behavior to normalizing positive behavior do far better (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). To read more about this, Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, The Tipping Point is digestible and provides a compelling overview of how ideas spread socially (Gladwell, 2000).
In addition to the role of peer influence, sharing has an impact on the sharer. Cialdini and others have shown that people strive for consistency in their identity and their commitments. A simple act of affirming a belief publicly can reinforce someone’s sense of identity around a subject and create an internal need to continue along that path (Rogers, 2011; Cialdini, 2009; Bator & Cialdini, 2006). This is particularly true of prosocial requests (Beaman et al., 1983). This means that sharing reinforces a belief or habit held by a sharer and powerfully influences the recipients.
Promoting sharing, then, is an important skill for entity hoping to create behavior change. This paper attempts to answer the following questions:
RQ 1: What are the motivations for using FB? RQ 2: What are the motivations for sharing on FB? RQ 3: Given these motivations, what factors mitigate sharing success? RQ 4: What factors prevent the sharing of altruistic behavior from meeting user needs? RQ 5: How can sharing of altruistic behavior be modified to increase sharing rates?
In the next section, we examine why people go online in an attempt to understand why they do or do not share.
3. Limitations of the study
It is first worth noting that online social networks are new. FB has only been around since 2004 (Wikipedia, 2012) and while it has already saturated the US population, the time spent on FB in
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the US continues to grow (Comscore, 2012). In addition, the site itself is in a near-‐constant state of evolution. New features appear and developing new uses for the site or changing existing use-‐patterns. Between increased ubiquity and acceptance and the continued evolution of the site, the meaning of a FB identity and the meaning of FB activity has yet to settle into a steady state. It seems that online norms around personal disclosures, in particular, have been changing rapidly. In a 2010 interview, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of FB said:
And then in the last 5 or 6 years, … all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time. (Kirkpatrick, 2010)
The following research, then, should be understood within the context of an evolving dynamic. While some of the differences have evolved slowly and smoothly, feature changes have led sudden categorical additions to FB’s repertoire. For instance, the FB developer platform was launched in November of 2007 (https://www.FB.com/platform, accessed 5/1/12), turning FB into a platform upon which developers could create their own social applications. Any research conducted before 2008, will not include the use of FB for games and other applications that were developed on FB after this time. Given this limitation, results from earlier papers should be weighed against changes to the environment. Additionally, certain motivations and factors of sharing success (the results of this paper) may not be relevant moving forward. Furthermore, a great deal of research cited in this paper used self-‐reported data to generate results. Only recently have scholars begun analyzing actual FB activity or measuring responses to such activity. Results from actual activity were found to deviate from earlier, self-‐reported results in at least one FB study (Moore & McElroy, 2012). In light of this, for the author’s own study, an attempt was made to measure online actions in addition to self-‐reported data. As data proliferates and the academy becomes more comfortable with online data mining and natural language processing, the accuracy and validity of studies should improve.
4. Motivations for using FB
Motivations for joining and engaging with online social networks have been studied extensively (Nadkarni & Hofmann, 2012; Sheldon et al., 2011; Buffardi & Campbell, 2010; Zhao et al., 2008). Though different researchers categorize motivations at different levels of abstraction, the underlying motivations can be summarized as:
1. Social needs 2. Information gathering/sharing 3. Entertainment
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Any sharing behavior, therefore, should be motivated by a subset or manifestation of these objectives. However, the first motivation, social needs, requires some unpacking. A literature review by Nadkarni and Hofmann (2012), led to the conclusion that FB use is motivated by two primary social needs:
1. Need to belong (formation and maintenance of social relationships) 2. Need to for self-‐presentation (held in high regard)
The origin and intensity of these needs are well documented, and outside the scope of this paper, but both needs are well met online. Social connections online, while limited in nature, can reach people who are otherwise isolated. Indeed FB use is correlated to feelings of disconnectedness and this disconnectedness was mediated by FB use (Sheldon, Abad, & Hirsch, 2011). Identity needs are enhanced online, as well. According to a study by Zhao, Grasmuch and Martin (2008), in the offline, nonymous (not anonymous) world we are forced to hide our true selves, but the filters permitted in an online, nonymous platform allow us to portray a unique version of ourselves. To be sure, this isn’t the “idealized self”, but rather a “hoped for self” a realistic hybrid between our idealized self and our actual self. Zhao and colleagues make the point that the “hoped for self” is a socially desirable identity that the user believes can be established, given the right conditions. A link between narcissism and FB has been established by several studies now (Carpenter, 2012; as cited by Nadkarni and Hofmann, Buffardi & Campbell, 2010; Mehdizadeh, 2010). And the effort is well founded, personal attractiveness and likeability have been tied to profile attributes in a number of studies (Walther et al., 2008, Wang et al, 2010; Weisbuch et al., 2009; Tong et al., 2008). But the desire to craft an identity is not just limited to social concerns, Gonzalez and Hancock found that examining one’s own FB profile enhances self esteem, particularly when the information has been edited for aspirational purposes (2010). It should be noted that individuals are trying to project an identity that will be well received by others and project it in a way that will be well received. It goes without saying that this also includes avoiding negative attention. Even postings that seem likely to damage identity are designed to craft a desired perception. Peluchette and Karl (in a study whose secondary title is “What were they thinking?!”) found that even the posting of inappropriate content correlated to the user’s intended presentation of appearing a certain way: sexually appealing, wild, or offensive. (Peluchette and Karl, 20120) However, there is a great deal of evidence that identities on FB do not stray far from offline reality. In one study, visitors to profiles were able to accurately assess people’s personality characteristics from their FB profiles. The only exception was emotional stability, where “self-‐enhancement” came into play (Gosling, S., Gaddis, S., & Vazire, S. (2007). Additionally, people who were liked in person by study participants also had FB pages that were more likeable (Weisbuch et al., 2009).
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Lastly, there are some individuals who only go online to consume information. They have in the past been referred to as “lurkers” (Heinonen, 2011), and indeed it should be remembered that there is a significant portion of the population that does not go online to create and maintain their identity. This is reinforced by the author’s own study, the results of which are below.
