How significant are users’ opinions in social media?

• Date: 30 September 2014
• Published date: 30 September 2014
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJAIM-02-2014-0010
• Pages: 254-272
• Author: Hamid Khobzi,Babak Teimourpour
• Subject Matter: Accounting & Finance,Accounting/accountancy,Accounting methods/systems

SPECIAL ISSUE PAPERS SECTION

How signicant are users’

opinions in social media?

Hamid Khobzi

Department of Industrial Engineering, Eyvanekey Institute of Higher

Education, Eyvanekey, Iran, and

Babak Teimourpour

Department of Industrial Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University,

Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to assign polarity score to each post from Facebook fan pages,

and then examine whether the Comments submitted by users on a post from fan page have a signicant

relationship with the popularity of that post. Being aware of how to enhance the popularity of posts will

help companies in terms of administrating their fan pages.

Design/methodology/approach – In the context of fan page and post popularity, the authors test

signicance of the relationship between Comments’ polarity and number of Likes and Comments of a

post in different Facebook pages by regression method. The data are collected from different fan page

posts in Facebook, and a sentiment analysis approach is proposed to accomplish this research.

Findings – Results show that the relation between users’ Comments and popularity of fan page posts

is strongly signicant. Outcomes of this research are useful for every company in terms of monitoring

and managing their brand fan pages on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Originality/value – Investigation of factors inuencing popularity of fan page posts in social media

is almost a new area of study that dates back to recent years. The authors use a sentiment analysis

approach to evaluate a new concept describing the relationship between users’ Comments and

popularity of posts from Facebook fan pages. Moreover, a part of dataset is extracted from Facebook by

a crawler which is an advantage to prior studies.

Keywords Facebook, Fan page, Online social network, Post popularity, Sentiment analysis,

Social media monitoring

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

By vast growth of social media through the people, it is becoming more common for

companies to include social media as a part of an overall business strategy, particularly

in the area of marketing. There are different denitions about social media and its

classication; however, these denitions are mostly similar. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010)

have dened social media as “a group of internet-based applications that build on the

ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and

exchange of user-generated content”. Based on their classication, social media include

these specic categories: collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social

networking sites (SNS), virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds. Also in their

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1834-7649.htm

IJAIM

22,4

254

Received 27 February 2014

Revised 31 May 2014

30 July 2014

Accepted 30 July 2014

International Journal of Accounting

& Information Management

Vol. 22 No. 4, 2014

pp. 254-272

© Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1834-7649

DOI 10.1108/IJAIM-02-2014-0010

view, what distinguishes social media from many common traditional media is that they

are more accessible and inexpensive than traditional communication tools. In addition,

there was nothing as user-generated content in traditional media which is a common

feature of social media nowadays.

Most companies and business owners tend to have their presence felt on social media

Web sites to attract larger number of potential customers. It’s due to the fact that millions of

youngsters and adults use social media Web sites every single day. They search their friends

online and communicate with them and share information, photos and videos by utilizing

these Web sites. Recently, SNS have expanded very quickly and turned to enormous media.

With the rise of SNS, a new world of collaboration and communication is created.

Communication is the main feature of SNS by which people are able to contact any person

across the world. In addition, there are lots of interesting features which have caused a

number of scholars and practitioners, particularly in the eld of business, to focus on SNS.

Actually, SNS provide the opportunity for the business owners to learn about their

customers’ needs and offer effective ways to obtain insights about them which were not

previously available (Pookulangara and Koesler, 2011).

Some of SNS such as Facebook and Twitter make it possible for business owners to create

a fan page for their brands or services. They are able to publish unlimited amount of posts

related to their brands or services on fan pages. Also, their customers or users can follow

these fan pages and Like or Comment on their posts (de Vries et al., 2012). Regarding to the

popularity of SNS among users, numerous Comments or reviews are being submitted at fan

pages every day. Based on the viewpoint of de Vries et al. (2012), liking and commenting on

a brand post is similar to Word-of-Mouth (WoM) communication and the number of these

Likes and Comments inuence brand posts popularity.

People always inuence others decisions in their daily interactions through different

ways. However, the most prominent way is what we know as WoM nowadays. WoM is

so inuential that in comparison to performance of traditional marketing methods,

Trusov et al. (2009) showed that its elasticity is approximately 20 times higher than

elasticity for marketing events and 30 times higher than elasticity for media

appearances. As mentioned previously, one of the most common features of SNS is their

capability of submitting Comments or reviews by users under each online post. For

instance, an online review about a product in an online shopping Web site which is

submitted by a customer and is likely to be optimistic (positive) or pessimistic

(negative), is a sort of electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWoM) (Jalilvand et al., 2011). Online

customers are more accessible to one-on-one processes, and also more active and

discerning (Brown et al., 2007). Accordingly, concentration on these online opinions,

reviews or Comments submitted by customers or users on online social networks,

Weblogs or online shops can provide the company with a good source of information

which can be used as a means of business development.

Yet, many executives eschew or ignore this type of media only because they do not

know what SNS are capable of, what the different forms of it are, and how to engage with

it and learn (Kietzmann, 2011). This is the main reason for hitting the start button of this

research. We want to unveil a hidden relationship associated with fan pages in social

media such as Facebook to make a better understanding about utility of this type of

media. Being aware of how the number of Likes or Comments will increase – how to

enhance the popularity of posts – will help companies in terms of administrating their

fan pages. By making a post popular, companies are likely to motivate more users to

255

Users’ opinions

in social media