Emotional stimuli in social media user behavior: Emoji reactions on a news media facebook page

Abstract

Emotions influence cognitive processes such as attention to a Facebook post and lead to behavioral response, such as liking, sharing and commenting. In 2016 Facebook launched a new set of icons indicating emotions in addition to the Like button, therefore the data about emotional stimuli in social media user behavior can be gathered automatically. This study examines user response to the posts published by 18 Facebook pages of Israeli news media in Russian language and investigates relationships between selective, interpretative and productive activities of a news user. We advocate that the usage of Emoji reactions on Facebook media pages is negatively correlated with commenting and sharing. The Love icon is used in the same way as the traditional Like. Posts evoking a Sad reaction are less likely to be commented or shared than posts arousing any other reaction. Second, we measure the congruence between different reactions expressed in a choice of one Emoji icon. The Love icon is used in the most monosemantic way. On the contrary, the post evoking a Wow reaction might be responded with any other Emoji reaction with a moderate degree of probability. Possible meanings of the homogeneity of emotions shared in a media Facebook page community are discussed.