A Multilevel Perspective to Social Media Influentials' Frame Building Across Crises. (August 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhao, Xinyan
• Is Part Of: Social science computer review. Volume 41:Number 4(2023)
• Page Start: 1296
• Page End: 1315
• Publication Date: 2023-08
• Subjects: social media -- crisis communication -- influentials -- frames -- multilevel modeling; Social sciences -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Computers -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Microcomputers -- Periodicals; Sciences sociales -- Informatique -- Périodiques; Micro-ordinateurs -- Périodiques; 300.285
• DOI: 10.1177/08944393211073746
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0894-4393

Abstract

Social media influentials play key roles in information creation and impact people's crisis interpretations and behavioral intentions. Applying a multilevel perspective, this study examined how various social media influentials' frame building was affected by crisis clusters and message characteristics. Social media influentials' tweets were extracted from over a million tweets from eight crises. A random sample of 2, 000 tweets was analyzed by content analysis. The results showed that social media influentials' use of responsibility and topic frames was affected by both crisis-level factors (i.e., crisis origin and organization type) and message-level factors (i.e., communicative functions and types of influentials). These findings support the importance to understand the contextual factors that condition influentials' frame building on social media.