5. Sharing types and motivations
In studying sharing behavior it is important to note that most research focuses on one of two categories of sharing:
1. Disclosure: sharing personal information, either through statements imagery or behavior.
2. Word of mouth (WOM): sharing external content, such as writing product reviews, sharing links or “liking” actions or entities. Indirectly, all WOM includes some personal disclosure. For instance, the mere act of recommending a Canon camera implies that I have used one and that I care if others use them. The content of my review might reveal other personal attributes.
Throughout this paper, the use of the word “sharing” includes both of the above categories, and means any broadcast intended to convey information. Importantly, the most predictive motivations were utilitarian (purpose driven) rather than hedonic (entertainment driven): people share in order to accomplish something, rather than for the enjoyment of it.
5.1. WOM All studies reviewed found a number of motivations predictive of WOM, but it is clear that certain motivations are more powerful than others. Specifically, information sharing is more predictive of sharing volume than the desire to connect. This is an apparently altruistic motive and explicitly stated altruistic motivations were also found to be powerful predictors. Identity creation and associated status was another strong predictor of WOM. Baek, Holton, Harp, and Yaschur conducted a broad multi-‐tiered study to uncover the motivations for linking on FB. They conducted factor analysis to uncover 6 different motivation categories for sharing links on FB and looked to see which motivations were tied to number of links shared.
1. Information sharing 2. Convenience and entertainment 3. Pass the time 4. Interpersonal utility (i.e. meet people, stay connected) 5. Control (to get others to do something) 6. Promoting work
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They found that the positive correlation between each motivation and the number of links decreased as you moved from #1 to #6. Information sharing was ~3x more of a factor than interpersonal utility. This shows that the reasons people link are not necessarily the same reasons for using FB in general. In particular, information sharing seems to be somewhat altruistically motivated. Ho and Dempsey looked for the motivations behind forwarding online content by examining motivations behind email forwarding. They looked at how five potential communication motivations predicted email-‐forwarding behavior:
i. Need to belong ii. Individuation iii. Altruism iv. Personal growth v. Consumption vi. Curiosity
They found that of the potential motivations, only individuation (the need to establish a unique identity) and altruism predicted forwarding behavior (Ho & Dempsey, 2010). Here one could interpret altruism as a parent category of the top two motivations found by Baek and colleagues: information sharing and entertainment. Echoing the Baek study above, Ho and Dempsey found that the “need to belong” did not significantly impact forwarding, and postulate that this is an artifact of email or the nature of forwarding (rather than other elements of social networking). The study also identified altruism as a predictor of forwarding and suggests, cynically, that altruism is being used as a signal to the recipient about the sender’s generous identity (Ho & Dempsey, 2010). Lee, Kim and Kim cite several studies showing that electronic WOM is motivated by altruism (Lee et al., 2012).
A study of fanning (precursor to like) behavior on FB found college students view the act of fanning as a means to connect with organizations but also to make announcements about their identity. Specifically, people who engaged in fanning were more likely to be expressing an identity for others, not to create a new identity with the brand community. They also perceived fanning as a means of gaining and sharing information and engaging in entertaining, creative, or social activities. As with other studies, the utilitarian motives were stronger predictors than the last three, hedonic motives (Hyllegard et al., 2012). Lee and Ma (2012) also found that news sharing on a social media platform was driven by the following motivations: socializing, information seeking, and status seeking. In addition they cite several other studies that show that other contributions online are related to maintaining a reputation. Entertainment was not found to be a significant determinant in this study. Status seeking also tied to social media experience…probably because people seeking status will develop social media experience (Lee & Ma, 2012).
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5.2. Disclosure
People disclose personal information to form connections and establish identity. Relationship formation motivates disclosure, because it conveys important data and also, the rule of reciprocity leads to disclosure from the other party (Park et al., 2011). In the Nadkarni and Hofmann literature review, they cite a study that showed a person’s “tendency to disclose” and their “need for popularity” were the only predictors (among the factors they examined) of information disclosure on FB (Nadkarni & Hofmann, 2012). Another study indicated that contingencies of self worth, such as appearance, approval of generalized others, and outdoing others explained online photo sharing volume. Appearance (i.e. identity) had the strongest relationship with the volume of disclosures (Stefanone et al., 2011).
5.3. Damage control
It almost goes without saying, but one of the inherent considerations (if not motivations) when sharing content online is ensuring that any share does not damage one’s online identity or otherwise negatively impact their online relationships. Damage control tactics (vaguely defined) were found to be positively related to an individual’s motivation of self-‐presentation on FB (Rosenberg 2011). A 2011 qualitative study of regrets on FB, found no dearth of regretted postings. Respondents reported many angry spouses, angry family members, angry friends, lost friends, and actions taken against their business. The study also highlighted the way that users police their accounts to avoid making errors. Self-‐censoring and “not posting at all” were among the methods (Wang et al., 2011). We have established that FB users share to shape their online identity, distribute information, for entertainment, and to form and maintain relationships. Whether or not shaping an online identity is a primary motivation for a sharing activity, the impact on identity seems to be an overarching concern when sharing. We will look next to the factors that might lead to either desirable or undesirable outcomes given each motivation (RQ 3):
RQ 3: Given these motivations, what factors mitigate sharing success? We will evaluate inline how altruistic behavior sharing interacts with these factors in order to answer research questions:
RQ 4: What factors prevent the sharing of altruistic behavior from meeting user needs? RQ 5: How can sharing of altruistic behavior be modified to increase sharing rates?
