Identification of Factors Influencing the Content Engagement Effect in Social Media Communication
(A2019-7199)

AUTHORS

Melanie Schreiner, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria; René Riedl, Johannes Kepler University Linz

KEYWORDS

engagement; social media; effectiveness

ABSTRACT

The increasing efforts of researchers to study content engagement in social media have led to insights regarding the configuration of content characteristics (e.g., topic and components such as photo or length). As practical recommendations based on the research efforts are frequently contradictory (e.g., should photo or video content be preferred), our research goal was to identify the major influencers of the content/engagement relation, and so we conducted both a literature and content analysis of N=45 articles to develop a framework of potential influencers in that area. The results identify factors originating from five main sources along the social media communication process: i) community, ii) context of the content, iii) medium, iv) receiver, and v) sender. Our work contributes to the body of social media research with a framework that guides future research and helps practitioners to better understand the communication process in social media.