Should I Comment? Online Engagement and What We Know (and Don’t Know) About Social Media Interaction | Interdisciplinary Lunch Series

Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/11/2014
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm

On Friday, April 11, 2014, the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will host an interdisciplinary lunch open to faculty and graduate students from across the UNC system. The topic will be “Should I Comment? Online Engagement and What We Know (and Don’t Know) About Social Media Interaction,” led by Gi Woong Yun, associate professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University.

Amazon’s early success was largely due to its reputation and recommendation systems, a model that has been followed by many online companies including Netflix, Yelp, and Waze.  News sites like The Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal also engage in reader recommendations and comments, but such engagements often come at a price. Flaming, libeling, and trolling are among the many challenges for services that want to solicit content from online users.  The risks of legal, ethical and business problems can be substantial. Researchers are only now beginning to understand the complex nature of social interactions online. Although the frameworks used by researchers need further refinement, these approaches can help us understand more about what motivates online users to engage online and how that might be managed. During the luncheon, we will discuss the frameworks that have been utilized by researchers, what they have found and the applications of that research in facilitating online social interactions and commenting.

Gi Woong Yun is an associate professor at Bowling Green State University. His research focuses on interaction on online media and data analysis methods. His recent projects are about selective postings online and twitter network analysis.

April’s lunch discussion will be held from noon to 1:15 p.m. on Friday, April 11 in the Carroll Hall Room 283 on the UNC-CH campus. We will provide box lunches and drinks. RSVP using the form below by Tuesday, April 8.

Background Readings

• Fixing Your Online Reputation: There’s An Industry For That, Steve Henn, May 29, 2013, NPR: All Things Considered
• Moderation Matters for Online Commenting, Josh Wolf, December 13, 2013, Journalism that Matters
• The Power of Popularity: An Empirical Study of the Relationship Between Social Media Fan Counts and Brand Company Stock Prices, O’Connor, A. J., 2013, Social Science Computer Review (Requires ONYEN login)
• “Highly Recommended!” The Content Characteristics and Perceived Usefulness of Online Consumer Reviews, Willemsen, L. M., Neijens, P. C., Bronner, F. and de Ridder, J. A., 2011, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (Requires ONYEN login)
• Selective Moderation, Selective Responding, And Balkanization Of The Blogosphere: A Field Experiment, Yun, G., Park, S., Holody, K., Yoon, K., & Xie, S., 2013, Media Psychology (Requires ONYEN login)

RSVP