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Who shows more emotion when interacting with a company on social media? A study of political orientation and tweet sentiment
Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing,
12
(1),
81-99
(2024)
Abstract
This study provides insights into how consumers interact with companies on social media. The study draws upon the theory of personality and political orientation to examine the relationship between consumers’ political orientation and the emotion used in their online interactions with companies. To provide additional understanding of this relationship, the study incorporates the political orientation of companies as a moderator. Leveraging Twitter (now known as ‘X’) as a research context, the study provides empirical evidence that more conservative consumers show less positive emotion when interacting with companies. The findings suggest that this relationship is weaker when the company involved has a more conservative (or less liberal) political orientation. Finally, the main effect follows a non-linear pattern that becomes stronger at an exponential rate among the most conservative consumers.
Keywords: social media; consumer behaviour; consumer emotion; political orientation; Fortune 500 companies; tweet sentiment; congruence of political orientation.
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Jong Seok Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Accounting & Information Management in the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr Lee holds a doctor of philosophy in business administration from Georgia State University, a master of management information systems from the University of Arizona, and a bachelor of business administration from Soongsil University. Dr Lee’s research is centred on IT project management and behavioural decision making in the digital environment. His work has been published in such scholarly journals as Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Association for Information Systems and Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, and presented at such international as including the International Conference on Information Systems and Academy of Management Meetings.
Jeffrey P. Kaleta is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Information Systems in the Walker College of Business at Appalachian State University. Jeff holds a doctorate of philosophy in business administration from the University of Memphis and a master of management information systems from Murray State University. Jeff has spent nearly ten years working in industry as a design engineer, project leader and continuous improvement manager. His research interests include user behaviour in social media, information search in electronic environments and the analysis of unstructured textual data.