6. Factors mitigating sharing success
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The above sections outline the motivations or purpose for sharing. It has been postulated by many that sharing has both a utilitarian (purpose driven) and hedonic (entertainment driven) component. The studies above found the utilitarian motivations were more predictive of sharing behavior than hedonic motivations. It is therefore helpful to consider the likelihood of sharing as the result of an expected outcome analysis on the part of the user. While this may seem overly mechanical, it is legitimized by research that found that people are less likely to share good news with friends who have low self-‐esteem, not out of concern for their friend’s feelings but because they knew they were unlikely to receive the positive reaction they desired (MacGregor & Holmes, 2011). Given the motivations outlined above, the value of sharing is a factor of both entertainment value and the likelihood that the action will lead to the desired outcome (positive identity creation, information sharing, helping others). One can visualize the analysis as such: S = VEntert + (X � VUtility) – (Y � VDamage) – CAction Where:
S = value to sharer of sharing VEntert = value of entertainment X = likelihood of goal being met VUtility = value of goal being met Y = likelihood of damage being done CAction = cost of the action in time/effort
While tweaking the act of sharing to make it more entertaining for the sharer is an interesting challenge and reducing the cost is a universal goal, this section will focus on the factors that determine success for a sharer in terms of achieving goals and controlling damage. Each factor will be followed by suggestions for how this information might be used to increase the rates of prosocial behavior sharing. 6.1. Identity creation and maintenance
This is the most important motivation for sharing, because it is a primary motivation for using an online social network and guides sharing even when the primary purpose is to enlighten or provide entertainment. Anything that will impact online identity is likely evaluated in terms of how effective it is and how others will receive it. Here are the factors that lead to effective, positive, and safe identity claims:
1. Normative 2. Innocuous 3. Indirect 4. Targeted
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5. Community oriented
6.1.1. Users are more likely to share items that reflect normative qualities Zhao and colleagues demonstrated that there is a great deal of congruence among online identities and they seem to follow the rule of staying within socially agreed up on norms. First and foremost, this identity is social. For instance, most pictures are taken with a group (though this author believes it is an artifact of how pictures are taken, rather than curation by the profile owner). “Well-‐roundedness” was another big claim. Lastly, there were many claims of thoughtfulness—usually through the words of others, by posting quotes. There was also some expression of identity traits that fell outside dominant social norms. Some users posited a strongly hedonistic or superficial image of themselves. Less approved qualities were mitigated by using a joking manner or expressed via someone else, by posting a quote. In addition to what was claimed, it is important to note what was not claimed. Here are some of the characteristics that were not projected on profile pages:
1. Pessimism 2. Apprehension 3. Un-‐Spontaneity 4. Narrow focus 5. Academics 6. Religious (Zhao et al., 2008).
It is worth reminding the reader that there is a motivation to create a unique personal identity within established social norms. While normative behavior makes the bulk of a user’s identity claims, the unique combination or some small percentage of mildly deviant behaviors (within a group norm or pushing the boundary) are likely to exist in any identity claims. Indeed, Chan and colleagues found that within brand affiliations, consumers found a need to pick unique colors or odd variations as a way to stand out (Chan et al., 2012)
6.1.2. Users are wary of sharing controversial or obviously altruistic content It should be noted that moral/altruistic statements and behaviors often lead to a negative reception. There is a “holier than though” identity imparted on someone who behaves in an overtly altruistic way that extends beyond the community’s status quo. See sections 5.1.3 and 5.1.4 for more on the effect of differing community values. In a 2011 survey, an Ogilvy & Mather report showed that consumers who make an effort to consume sustainably feel ostracized for their behavior. The disapproval is not imagined. Half of all Americans being surveyed said they though green products were marketed to “Crunchy Granola Hippies” or “Rich/Elitist Snobs”. This came with negative qualitative remarks, such as:
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I really do think ‘being green’ these days is more of a lifestyle statement for people...I see many ‘granola hippies’ and ‘elitist snobs’ shoving their green lifestyles in people’s faces and it makes them seem on the fringes of society.
In the negative response, there is often a reaction to an implied threat or judgment against the original receiver. One respondent gave the answer:
One woman never colors her hair. She is very like ‘natural,’ she wears Birkenstocks (laughs)...I look at her in annoyance, cause I think she’s looking at me...
(Ogilvy & Mather, 2011)
This negative, defensive reaction is particularly true of moral stances that threaten the status quo. In the 1960’s in the US, nonsmokers and feminists were derided and ostracized in the same way that environmentalists are now. The research into this phenomenon goes beyond the scope of this paper. Political statements are dangerous for the same reasons. If Person A claims a political identity that is at odds with the political views of Person B, Person B is likely to attribute negative qualities towards them (Reeder et al., 2005). The more deeply someone feels about the issue, the more negatively they will perceive someone who disagrees (Reeder et al., 2005). This might have to do with the ‘similarity effect’, whereby people like others similar to them (Cialdini, 2009). However it likely goes deeper and reflects some perceived threat or judgment (Person B thinks Person A would not approve of Person B). This is implied by the Ogilvy quote above and by the results of a study showing that people think they agree more with their FB friends on political issues than they actually do. Stronger ties and political discussions among friends increase agreement, but don’t impact the perceptual gap do (Goel et al., 2010). This indicates that when discussing politics with friends, people avoid controversial issues or discussing issues in a way that reveals their true opinion. The logical conclusion is that people are aware of the potential negative reaction to politically discordant views and avoid socially risky statements. This is reinforced by statements made by subjects in the study by Wang and colleagues,
I got in a religious debate on Facebook. I did delete my comments but several people dropped me as their friend. …Even though I agreed with it, I partly regretted it because making statements about religious or political things are affine line. I have my beliefs but would never want my friends or family to think I was trying to force my beliefs on them [emphasis added]. I was afraid some of them might think that. (Wang et al., 2011)
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Conforming identities: Challenge and solution Unfortunately, in order to create social change, it is not enough that normative behaviors are shared. For altruism and other prosocial behaviors like civic engagement to increase, they need to be buoyed above the currently accepted level. This goes directly against a user's motivations in creating a socially approved online identity. Round the edges Altruistic behaviors or qualities should be framed in a normative fashion and emphasize the sender as well rounded and social, rather than as extreme, one-‐sided or negative. If a non-‐normative value is being claimed it seems people feel more comfortable if it is delivered with a softening joke or “wink” at recipients. Similarly, all debatable moral or political content should be declawed. For example, if the Occupy movement would like its community to promote civic engagement, rather than telling members to cite statistics, talk about the noble cause, or call for an overthrow of capitalism, they should ask members to:
• Take a picture of them and their friends smiling at a protest (well rounded, fun not altruistic)
• Circulate messaging about how occupy is for everyone: 99%! (not extreme, not political) Temporarily change the norms While permanently changing societal norms is very difficult, the recent Kony2012 phenomenon showed the power of creating trends. An analysis of the viral spread of Kony2012, showed that by asking all of their followers to tweet at the same time, they were able to create a “twitter bomb” and create the illusion that a large segment of the population shared their belief . This created a false norm around caring about Joseph Kony. Using this bomb, they were able to convert influential celebrities into advocates, perpetuating their “normative” message (Lotan, 2012). Organizations can try similar large scale efforts, or at a small scale, organizations either run outreach campaigns at times when there is a lull in social activity or create “minibombs” by postponing FB API calls from their website so that all shares for a given hour are sent at once. Re-‐anonymize Alternatively, though it may be difficult on FB as it is currently configured, removing identity from the situation would likely remove this concern altogether. In anonymous situations, as Zhao and colleagues discuss, people throw off their carefully constructed identities and let their “true selves” emerge and people say whatever they like. While this does remove an important motivation for sharing (identity maintenance), the amount of anonymous, user-‐generated online content shows that entertainment, persuasive, and altruistic motives are together strong enough to drive the creation of massive content stores. To test this theory, a FB application with a large existing userbase, like Causes, could post messages with anonymous protagonists : “A friend of this user donated XXX amount to YY”.
