Social Media Research
Kara Bentley- kbentley@chapman.edu
Charlene Chu- cchu@chapman.edu
Cristina Nistor- nistor@chapman.edu
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Khushi Patel- khpatel@chapman.edu
Shaan Parol- parol@chapman.edu
College: Argyros School of Business and Economics
Overview of scholarly research/creative activity: Our team analyzes various aspects of the current social media environment using novel datasets of influencers and their followers.
Specific projects working on: Consumers use social media to create content, generate online word-of-mouth, communicate with brands and other consumers across a global marketplace. Influencers have a truly global reach across the world. Their followers choose to engage with influencers who deliver content that is timely and interesting. However, there is little research on international aspects of social media, such as country of origin effects or variety seeking behavior across countries. Our project seeks to analyze the forces that drive consumer engagement across countries using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. We rely on a novel dataset of global sustainability influencers to empirically determine the forces that drive engagement for followers across the world. Our results indicate that the country match between the influencer and the followers is an important driver of engagement and is correlated with followers’ consumption behavior of social media content.
Number of students looking to work with: 1-2
When students are needed: Fall 2020, Interterm 2021, Spring 2021, Summer 2021
Requirements for students who work with you: detail oriented, comfortable with excel
What would students be expected to do: data search, data entry, statistical analysis