A mixed methods approach to the posting of benevolent comments online

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2016.02.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Mixed methods: qualitative study with interview and quantitative study with survey.

  • Social exchange theory with benefit-cost assessment.

  • Four benefit factors and one cost factor in the qualitative study.

  • Research model testing with six decision factors in the quantitative study.

  • Three main antecedents of posting benevolent comments online in terms of self-interest, altruism, and rationality.

Abstract

Cyberbullying by way of malicious online comments has been identified as a critical social issue. As a way to combat cyberbullying, it is important to promote the posting of benevolent comments, especially in response to malicious comments. In this study, we adopted a mixed methods approach in using social exchange theory to explore what motivates people to post benevolent comments online. We first adopted a qualitative study to explore the decision factors involved. These were then used as the basis for development of a theoretical research model to undertake a quantitative study. The results explain how people decide to post benevolent comments online. The study makes a strong theoretical contribution in demonstrating the decision factors underlying the posting of benevolent comments. It also has practical implications by providing guidance on how to combat cyberbullying through promoting the posting of benevolent online comments.

Introduction

Cyberbullying or electronic harassment has recently caused a vast amount of damage across the globe. In Singapore, 59.4% of students underwent at least one type of cyberbullying, and 28.5% were the targets of abusive comments on Facebook (Kwan & Skoric, 2013). In Australia, Charlotte Dawson who had hosted a TV program named “Next Top Model” committed suicide in 2012 after she was the target of malicious and abusive comments. Moreover, a survey of 3000 teachers by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, which is a teacher’s union in Britain, found that 42% of them had received insulting comments on their performance.1 Malicious comments are made as part of attacks that amount to cyberbullying.

The identification of cyberbullying as a critical social issue in the context of comments online and in social media has also attracted attention to the search for ways to prevent it and to deal with those who commit it. For example, there is a campaign on Facebook called “Help Stop the Stomping” that has the goal of preventing cyberbullying.2 Within the European nations, an anticyberbullying campaign named “The Big March” is considered the world’s first virtual global march in pursuit of children’s right to be safe from cyberbullying.3 “Sunfull” is an Internet campaign to promote posting benevolent comments online to counter bullying and the hateful comments that are posted.4 All of these anticyberbullying campaigns have in common the goals of not only stopping the posting of malicious comments, but also motivating people to post benevolent comments (i.e., comments that express goodwill and/or help others) as a kind behavior to foster civility on the Internet. However, promotion of the posting of benevolent comments should rank higher in importance in all these campaigns than merely stopping the posting of malicious comments because their cessation does not necessarily lead to the posting of benevolent comments. Posting benevolent comments may lead to the development of online social norms that in turn may reduce the posting of malicious comments and lead to a lessening of cyberbullying.

Despite the importance of benevolent online comments as a way to oppose cyberbullying, there is a lack of understanding about what motivates people to post benevolent comments in the online and social media contexts (Kim, Chan, & Gupta, 2015). Prior research on cyberbullying has mainly addressed issues of conceptual definition (Abu-Nimeh, Chen, & Alzubi, 2011; Slonje, Smith, & Frisén, 2013; Vandebosch & Cleemput, 2008), classification of cyberbullying types (Aoyama & Talbert, 2010), reasons for it (Varjas, Talley, & Meyers, 2010), the relationship between cyberbullying and traditional bullying (Brown, Demaray, & Secord, 2014; Kwan and Skoric, 2013), assessments of cyberbullying (Cetlin, Yaman, & Peker, 2011; Mason, 2008), its effects (Talwar, Gomez-Garibello, & Shariff, 2014; Dredge, Gleeson, & de la Piedad Garcia, 2014), and its prevention (Beale and Hall, 2007, Bhat, 2008; Diamanduros, Downs, & Jenkins, 2008; Keith & Martin, 2005).Of particular interest in the literature is the research on the prevention of cyberbullying. Even the few studies that have been done merely discussed strategies and guidance for school counselors and parents to prevent cyberbullying (Beale and Hall, 2007, Bhat, 2008; Diamanduros et al., 2008) and the creation of a culture of respect in the cyber world (Keith & Martin, 2005). Missing from the research is a theory-based empirical explanation of what factors lead to the posting of benevolent comments online.

This study thus aims to determine what motivates people to post these benevolent comments. Posting benevolent comments online can be viewed as a social exchange in which individuals offer something to someone without negotiating terms and without knowing whether or when the recipient will reciprocate (Molm, Takahashi, & Peterson, 2000). Hence, this study adopts social exchange theory to explore the posting of benevolent comments online. Social exchange theory holds that individuals decide if they want to perform such a behavior (i.e., posting benevolent comments) based on a cost-benefit analysis of its worth (Blau, 1964; Molm et al., 2000).

This research used a mixed methods approach for an exploratory qualitative study that was followed by a confirmatory quantitative study with a “developmental” purpose (Venkatesh, Brown, & Bala, 2013; p. 26). A sequential combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (i.e., mixed methods) is useful for developing a deeper understanding of a phenomenon (Lee, Noh, & Kim, 2013). The first stage of this research adopted a qualitative research method and then identified cost and benefit factors specific to the posting of benevolent comments. The identification of these factors was based on interviews with persons who had posted comments. The second stage used a quantitative research method by developing a theoretical research model based on social exchange theory and using the cost and benefit factors explored in the first stage. The model was validated by collecting survey data from online users. In this way, this study expects to advance the theoretical understanding of the posting of benevolent comments in an online context and knowledge of the drivers of this activity. Moreover, the study can inform social network service (SNS) providers on how to combat cyberbullying through informing them of the relevant cultural aspects of the online and social media contexts and teaching techniques to promote the posting of benevolent comments.

Section snippets

Social exchange theory

Social exchange refers to “reciprocal acts of benefits, in which individuals offer help, advice, approval, and so forth to one another without negotiation of terms and without knowledge of whether or when the other will reciprocate (Molm et al., 2000; p. 1396)”. Accordingly, in a social exchange actors initiate exchanges by performing a beneficial act for another without knowing whether, when, or to what extent the other will reciprocate. Posting a benevolent comment as prosocial behavior on

Research method

We first conducted an exploratory qualitative study. This exploratory study adopted an interview approach; such an approach has several strengths, such as exploring relevant factors and inferring relationships between them in a targeted research context (Yin, 2008). Interview questions – developed and posed to comply with social exchange theory – dealt with the benefits and costs of posting benevolent comments online.

In recruiting interviewees, we used the snowball sampling technique (Biernacki

Theoretical framework

Based on the qualitative study, we developed the theoretical framework (see Fig. 1). Those four benefit factors derived from the coding results were mapped to the benefits category of social exchange theory, and the cost factor was mapped to the costs category of the theory. Some of the factors were renamed in consideration of the research context, i.e., online. In addition to these benefit and cost factors explored earlier, we proposed a new factor, the perceived net value of posting

Discussion of findings

This study has three key findings. The most notable finding is that the perceived net value of posting benevolent comments is a main motivator that leads to intention to post. This finding agrees with the social exchange theory (Molm, 1997), which explains that the overall assessment of a social exchange behavior (i.e., posting benevolent comments) determines the behavior. It means that from the rationality perspective, people assess overall net value based on tangible and intangible benefits

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015S1A3A2046711). This work was also supported in part by the Yonsei University Future-leading Research Initiative of 2015 (2015-22-0053).

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