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6.1.3. Users make identity claims indirectly Zhao and colleagues’ study on identity formation examined the kinds of disclosures made on FB, differentiating between implicit and explicit identity statements. The study analyzed FB profiles and categorized the kinds of content being published. They found that the vast majority of identity statements were implicit. Users chose to identify themselves through a social group or organization, rather than communicate directly with the audience and to show through affiliations, rather than tell.
Figure 1 The continuum of implicit and explicit identity claims on Facebook (from Zhao et al., 2008)
6.1.4. Indirect is more convincing Zhao and colleagues speculate that indirect messaging allows users to establish their identity in a more convincing way: testimonials and affiliations are trusted more. Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, Westerman, & Tong postulate that secondary information has a much higher integrity than if the profile bearer had posted it themselves:
Results showed that complimentary, pro-‐social statements by friends about profile owners improved the profile owner’s social and task attractiveness, as well as the target’s credibility.
Subjects also found friends’ pictures to be meaningful, finding people with better looking friends more attractive (Walther et al, 2008). This author was unable to find data on what posting positive things about others did for a user’s reputation.
6.1.5. Indirect messaging allows for damage control Additionally, indirect helps shield individuals in important ways.
1. Replacing strong, single statements against multiple subtler statements hedge against changes of heart. It likely would be easier for a bureaucrat to look back at an old picture of himself at a Ramones concert than a status update that says, “I’ll never work for the machine”.
2. Crafting an identity through many brushstrokes allow the individual to make subtle alterations in the image seen by different audiences. Indeed, a paper on hipsters’ eating habit in the UK proposes that eating alternative food (vegetarian, non-‐commoditized) is
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ostensibly about dislike of corporate food systems, but is operationalized as an inconspicuous in-‐group signal of identity (Cronin et al., 2012).
3. Though Zhao doesn’t mention this, showing, rather than telling also avoids the
unmeasured social backlash against direct social communication. For example, imagine you saw these statements on a FB page and check your gut to see how they make you feel towards the writer:
• Self-‐promotion: “I am a great athlete.” • Personal awareness: “I am a very anxious person. I talk too much because I get
excited and find it hard to calm myself.” • Sincerity: “I am so proud of my best friend!” • Confidence: “I am going to ace that test!” • Morality: “I think we should all look at ourselves before we judge others.”
The annoyance, anger, or even hatred that is evoked by such direct statements is powerful. It is the author’s opinion that naked agendas, or merely visible analysis, make people very uncomfortable in a social setting. In the same way that there are purity taboos around behaviors that remind us of our physical nature, there are taboos against reminding people that we are aware of or actively managing external identities. In fact, direct statements are so disliked that people will make adventurous, often awkward or transparent attempts to avoid them. This has led to the phenomenon known as the “humblebrag”. A humblebrag is a statement intended to make a very strong, positive identity claim, presented as an accessory to a self-‐deprecating or misleading remark. It is the reverse of the backhanded compliment (and reflective of a similar social norm), yet directed at oneself. Like the backhanded compliment, if the true nature is detected, the issuer loses credibility. There is a twitter account called Humblebrag and blog posts dedicated to exposing and humiliating people whose humblebrags are too obvious. Here is a humblebrag and response from Grantland.com’s humblebrag hall of fame:
"I was mentioned in the NY times but the piece was so fucking dumb I didn't post it. All though he said nice things about me. #burningbridges" Yeah, but you just mentioned the piece, so clearly you wanted us to know about it. The only bridge burned here is the one between you and humility.
(Harris, 2010)
In fact, the humblebrag has turned into an awareness arms race. Many twitter users now apply the humblebrag hash to their own statements to acknowledge that they are bragging, and avoid criticism (Twitter, 2012). The author suspects the cynics will catch up soon.
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Indirect Messaging: Challenge and solution Unlike conspicuous consumption, an altruistic act itself is itself positive and requires an extra layer of camouflage to avoid backlash. “I just bought an iPod” indirectly connotes that you have expendable wealth. Sharing “I just donated $300 to the Planned Parenthood” directly states that you have done something noble and that you support Planned Parenthood. Vague To increase rates of altruistic sharing: Altruistic behaviors or qualities should be reflected indirectly. For example, if PETA wants vegans to “share” their behavior, rather than having them post a status update or add to their info page: “I am a vegan”, they could ask members to make intentionally subtle posts:
• Share a vegan recipe without explicitly saying it is vegan • Share an article about vegan bikers with the comment, “Inspiring”. • Like PETA (affiliation) • Take a picture at a vegan restaurant
Of these, affiliations through the “like” button are the most uniformly instituted and utilized. Past examples of successful, mass, indirect messaging using visual cues include:
• Livestrong bracelets (I support fighting cancer, maybe I’m sporty, or maybe I just like Nike)
• Pink cancer ribbons • Changing a profile picture
o Obamizer app: applies the classic Shepard Fairey Obama poster pattern to a user’s profile pic (2008)
o Wearing a hoodie for Travyon Martin (2012) o Blackout profile to protest SOPA (2012)
These are all typified by requiring an additional level of decoding to receive the message: Even the Obamizer app is ambiguous: maybe they support the president, maybe this it is just funny, maybe they are making a comment about hype. Divert Attention In addition to creating subtle messages, users can promote altruistic behavior indirectly, by crediting others for their altruism. One can applaud the efforts of friends who have done good deeds, publicly ask friends to do favors for them, or publicly invite friends to share, giving friends a “free pass” to promote their behavior. A great example is the Wish feature on Causes.com. This lets users ask their friends to publicly donate on their behalf as a Birthday wish, wedding wish, etc. Made famous in 2010 by Bill Clinton’s birthday wish (Huffington Post, 2010) this feature of the site has raised more than $15
Katz Sharing altruistic behavior… 17
million dollars, to date (http://wishes.causes.com/, accessed 5-‐6-‐12) out of $40 million total (http://www.causes.com/about, accessed 5-‐6-‐12). Even wishes, however, carry the “taint” of morality—as it suggests the requester would rather help others than get presents. Removing any obvious altruism from the sharer’s action might make this even more effective. For example, the statement “If I get 5 friends to donate to the Red Cross by Sunday (use this code: XXX), they will give me a free t-‐shirt! Help a brother out!” A variation on this hypothesis is tested in the study at the end of this paper.
