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Hong Kong Baptist University HKBU Institutional Repository Open Access Theses and Dissertations Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-14-2017 How prosocial and alarm words predict online reads, responses, and relays Yu Leung Ng Follow this and additional works at:https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa Recommended Citation Ng, Yu Leung, "How prosocial and alarm words predict online reads, responses, and relays" (2017).Open Access Theses and Dissertations. 393. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/393 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at HKBU Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of HKBU Institutional Repository. For more information, please [email protected]. HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY Doctor of Philosophy THESIS ACCEPTANCE DATE: August 14, 2017 STUDENT'S NAME: NG Yu Leung THESIS TITLE: How Prosocial and Alarm Words Predict Online Reads, Responses, and Relays This is to certify that the above student's thesis has been examined by the following panel members and has received full approval for acceptance in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Chairman: Dr. George Cherian Associate Professor, Department of Journalism, HKBU (Designated by Dean of School of Communication) Internal Members: Dr. Xu Kaibin Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies, HKBU Dr. Song Celine Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism, HKBU External Members: Dr. Li Cong Associate Dean for Graduate Studies School of Communication University of Miami USA Dr. Lee Lai, Annisa Associate Professor School of Journalism and Communication The Chinese University of Hong Kong In-attendance: Prof. Zhao Xinshu Chair Professor in Communication, Department of Communication Studies, HKBU Issued by Graduate School, HKBU How Prosocial and Alarm Words Predict Online Reads, Responses, and Relays NG Yu Leung A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Principal Supervisor: Prof. Xinshu Zhao Hong Kong Baptist University August 2017 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis represents my own work which has been done after registration for the degree of PhD at Hong Kong Baptist University, and has not been previously included in a thesis or dissertation submitted to this or any other institution for a degree, diploma or other qualifications. I have read the University’s current research ethics guidelines, and accept responsibility for the conduct of the procedures in accordance with the University’s Committee on the Use of Human & Animal Subjects in Teaching and Research (HASC). I have attempted to identify all the risks related to this research that may arise in conducting this research, obtained the relevant ethical and/or safety approval (where applicable), and acknowledged my obligations and the rights of the participants. Signature: Date: August 2017 i Abstract This thesis empirically investigates alarm and prosocial words in online news headlines and the associated reads (the number of clicks), responses (including the number of likes, dislikes, and comments), and relays (the number of shares). I analyze over 170,000 online news headlines and mainly the associated number of reads and likes for each news story on an online news platform. Theoretically, based on the meta-level evolutionary theory-evolution by natural selection-I propose a middle-level evolutionary model of prosocial media effects from a nature-nurture interactive perspective. Then, I propose a specific evolutionary model that was derived from the proposed middle-level model, the human alarm system for sensational news, a psychological mechanism designed to detect and concern threatening news. I generate research questions from the specific model to test whether news headlines with alarm words attract more likes as a survival concern indirectly through an increased number of reads as a selection device, and whether prosocial words in headlines serve as a moderator. The results of a conditional indirect effect model showed that given that online readers click on (i.e, read) news headlines with alarm words, the fact that it has a prosocial word in the headlines leads readers more likely to “like” it. The empirical findings’ theoretical and methodological contributions, research agenda, and examples of implications for future studies are discussed. ii Acknowledgement I thank my principal supervisor Prof. Xinshu Zhao, co-supervisor Dr. Dominic Yeo, internal examiners Prof. Cherian George, Prof. Kara Chan, Dr. Céline Song, and Dr. Kaibin Xu, external examiners Dr. Annisa Lee Lai and Dr. Cong Li, executive secretary Ms. Eve Cheung, and anyone who provided help for this thesis. All parts of this thesis are my own work, except Chapter 4.2 (p. 69-72), which was done by Prof. Xinshu Zhao and his helpers. Parts of this thesis are published in: Ng, Y. -L. (2016). More than social-cultural influences: A research agenda for evolutionary perspectives on prosocial media effects. Review of General Psychology, 20, 317-335. doi: 10.1037/gpr0000084 Ng, Y. -L., & Zhao, X. The human alarm system for sensational news, online news headlines, and associated generic digital footprints I analyzed the data and wrote the second paper; Prof. Xinshu Zhao and his helpers crawled the data and Prof. Zhao provided comments. I thank Horace Lu for data crawling, Angela Wang for duplicate data deletion, and June Yeung and Ke Zhang for data coding. Data crawling of Chapter 4 is supported in part by a donation from Dr. Lee Shau Kee, GBM, through HKBU Research Grant Scheme (2015-2017, Zhao PI), and a China Ministry of Education Major Grant for Social Sciences through Fudan University Center for Information and Communication Studies (11JJD860007, Zhao PI) to Xinshu Zhao. iii Table of Contents Declaration ............................................................................................................... i Abstract ................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgement ................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ........................................................................................................ viii List of Figures .......................................................................................................... x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................... 1 1.1 Brief Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.2 What is Prosociality? ......................................................................................... 3 1.2.1 Theories of Prosociality .............................................................................. 3 1.2.2 Psychological Antecedents and Consequences of Prosociality Propagation ............................................................................................................................. 5 1.2.2.1 Prosocial motivation: Empathy. ........................................................... 6 1.2.2.2 Prosocial emotions. .............................................................................. 6 1.2.2.3 Prosocial personality: Agreeableness. ................................................. 8 1.2.2.4 Prosocial value: Self-Transcendence. .................................................. 8 CHAPTER 2 PROSOCIAL MEDIA EFFECTS ............................................... 10 2.1 Current Theories of Prosocial Media Effects ................................................... 12 2.1.1 General Learning Model (GLM) .............................................................. 12 2.1.2 Other Theories .......................................................................................... 15 2.1.2.1 Social cognitive theory. ...................................................................... 16 2.1.2.2 Cognitive-neoassociation theory. ....................................................... 17 2.1.2.3 Selective exposure theory. .................................................................. 17 2.1.2.4 Uses and gratifications theory. .......................................................... 18 2.1.2.5 Cultivation theory. ............................................................................. 18 2.1.2.6 Reinforcing spirals model. ................................................................. 19 2.2 Critical Review of Current Theories of Prosocial Media Effects .................... 19 iv 2.3 Synthesis of Prosocial Media Effects .............................................................. 24 CHAPTER 3 EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES ON PROSOCIAL MEDIA EFFECTS ............................................................................................... 