Incremental Persuasion through Microblogging: A Survey of Twitter Users in Latvia

Agnis StibeResearcher and Doctoral Candidate

Department of Information Processing Science

Incremental Persuasion through Microblogging:

A Survey of Twitter Users in Latvia

Harri Oinas-Kukkonen

Ilze Bērziņa

Seppo Pahnila

Agnis Stibe et al. “Incremental Persuasion through Microblogging: A Survey of Twitter Users in Latvia”

Context

June 3, 2011 – Columbus, OH, USAThe Sixth International Conference on Persuasive Technology

Microblogging

Online social networks

Persuasion


Related research

• Three main dimensions:– Persuasion

• An active attempt to influence people’s action or belief by an overt appeal to reason or emotion [Wright, J. S. and Warner, D. S. 1962.] or communication intended to influence choice [Brembeck, W. L. and Howell, W. S. 1976.] One of the most important strategies for influencing beliefs and behavior [Fishbein, M., Ajzen, I. and McArdle, J. 1980.]

– Online social networks• When a computer network connects people or organizations, it is a social network

[Garton, L., Haythornthwaite, C. and Wellman, B., 1997.] A new phenomenon of mass interpersonal persuasion is introduced [Fogg, B. J. 2008.] In online social networks persuasion happens in predictable ways [Weiksner, M. G., Fogg, B. J. and Liu, X. 2008.]

– Twitter as microblogging service• The intentions of Twitter users combine daily chatting, conversations, sharing of

information, and reporting of news [Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T. and Tseng, B. 2007.]

• There are distinct classes of Twitter users, such as broadcasters, acquaintances, miscreants or evangelist [Krishnamurthy, B., Gill, P. and Arlitt, M. 2008.]

• The driver of Twitter usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the declared set of friends and followers [Huberman, B. A., Romero, D. M. and Wu, F. 2009.]

• Twitter provides surprising degree of conversationality facilitated by its features [Honeycutt, C. and Herring, S. C. 2009.]

• The first quantitative study on the entire Twitter sphere marked a deviation from known characteristics of human social networks [Kwak, H., Lee, C., Park, H. and Moon, S. 2010.]



Persuasion in Information Systems

• Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) model defines 7 postulates:


1. Information technology is never neutral.

2. People like their views about the world to be organized and consistent.

3. Direct and indirect routes are key persuasion strategies.

4. Persuasion is often incremental.

5. Persuasion through persuasive systems should always be open.

6. Persuasive systems should aim at unobtrusiveness.

7. Persuasive systems should aim at being both useful and easy to use.

Oinas-Kukkonen, H. and Harjumaa, M. 2009. Persuasive Systems Design: Key Issues, Process Model, and System Features. Communications of the Association for Information Systems 24, 28.


Research question


What kinds of inherent persuasion patterns

do exist in Twitter that can

change users’ behaviors and/or attitudes?


Research settings


July 19-28, 2010Latvia

Quantitative survey online:-37 questions

-403 valid responses

Invitations for users:-7 tweets by authors

-1 author’s blog entry in

- http://ilzeberzina.wordpress.com/

-Several authors’ messages in other social networks

-37 retweets by other Twitter users

-1 reference in technology blogger article


Profile of the respondents



Number of followees and followers you have in Twitter?



How often do you tweet?


χ2(6)=18.059, p=0.006

The amount of tweeting increases over time.


Regarding content in Twitter you consider yourself as?


χ2(9)=29.789, p=0.000

Experienced users generate more content than new users.


What is the level of credibility in Twitter?


χ2(9)=21.130, p=0.012

The longer one has used the Twitter the higher trust the user has for it.


Are there unwritten behavioral rules in Twitter?


χ2(6)=19.064, p=0.004

Twitter users learn over time unwritten communication and/or behavioral rules in Twitter.


Is Twitter a powerful tool to call to action outside the virtual world?


χ2(6)=18.551, p=0.005

Twitter is powerful tool to call for action offline, i.e. outside the virtual world, and experienced users are more ready to take action based on their communication via Twitter.


Summary of findings


Content generators

Trust information

Recognize unwritten

communication rules

Powerful tool to call to

action outside the virtual

world

Number of followers and

followeesIntensity

of tweeting


Conclusions

• The findings from this survey revealed interrelationships among the responses, which support the hypothesis of Twitter users being persuaded to change their behavior over their use of the Twitter application/platform.

• These findings explicitly convey to the main idea of the fourth postulate of PSD framework, which states that persuasion is often incremental.

• 4th postulate implies that a persuasive system should enable making incremental steps towards the target behavior, and Twitter seems to follow this model in areas covered in this survey.



4th postulate of Persuasive Systems Design framework


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Incremental Persuasion through Microblogging: A Survey of Twitter Users in Latvia