6.1.6. Users look to share different things to different groups. While people are most interested in sharing normative or socially acceptable material, norms differ widely across groups. One of the motivations of using online social networks (among young people) is to represent a slightly different self to different groups, and FB now provides ample tools to control who sees which messages. Communications that are suboptimal for a group of conservative “friends” may be perfectly fine for another, more liberal group. This is particularly true with regard to controversial subjects like religion and politics. A study in 2011 created an environmental application on FB in an attempt to remove barriers, including “unsupportive social expectations”. Users of the application (self-‐selected) reported feeling safer making comments and asking questions within a group of people who shared similar beliefs. They also enjoyed peer approval and a gamification element that gave them points for their actions (Robelia et al., 2011). Lee and colleagues cite several studies showing that trust, strength of ties and similarity among members helps improve sharing within a group. Conversely, another study found that privacy concerns lead to lower sharing on FB and lower bonding (Stutzman et al., 2012). Many FB regrets in Wang and colleagues’ study were caused by sending a message to the wrong audience (Wang et al., 2011). It should be noted that targeting different messages to different people is not always the same as belonging to a community. For instance, my friend just invited 12 of his friends to see Paul Krugman at the Commonwealth Club in SF. This was a targeted list, but nobody else on the list knows each other and we will likely not meet again as a group.
6.1.7. Users share more within trusted communities2 Similar to matching audience to sharing message, is the practice of developing communities. While this is an established best practice for those seeking social interaction, it is also valuable for building identity through indirect means, as mentioned above. Lee and colleagues, cite several studies showing that the strength of community is very important to increasing WOM sharing. Their study showed that priming an individual to adopt an interdependent (rather than independent) sense of self, led to higher rates of word of mouth: suggesting that people are contributing out of a sense of altruism towards their
2 Also relevant to Section 6.2, Relationship management
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community. The study also showed that in many cases, people join branded communities because they represent a ready-‐made social group and provides an opportunity for social interaction. Brand communities also have established identities that one can borrow through affiliation and apply towards ones own self-‐representation. Lastly, they showed that WOM is higher in consumer created brand communities rather than marketer created communities. This reinforces the evidence that altruism is an important component of WOM. Targeting and community building: Challenge and solution: In addition to creating applications, using FB’s groups can improve the rate of sharing, as can the use of privacy controls to create custom lists in FB. This will create an environment where prosocial norms can flourish. If an organization like Change.org wants people to share that they have signed a petition to limit executive pay, rather than asking users to share the petition with all of their friends, or having the user select friends on their own, Change.org could create smart lists of “suggested” friends who might be sympathetic. This requires a great deal of information, but data is increasingly available. Selectively targeting messages to sympathetic recipients may be safer, but it somewhat defeats the purpose of generating mainstream awareness and support. Similarly, joining a group or community around altruistic or prosocial behavior might seem excessive to the mainstream target user who wants to incorporate good behavior into their lives without making it a life mission. In this case, simply sharing with close ties might be a way to target messages and use existing, tight knit communities (such as family or college friends). After all, close ties are likely to have more similar views. Shares to close ties are also more likely to be influential—FB’s analytics team ran a large study showing this (Backshy, 2012). Van Noort, Antheunis, and Van Reijmersdal ran a study showing that viral campaigns were more persuasive when they came from close ties and the recipient created a gentle interpretation of the sharer’s motives (Van Noort et al., 2012). Lastly, community highlights an important, but overlooked motivation for sharing: altruism. People share to help their community find information and be entertained. Creating framing around community and interdependence led to higher WOM levels in Lee and colleagues' study (Lee et al., 2012) and might also be effective in a prosocial setting if the desired share were framed as a favor to the community. For instance, if Greenpeace wants its members to share their opposition to a bill appearing before congress, it shouldn’t tell its members:
“Be proud of your position, let your friends know what you think. “
Instead, it should could ask its members,
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“As a valued member of our community and an ambassador to Greenpeace, please help us spread the word about this dangerous bill.”
Or it could invoke members’ commitments to their own communities and ask: “Protect your family community! Let them know about this dangerous bill.” 6.2. Relationship management
When strengthening relationships is a goal, sharing helps achieve this. Interestingly, volume matters more than content: Honesty and intent (consciously disclosing) do not lead to more intimacy.
Rather, a larger amount and more positive self-‐disclosure play an important role in enhancing feeling connected and intimate in Facebook. (Park et al., 2011)
Park, Jin, and Jin found that the desire to form a new relationship is associated with less honest, and more negatively toned disclosures and postulate that negatively toned messages are more likely to be perceived as “cool” than positive ones. This is backed by a study showing that males whose FB pages depicted normatively undesirable behavior (such as excessive drinking or sexual innuendo) were perceived to be more attractive. Females who made such comments were perceived to be less attractive (Walthers et al., 2008). Relationship management: Challenge and solution It seems that self-‐disclosure volume is good for the building and maintenance of relationships on FB. Great! The challenge in increasing altruistic behavior sharing is to create meaningful, (usually positive), altruistic disclosures that align with the goal of generating intimacy. As briefly mentioned above, creating community overlaps with relationship building, so many of the challenges and solutions listed in that box (Section 6.1.7) apply here as well. As with creating normative and indirect messaging, the challenge is to transform a message to be shared (e.g. “I donate to charity”) into something more indirect and social. For instance: “Stop buying so much crap!” à ”Hey I’m making my own table today, want to come help?” “It’s time to march for justice”à ”Hey, thought of you today. Want to hang out at the March on
Tues?
