Do Online Comments Influence the Public's Attitudes Toward an Organization? Effects of Online Comments Based on Individuals’ Prior Attitudes

Abstract

The authors investigated the effects of reading different types of online comments about a company on people's attitude change based on individual's prior attitude toward the company. Based on Social Judgment Theory, several hypotheses were tested. The results showed that the effects of online comments interact with individuals' prior attitudes toward a corporation. People with a strong negative attitude toward a corporation were less influenced by other's online comments than people with a neutral attitude in general. However, people with a prior negative attitude were more affected by refutational two-sided comments than one-sided comments. The results suggest that the effects of user generated content should be studied in a holistic manner, not only by investigating the effects of online content itself, but also by examining how others' responses to the content shape or change individuals' attitudes based on their prior attitudes.

An online experiment on the influence of online user comments on attitudes toward a minority group

“…On the other hand, contrary to the prediction of social judgment theory and to the findings of other studies (e.g., Velasco, 2016;Walther et al, 2010;Sung & Lee, 2014;Shi et al, 2014;Hsueh et al, 2015), we found no significant effect of exposure to negative comments on participants' attitudes. We are unable to assess the substantive value of this discrepancy at this point.…”

“…They found that positive and negative comments had positive and negative effects, respectively, on evaluations of the announcement and that the effects were stronger when prior attitudes were closer to the comments. Sung & Lee (2014) studied the effects of online comments on attitudes toward McDonald's. Based on a pretest, they placed participants in three groups (of prior negative, prior neutral and prior positive attitudes) and two weeks later they exposed each group to comments (positive, negative or two-sided) posted below a negative video about the company.…”

Circulating Humorous Antitobacco Videos on Social Media

“…Young (2008) found that humor decreases the argument scrutiny by reducing the individual’s cognitive availability to critically process the intended message. On social media, a video message is compiled not only by the original message sender but also by other users’ comments that may influence how users perceive a certain issue (Rim & Song, 2016; Sung & Lee, 2015; Walther et al, 2009). This begs a question: Could the backlash of using humor in health promotion, such as its tendency to distract, escalated in social media settings?…”

“…One unique characteristic of social media is that messages can be created/shared by users and the users also share their opinions through online comments (Sung & Lee, 2015), creating different contexts for how the messages are circulated. For instance, humorous health messages can be circulated where one’s interest is solely based on humorous elements (e.g., “being funny”) rather than the original intent of the messages (e.g., discouraging unhealthy behaviors or promoting health practices).…”

“…Studies found that others’ online comments shared on social media have impacts on individuals’ perception of the given issue/content itself (e.g., Rim & Song, 2016; Sung & Lee, 2015; Walther, VanDerHeide, Hamel, & Shulman, 2009). However, although social media shares common characteristics that distinguish it from traditional media, different platforms foster different types of social/communication interactions among users.…”