Badges in social media: A social psychological perspective

Abstract

Representing achievements as badges or trophies is a standard practice in online gaming. Awarding badges has also become a key ingredient in “gamifying” online social media experiences. S ocial systems such as Foursquare , StackOverflow , and Wikipedia have popularized badges as a way of engaging and motivating users. In this paper we deconstruct badges and present five social psychological functions for badges in social media contexts: goal setting, instr uction, reputation, status/affirmation, and group identification. We argue that future research should further explore these five functions and their application in specific contexts.