Reciprocal nature of social capital in Facebook: an analysis of tagging activity
| Date | 09 October 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-02-2016-0042 |
| Pages | 826-839 |
| Published date | 09 October 2017 |
| Author | Taehyun Ha,Seunghee Han,Sangwon Lee,Jang Hyun Kim |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Reciprocal nature of social capital
in Facebook: an analysis of
tagging activity
Taehyun Ha, Seunghee Han, Sangwon Lee and Jang Hyun Kim
Department of Interaction Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate how we can understand social media interactions
better by explicating the process of social capital formation on Facebook from a reciprocity perspective.
Design/methodology/approach –This study observed users who got tagged on Facebook by his/her
friends and how s/he responded to that tagging activity. In total, 4,666 posts and 418,580 comments from
The New York Times Facebook page were collected for the observation.
Findings –A majority (77.87 percent) of users who were tagged by their friends showed reactions to their
tagging. In detail, 33.63, 44.20, and 0.04 percent of users responded by comments, “Likes”, and “Shares”,
respectively. In total, 90.11 percent of the comments and 98.58 percent of the “Likes”were expressed on a
comment or sub-comment, and only 9.89 percent of the comments and 1.42 percent of the “Likes”were
expressed on a post. This indicates that a high percentage of users respond to their tagging notification, and
they prefer dialogic responses to non-dialogic responses.
Originality/value –Previous studies have focused on photo tagging activity in social media, but user
tagging activity had not been studied enough. This study examines the effects of Facebook tagging activity
from a reciprocal perspective.
Keywords Facebook, Reciprocity, Social capital, Tagging
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Tagging Facebook friends is one of the most ingenious and popular features on the site.
Facebook intended for these tags to allow users to expand and enrich the way they share
on Facebook. When a user tags friends in a post, a notification message is automatically
sent, and the tagged friends will be notified that they have been tagged. At the same time,
other members who are friends of the tagged users may be informed that their friends
have been tagged by someone. Recent studies show that there is a growing interest in
understanding people’s perceptions of these sharing modalities. Most of the studies
dealing with Facebook tagging activity focused on photos and showed the tagging
activity to be effective in fostering user involvement (Burke et al., 2009; Hampton et al.,
2012; Pesce et al., 2012). However, triggering factors of tagging and users’responses were
not examined in detail in past studies. The reason for this is that the tagging activity and
its interactive process basically cannot be observed without tracking each tag and its
subsequent responses.
Analyzing the tagging activity can significantly contribute to understanding user
behaviors in Facebook. One of the most important characteristics of the tagging activity
is that it has interactivity in itself (Ames and Naaman, 2007; Lewis et al., 2008; Savage
et al., 2015). As Kiesler et al. (1984) mentioned, one of the most notable differences between
offline and online communication is insufficient feedback during offline communication,
such as facial expressions and voice (i.e. regulating feedback). However, they discussed
the possibility that the lack of feedback can provoke users to be more responsive to
immediate textual cues. Such a possibility allows our expectation for Facebook, which is
one of the most popular social communication networks, to show a high degree of
response rate for the tagging activity.
Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 6, 2017
pp. 826-839
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-02-2016-0042
Received 4 February 2016
Revised 1 May 2017
Accepted 5 July 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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826
OIR
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