Perception of pranks on social media: Clout-lighting

Abstract

The development of the internet and social media has created new opportunities for using pranks as disguised means of generating clicks and social media engagement by social media users. As a means of humor, a prank has formed one of the major contents of social media landscape purposively designed to draw public attention to perpetrators’ walls and to generate comments in a social media driven economy of pay-per-click/view. This study aims to examine the reasons people carry out pranks against their intimate partners and to also find out if there is a relationship between self-esteem and the tendency to carry out pranks against ones intimate partner and to share such videos online. The study revealed that social media use, age, gender and the partners’ self-esteem predict the tendency for pranks among romantic partners in a relationship and that that pranks decrease the level of satisfaction in relationship among partners.