29 3.1 Origins and Ultimate Functions of Prosociality Propagation .......................... 30 3.1.1 Prosociality towards Kin and Non-kin ...................................................... 30 3.1.2 Evolutionary Cyber-psychology ............................................................... 31 3.1.3 Meme ........................................................................................................ 32 3.2 Selective Prosocial Media Effects ................................................................... 35 3.2.1 Agreeableness ........................................................................................... 36 3.2.2 Self-transcendent Values ........................................................................... 37 3.3 Indirect Prosocial Media Effects ...................................................................... 39 3.3.1 Compassion ............................................................................................... 42 3.3.2 Other Prosocial Emotions ......................................................................... 45 3.4 Conditional Prosocial Media Effects ............................................................... 46 3.5 Transactional Prosocial Media Effects............................................................. 49 3.5.1 Dramatic Prosocial Learning Process ....................................................... 50 3.5.2 Prosocial Media Reception, Expression, and Interaction ......................... 52 3.6 Prosocial Effects in Social Media: New Methods ........................................... 54 3.7 From Meta-Level to Middle-Level to Specific Evolutionary Model .............. 57 CHAPTER 4 ONLINE NEWS HEADLINES WITH PROSOCIAL AND ALARM WORDS AND ASSOCIATED GENERIC DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS ............................................................................................................................... 60 4.1 Literature Reviews ........................................................................................... 60 4.1.1 Prior Prosocial Media Effects Research ................................................... 61 4.1.2 Sensational News and Selective Exposure ............................................... 63 4.1.3 Sensational News and the Human Alarm System ..................................... 64 4.1.4 Sensational News and Prosocial Acts ....................................................... 65 4.1.5 Online News Headlines and Generic Digital Footprints .......................... 67 4.2 Method ............................................................................................................. 69 4.2.1 Data Source ............................................................................................... 69 v 4.2.2 Data crawling ............................................................................................ 70 4.2.2.1 Dates of data gathering. .................................................................... 70 4.2.2.2 Selection policy. ................................................................................. 70 4.2.2.3 Revisit policy. ..................................................................................... 71 4.2.2.4 Politeness policy and crawling duration. .......................................... 72 4.3 Pilot Study ........................................................................................................ 72 4.3.1 Analysis ..................................................................................................... 72 4.4 Results .............................................................................................................. 75 4.4.1 Intercorrelations Among All the Variables ................................................ 75 4.4.2 Mean Difference Between Online News Headlines with an Exclamation Mark and Headlines without an Exclamation Mark .......................................... 77 4.4.3 Mean Difference Between Online News Headlines with Prosocial Words and Headlines without Prosocial Words ............................................................ 79 4.4.4 Proposed Moderated Mediation Models ................................................... 81 4.4.5 Reads ......................................................................................................... 84 4.4.6 Likes .......................................................................................................... 87 4.4.7 Dislikes ..................................................................................................... 91 4.4.8 Relays ........................................................................................................ 95 4.4.9 Comments ................................................................................................. 97 4.4.10 Cross-validation of Results ..................................................................... 98 4.5 Main Analysis ................................................................................................ 101 4.5.1 Data Source ............................................................................................. 102 4.5.2 Coding ..................................................................................................... 102 4.5.2.1 Prosocial words dictionary. ............................................................. 102 4.5.2.2 Human alarm words in headlines. ................................................... 109 4.5.2.3 Punctuation and news type in the headlines. ................................... 110 4.5.3 Analysis ................................................................................................... 111 4.6 Results ............................................................................................................ 112 4.6.1 Primary Analyses .................................................................................... 112 4.6.2 Main Analyses ......................................................................................... 118 4.6.2.1 Reads. ............................................................................................... 118 4.6.2.2 Likes. ................................................................................................ 120 vi 4.6.2.3 Dislikes. ............................................................................................ 122 4.6.2.4 Moderated quadratic relationship. .................................................. 125 4.6.3 Cross-validation of Results ..................................................................... 128 4.6.4 Normalization of Results ........................................................................ 131 4.6.5 Log-transformation of Generic Digital Footprints .................................. 134 4.6.6 Split/Analyze/Meta-analyze Approach ................................................... 136 4.6.6.1 Regression analysis. ......................................................................... 140 4.6.6.2 Meta-analysis. .................................................................................. 149 4.6.6.3 Other criterion variables. ................................................................ 151 4.7 Discussion ...................................................................................................... 152 4.8 Limitations ..................................................................................................... 155 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ........................................................................... 157 5.1 Research Agenda ............................................................................................ 157 5.2 Examples of Implications .............................................................................. 159 5.2.1 Charity Advertising ................................................................................. 159 5.2.2 Cooperative Violent Video Games .......................................................... 162 5.3 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 164 References ............................................................................................................ 165 Appendix .............................................................................................................. 217 Curriculum Vitae .................................................... 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Ng, Yu Leung, "How prosocial and alarm words predict online reads, responses, and relays" (2017). Open Access adults' prosocial behavior in Singapore, Japan, and the United States (Gentile et al., 2009). Sociobiology, 11, 375–424. http://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(90)90017-Z. Tooby, J.
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