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“I donate to charity.” à “I want to hang out and trust your judgment: can you help me
figure out what charities to give to? Maybe over beer?” 6.3. Information and entertainment
When the motivation is to provide oneself or another with information or entertainment, the primary feature of importance is the external value of the content being shared. From an identity perspective, the quality/credibility of the content is seen to be a reflection of the user (Lee & Ma, 2012). Beyond that, users want to ensure that they are sharing something that the recipient will appreciate. Due to the importance of link-‐sharing, there have been many studies as to what makes something “viral” or spreadable. Below is just a sampling from that research. A recent study looked at coded New York Times items and how likely they were to reach the “most emailed list”. It found that of the many items coded, the items in Figure 2 were most predictive of whether or not an article made the list:
Figure 2 Factors impacting virality (from Berger & Milkman, 2012)
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Another study found that positive messages were shared more often, but how aroused a user is when considering the message has a much bigger, positive impact. Sadness is considered to create a low arousal state, while awe and anger created higher arousal and higher effects than mere positivity. In this study, the effect of arousal was captured with actual respondents reading articles while jogging on a treadmill (aroused) or not (Berger, 2011). Above, we showed how controversial items were potentially damaging to identity, but it is likely that controversial items are also more arousing—so the two effects when present together should counterbalance each other. Alternatively, one might avoid provocative or controversial content when making identity claims, but be more willing to share such content as a third party. Berger and Schwartz found that products that are publicly visible or cued more frequently by the environment led to higher immediate and long term levels of WOM sharing in another study. Interesting products have higher immediate WOM, but this effect does not last long. The conclusion is that interesting products that stay accessible in consumer’s minds are more likely to be shared (Berger & Schwartz, 2011). The application for applying this to issues in the news is discussed below. Baek and colleagues examined if the motivation for sharing had any connection to the kinds of links shared: news, entertainment, job related or organization. They found only the obvious connections that those looking to motivated to information were more likely to share news stories and the motivation to control others (not a popular one) was negatively correlated to the propensity to share entertaining content (Baek et al., 2011). Entertainment value: Challenge and solution Altruistic behavior isn’t always exciting or entertaining. That they just found a new organic toothpaste brand or that bill X is entering congress is not the kind of news people share with friends. As noted above, arousal is a very important feature of virality. Provoking/Humorous/Accessible It would behoove organizations to describe actions or news in a way that makes it “shareworthy”. In fact, a new enterprise called “Upworthy”, founded by Eli Pariser, a board member of MoveOn.org, and Peter Koechley, former managing editor of The Onion, attempts to do just that (Pariser, 2012). They take important political information and disguise it in an attention-‐grabbing, humorous, and easily digestible costume. In doing so, they copy many of the features of the inane viral content that spreads quickly online. Their motto is: “Make your friends accidentally think” (http://www.upworthy.com, accessed 5-‐4-‐12).
Here is an example of an Upworthy item:
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Figure 3 From Upworthy.com's FB stream (https://www.facebook.com/Upworthy, accessed 5-4-12)
Figure 4 A riff on the internet Venn diagram jokes, from Upworthy.com's FB header (https://www.facebook.com/Upworthy, accessed 5-4-12)
The MoveOn.org webpage has something similar:
Figure 5 From MoveOn.org's homepage (http://www.moveon.org, accessed 5-6-12)
As mentioned above, the need for provocative or controversial material is potentially at odds with users’ best interests in creating normative self-‐representations. Care should be taken to create “shareworthy” material without making potentially damaging identity claims. Gaming Another example of creating entertainment value is through gaming. In the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, social game maker Zynga raised over $1.5M by incorporating virtual Haiti-‐related virtual products into the game and donating the proceeds to charity (Hameed, 2010). The aforementioned study of an environmental FB application also demonstrated that
Katz Sharing altruistic behavior… 23
gamification is a powerful motivator for sharing (Robelia et al., 2011). In addition to giving a reason to share, gaming increases the VEntert metric in the sharing value equation above. Current events Berger and Schwartzs’ finding (2011) that environmental cues lead to higher rates of WOM suggest that as someone’s exposure to a topic increases, people are more likely to share it. This means content that is specific to the current public agenda is more likely to get shared than more universal topic that is getting less media attention. According to David Karpf, MoveOn.org and other next-‐generation political organizations have been able to successfully use the internet to capitalize on the latest news in real-‐time. This practice has been dubbed “headline chasing” (Karpf, 2010). 6.4. Differences among users
Another important factor in determining sharing volume is the user. Users’ likelihood of sharing vary quite a bit. Additionally, the motivations above are not all shared by everyone in equal proportions. Most of the studies looked at links shared, given the primary motivation of that particular person, supporting the notion that that there are distinct user types. Here is a succinct sample of the kinds of differences that have an impact on sharing propensity or method:
• Not everybody shares! Consumption online is much more common than production and there are many so-‐called “lurkers” who participate on FB only to gather information (Heinonen, 2011).
• Personality qualities lead to different levels of regret and posting. Explaining 24% of self-‐postings and 42% of postings about others (Moore & Elroy, 2011).
• Women share more than men (Glynn et al., 2012). This effect is not always found (Baek et al., 2011).
