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EMAC 2024 Annual


May I have your attention, please! Social Media Engagement does not always reflect user attention
(A2024-119852)

Published: May 28, 2024

AUTHORS

Thomas Reichstein, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg; Florian Dost, Brandenburg University of Technology; Clara Galle, Brandenburg University of Technology

ABSTRACT

User engagement with social media content is the primary currency for social media marketers. An implicit assumption is that high engagement reflects high user attention to content. Surprisingly, this assumption has not been tested, and many users may only habitually engage with content without paying much attention to it. Using an eye-tracking experiment to examine subjects' gaze trajectories across 161 social media posts, we show that attention is indeed a strong predictor of engagement. However, the strength of the prediction is moderated by text length and emojis, with surprising results. Thus, the implicit assumption that engagement reflects attention is often misplaced.