| Summary: | Purpose—Using a sample of universities from Europe and North America the research herein seeks to understand the content trends of university brand pages through an exploration of the social community and the measurement of user participation and behavior. The analysis relies on an artificial intelligence approach. Through the verification of interactions between users and content on the university brand pages, recommendations are made, which aim to ensure the pages meet the needs of users in the future. Design/methodology/approach—The study sample was drawn from six well-known universities in Europe and North America. The content of 23,158 posts made over the course of nine years between 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2019 was obtained by a web crawler. Concepts in the fields of computer science, data mining, big data and ensemble learning (Random Decision Forests, eXtreme Gradient Boosting and AdaBoost) were combined to analyze the results obtained from social media exploration. Findings—By exploring community content and using artificial intelligence analysis, the research identified key information on the university brand pages that significantly affected the cognition and behavior of users. The results suggest that distinct levels of user participation arise from the use of different key messages on the university fan page. The interactive characteristics identified within the study sample were classified as one of the following module-types: (a) information and entertainment satisfaction module, (b) compound identity verification module or (c) compound interactive satisfaction module. Research limitations/implications—The study makes a contribution to the literature by developing a university community information interaction model, which explains different user behaviors, and by examining the impact of common key (image) clues contained within community information. This work also confirms that the behavioral involvement of users on the university’s brand page is closely related to the information present within the university community. A limitation of the study was the restriction of the sample to only European and North American cultural and economic backgrounds and the use of Facebook as the sole source of information about the university community. Practical implications—Practically, the research contributes to our understanding of how, in official community interactions, user interactions can be directed by features such as information stimuli and brand meanings. In addition, the work clarifies the relationship between information and user needs, explaining how the information characteristics and interaction rules particular to a given school can be strengthened in order to better manage the university brand page and increase both the attention and interaction of page users. Originality/value—This research provides an important explanation of the role of key information on the university fan pages and verifies the importance of establishing key (image) clues in the brand community, which in turn affect user cognition and interaction. Although related research exists on information manipulation and the importance of online communities, few studies have directly discussed the influence of key information on the fan pages of university brands. Therefore, this research will help to fill gaps in the literature and practice by examining a specific context, while at the same time providing a valuable and specific reference for the community operation and management of other related university brands.
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