How Readability Shapes Social Media Engagement

• Main Authors: Chandler, V. (Author), Noseworthy, T.J (Author), Pancer, E. (Author), Poole, M. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2019
• Subjects: Commenting; Processing fluency; Readability; Sharing; Social media
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 We suggest that text readability plays an important role in driving consumer engagement on social media. Consistent with a processing fluency account, we find that easy-to-read posts are more liked, commented on, and shared on social media. We analyze over 4,000 Facebook posts from Humans of New York, a popular photography blog on social media, over a 3-year period to see how readability shapes social media engagement. The results hold when controlling for photo features, story valence, and other content-related characteristics. Experimental findings further demonstrate the causal impact of readability and the processing fluency mechanism in the context of a fictitious brand community. This research articulates the impact of processing fluency on brief word-of-mouth transmissions in the real world while empirically demonstrating that readability as a message feature matters. It also extends the impact of processing fluency to a novel behavioral outcome: commenting and sharing actions. © 2018 The Authors. Journal of Consumer Psychology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Consumer Psychology.