• Women affiliate with groups more than men (Haferkamp et al., 2012). • Unhappy people share more (Glynn et al., 2012). • People who spend more time online share more (Baek et al., 2011; Hyllegard et al.,
2011). • Mavens share more (Hyllegard et al., 2011) • Younger people are more likely to engage in WOM (Strutton et al., 2011) • In different countries, different kinds of sharing are more prevalent (Vasselou et al.,
2010) Wang and colleagues found that different groups of people use different self-‐censoring techniques. Young people simply avoid people of a certain social rank, such as parents or teachers. Professionals create boundaries around formal and informal relationships. Older people, on the other hand simply share with everyone or don’t share. As FB’s sophistication
Katz Sharing altruistic behavior… 24
increases, it is reasonable to assume that posting to different groups becomes easier and more common (Wang et al., 2011). People are different: Challenge and solution No one tactic will work with everyone. On the bright side, there is an opportunity online to personalize messaging and experiences to achieve optimal share rates. Effort should be taken to segment users based on demographic, psychographic or behavioral profiles and apply different tactics towards the different segment to achieve maximum results. For example, the civic engagement platforms Change.org and MoveOn.org very successfully send different petitions to different people. They vary the message based on the characteristics of the petition and the data they have about those people (Conversations with: Change.org employee, 2-‐7-‐12, MoveOn.org employee 2-‐8-‐12). In the world of political campaigns, this tactic has been around for decades and is called “microtargeting”.
7. Study
Given the above research, the author set out to test two of the proposed methods for increasing altruistic sharing. Specifically, I was interested in learning if people would be more likely to share their altruistic behavior if the request for sharing framed it as a favor, rather than an opportunity for self-‐promotion. The study also looked at how sharing an altruistic act indirectly, along with evoking a sense of community affected share rates.
H1: If request to share is framed as a favor, rather than an invitation for self-‐promotion, the sharing rates will increase.
H2: If the share content mentions the altruistic behavior only indirectly through a community lens, the sharing rates will increase.
H3: If the sharing is framed as self-‐promotion, and the content is promotional, the sharing rate will be close to 0.
7.1. Method For this experiment, 500 Haas students were recruited via email to fill out a survey. The survey asked 2 dummy questions (about sleeping habits and breakfast) and then asked one of the 4 questions below, determined randomly (Figure 6).
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Figure 6 Test prompts distributed randomly
If the respondent clicked on the link to share, they were taken to an FB page that told them the link was a dummy and they should return to the survey. Then they were asked why they chose to click the link. If the respondent chose not to share, they were asked how close they were to sharing and why they chose not to share. It was thought that the Indirect/community frame
Altruistic
Vague self-promotion
Blatant self-promotion
Indirect/community promotion
Frame Message
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would lead to the highest sharing rate, followed by the altruistic frame, the vague self-‐promotion, and the blatant self promotion frames. 7.2. Results Of the ~480 individuals who received the link to the survey, 108 filled out the survey completely. Of those, 89 were classmates of the author and 19 were in the year behind in the full time MBA program at Haas. The ~240 in the author’s class received a direct email from the author and it can be assumed that they were more familiar with the author. The ~240 in the year behind received the email through FB indirectly and most of them did not know the author personally. For both classes, the percentage of respondents who chose to share was 21% indicating that knowing the author did not impact the likelihood to share. As predicted, there was a sharp difference in sharing across the different frames (Figure 7).
Prompt Share No Share Total % Sharing Altruistic 11 13 24 46% Vague Self-‐Promo 2 22 24 8% Blatant Self-‐Promo 7 25 32 22% Indirect/C Promo 3 25 28 11% Grand Total 23 85 108 21% Figure 7 Share rates by prompt
Though there was no testing for significance, it is clear that posing the sharing as a favor to the author had a big impact on the sharing rate. This is despite the fact that the altruistic prompt’s share content was almost entirely self-‐promotional. However, the Indirect/Community promotion framing did not do well at all. Interestingly, the blatant self-‐promotion did reasonably well. Because the author is a social connection, it might have to do with the “free pass” principle suggested above. When asked why they shared, there was some difference among frames, but with such small numbers it is hard to make any conclusive judgments (Figure 8). It is interesting, however, that sharers given the altruistic frame were motivated by the desire to please the requester personally rather than by fulfilling their request (i.e. to help recruit others for the survey by sharing).
Wanted to promote your survey to
others
Wanted to let you know I cared
Wanted to let others know I
cared
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Prompt # % of Sharers # % of Sharers # % of Sharers Total Sharers
Altruistic 3 27% 9 82% 1 9% 11 Vague Self-‐Promo 2 100% 0 0% 1 50% 2 Blatant Self-‐Promo 4 57% 2 29% 2 29% 7 Indirect/C Promo 1 33% 3 100% 2 67% 3 Grand Total 10 43% 14 61% 6 26% 23 Figure 8 Top sharing reasons by prompt
When asked why they did not shared, the breakdown did not vary meaningfully across prompts. When totaling the number of responses for each reason, it is clear that the quality of the information being shared can be an important factor in determining not to share online, as seen in Figure 9.
Reason % # Afraid it was spam 7% 8
Didn't think it was interesting enough to share 56% 60 Kind of annoyed you asked, "dude". 15% 16 Didn't want to brag 11% 12 I don't post anything 20% 22 Don't have Facebook 3% 3 Didn't want to spend the time 8% 9 Other 9% 10 Figure 9 Reasons given for not sharing (no difference by prompt)
The people who shared reported having a slightly higher frequency of sharing, but this could easily be accounted for by the priming effect of having just shared or not shared. Interestingly, roughly 10% of the respondents never shared anything. The prompt asked how often users “posted” on FB, which is an equivalent term to how “share” is being used in the study.
Share Never <Once a Month
Once a Month
2-‐3 Times a Month
Once a Week
2-‐3 Times a Week Daily
Yes 4% 9% 17% 22% 22% 22% 4% No 12% 21% 11% 14% 18% 20% 5% Grand Total 10% 19% 12% 16% 19% 20% 5%
Figure 10 Frequency of sharing, by whether share was attempted or not
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7.3. Discussion The experiment supported hypothesis H1: a positive impact in the sharing rate of an altruistic behavior by framing the share request as a favor. Hypotheses 2 and 3 were not supported by the results. Indirect promotion coupled with community priming resulted in a low sharing rate. This was really surprising both because indirect promotion is so widespread (Zhao, 2008) and as the in-‐community feelings are at an all time peak as the school readies for graduation. As one respondent put it:
May have been more altruistic than usual because the prompt appealed to my loyalty to Haas and we're in the final weeks before graduation
Despite the author’s expectations, framing the request as blatant self-‐promotion led to a reasonable sharing rate. One explanation for this is that users are eager to blatantly self-‐promote, but await the explicit permission to do so. The prompt’s request in the “Blatant self promo prompt” provided this. Interestingly, the users who were given the altruistic framing and shared overwhelmingly cited their motivation as letting the requestor know they cared, rather than actually fulfilling the intent of his request. Perhaps this had to do with the mismatch of the share and the request. As one respondent put it:
FYI, considered accepting the post at first, thinking it would help you recruit participants (e.g. “I just did this survey, follow this link to do too”) -‐ but the generic "I just helped someone with their homework" didn't seem worthwhile.
