Using Retweets When Shaping Our Online Persona: Topic Modeling Approach1
Authors: Geva, Hilah; Oestreicher-Singer, Gal; Saar-Tsechansky, Maytal
Journal: MIS Quarterly (2019)
<jats:p>Theories of personal branding are built on the idea that each individual should be aware of the persona they present to the world. Nowadays, as social interactions are increasingly shifting to the online arena, users of social platforms are presented with many new opportunities and technology-enabled tools by which they can construct their online personas. A powerful type of tool that has emerged in this ecosystem is the ability to reiterate a friend’s activity, that is, to redistribute an exact copy of the content that the friend has posted online (e.g., words, videos, or pictures) and to incorporate it into one’s own online image. In this work, we examine how users employ reiteration tools when presenting themselves and shaping their online presence. We focus on retweeting behavior on Twitter and study the spectrum of topics that users choose to reiterate. We hypothesize that users’ retweeting behavior will show patterns that are theorized to characterize effective personal branding strategies: Specifically, when reiterating content produced by others, a user will maintain a persona that is consistent with the persona portrayed in self-produced tweets.</jats:p> <jats:p>W…