How prosocial and alarm words predict online reads, responses, and relays

236 Pages·2017·2.48 MB·English

by  Yu Leung Ng

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
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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

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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.

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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
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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
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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
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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 .................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

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