This also suggests there is a strong social component to successful request framing. Another respondent wrote:
the term "would you help me out" is def what got me to post, the personal connection. You should try modifying the person requesting. Nice/likable requesters pervert the results. (Author note: #humblebrag!)
Of the three non-‐classmates who received this prompt, nobody clicked the link. With such a small numbers it is hard to make any conclusions, but further research might prove insightful. Most users who didn’t share cited the quality of the share text/activity as being below their standard for their audience. This reinforces the content success factors mentioned above: message quality is important both because people want to create value and because people do not want to hurt their reputation. Some respondent’s comments echoed this:
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It was more that this just [didn’t] seem like an important enough thing to share... Felt others would think spammy I only post REALLY interesting/important things to FB. Didn't seem worth it.
Didn't think it was worthy of my wall what I post reflects on me socially I only post things I care about I like to 'curate' my FB posts and honestly helping you with your homework just seems kind of lame to tell the world about.
This study was limited in many ways. The population consisted only of full-‐time MBA students at the Berkeley Haas School of Business (age ranged from 23-‐40). The nature of the survey created the deception that a click would lead to a share, but did not allow for a truly authentic sharing experience. In the future, connecting to the FB API will allow users to actually post or not post. Due to low survey size, multiple groups, and the trivial nature of the altruistic behavior, the prompts were designed to maximize sharing at the expense of experimental clarity. For instance, community and indirect should have been separated, but the author failed to come up with a compelling indirect promotion that did not involve community. Lastly, time did not allow for significance testing—any reader is welcome to use the data for their own analysis.
8. Conclusion This paper attempted to answer 5 questions and tested 3 hypotheses. The following is a summary of the findings. RQ 1: What are the motivations for using FB? People use FB for the formation and maintenance of relationships, and to create and maintain positive identities. In addition people use FB for information sharing and gathering, and entertainment.
RQ 2: What are the motivations for sharing on FB? The motivations for sharing on FB are similar to the motivations for being on FB. With sharing, the creation of a positive identity is most important, though belonging to a community and altruistic motivations behind information sharing also come into play. Controlling others is not a
Katz Sharing altruistic behavior… 30
motivation that leads to a lot of sharing. Lastly, preventing damage to one’s online identity is a primary concern, if not a motivation. In many ways, it is fear of social backlash that limits sharing more than anything.
RQ 3: Given these motivations, what factors mitigate sharing success? For positive identity formation, the following factors are thought to lead to success: Conforming to social norms and avoiding controversial or moral positioning, targeting different messages to different groups, and avoiding direct statements. For information sharing, entertainment and relationship building, the following factors are thought to lead to success: Creating communities, fashioning content that is positive, and induces excitement, creating meaningful content, and using content that a users will be reminded of.
RQ 4: What factors prevent the sharing of altruistic behavior from meeting user needs? Altruistic behaviors are hard to position indirectly and very susceptible to social backlash. Altruistic content has been packaged and presented in unexciting ways.
RQ 5: How can sharing of altruistic behavior be modified to increase sharing rates? Altruistic behaviors will be shared more if organizations
• Help users strip content of overt extremism and directly controversial statements • Help users share content in an indirect or subtle manner • Help users to target a receptive audiences • Help users share in ways that increase intimacy • Package the content and present it in flashier ways • Make the act of sharing more entertaining • Treat different segments of users according to their needs
All of the listed tactics are best understood given the context of the examples in the “”Challenges and solutions” boxes above. To summarize, organizations improve sharing rates of altruistic behavior by providing their membership with the guidance, tools, and content to share in ways that will please recipients and will not lead to identity damage. In particular, users and organizations need to weigh the value of increased sharing against the potentially harmful impact of diluting or otherwise manipulating their content. The author tested three of the learnings mentioned above using an online experiment with 110 MBA student test subjects The author found evidence to support the hypothesis that if a request to share is framed as a favor, rather than an invitation for self-‐promotion, the sharing rates will increase. The sharing rate was 46% for this framing, while the average was 21%. The evidence contradicted the other two hypotheses. The sharing rate of an indirectly promotional statement affiliated with a community was 11%, below that of a share directly framed as
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promotional. In turn the directly promotional framing led to a substantial sharing rate (22%). Though several elements of the experiment limit the ability to make generalized claims based on the results, the directional effects were strong and present interesting questions for further study. Sharing on FB represents an enormous opportunity for good behavior to spread, but given the dominant motivations for sharing on FB, altruistic content is less likely to be shared. It doesn’t have to be this way. By optimizing their messaging tactics, we believe that organizations can change this situation. Upworthy.com (introduced in section 6.3) is an organization founded to test this very premise. As co-‐founder Eli Pariser said in a recent interview:
[Our core competition is the] vast ocean of random stuff that winds up in the Facebook news feed that isn't about stuff that matters. If we can knock that down by a percentage point or two for a lot of people then we'll be really happy.
(Judd, N., 2012). Though the organization is new, early results have been remarkable. In this last week, Upworthy.com generated over a 250,000 views of an Obama campaign ad (a response to an attack ad) mostly by changing the headline (Judd, N., 2012). But this paper demonstrates that making content more entertaining, as Upworthy does, isn’t the only way. Organizations can follow many paths of the paths described to increase the sharing of altruistic behaviors on FB. This solutions proposed in this paper are far from exhaustive; as with many organizational challenges, success lies in paying close attention to the motivations and needs of constituents and developing innovative solutions to ensure those needs are met.
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