Browse > Article
http://dx.doi.org/10.15206/ajpor.2022.10.1.51

Users' Reactions to Rape News Shared on Social Media: An Analysis of Five Facebook Reaction Buttons  

Al-Zaman, Md. Sayeed (University of Alberta, Jahangirnagar University)
Ahona, Tasnuva Alam (Jahangirnagar University)
Publication Information
Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research / v.10, no.1, 2022 , pp. 51-73 More about this Journal
Abstract
This study investigated 3.50 million Facebook reactions collected from 9,429 Bangladeshi news items about rape shared on social media from 2016 to 2021. The primary aim of this study was to understand users' different reaction patterns based on the five major Facebook reactions (i.e., love, haha, wow, sad, and angry). Based on the theories of emotion, we quantitatively answer one research question: How do social media users react to rape with the five major Facebook reactions? The results suggest that users are more likely to express disdain toward rape and sympathy toward the victims using Facebook reactions by using the angry button, along with the sad button. In rape news, both reactions are consistent and maintain a strong positive correlation, meaning they increase and decrease together. Although many users tend to mock and laugh at rape incidents and the victims, trend lines suggest that such expressions may not be consistent with time. Despite contextual relevance, we presume that in socially and morally unacceptable events like rape and war, the valences of reactions alter to some extent: angry and sad usually become positive, while love, wow, and haha become negative. Some strengths and limitations of the study are discussed as well.
Keywords
rape news; social media; Facebook reaction; reaction analysis; Bangladesh;
Citations & Related Records
연도 인용수 순위
  • Reference
1 Tian, Y., Galery, T., Dulcinati, G., Molimpakis, E., & Sun, C. (2017). Facebook sentiment: Reactions and emojis. Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Social Media, 11-16. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/W17-1102   DOI
2 Dewey, C. (2016, February 24). A quick, no-nonsense guide to using Facebook's new Reactions. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/02/24/a-quick-no-nonsense-guide-to-using-facebooks-new-reactions
3 Jost, P., Maurer, M., & Hassler, J. (2020). Populism fuels love and anger: The impact of message features on users' reactions on Facebook. International Journal of Communication, 14, 2081-2102.
4 Lyles, T. (2020, April 17). Facebook adds a 'care' reaction to the like button. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/17/21224805/facebook-care-reaction-like-button-messenger-app
5 Woodruff, S. J., Coyne, P., Fulcher, J., Reagan, R., Rowdon, L., Santarossa, S., & Pegoraro, A. (2020). Reaction on social media to online news headlines following the release of Canada's food guide. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research, 82(1), 16-20. https://doi.org/10.3148/cjdpr-2020-022   DOI
6 Molina, A., Gomez, M., Lyon, A., Aranda, E., & Loibl, W. (2020). What content to post? Evaluating the effectiveness of Facebook communications in destinations. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 18, 100498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2020.100498   DOI
7 Odhikar. (2018). Statistics on Violence against women. http://odhikar.org/statistics/statistics-on-violence-against-women/
8 Powell, Anastasia. (2015). Seeking Informal Justice Online. In A. Powell, N. Henry, & A. Flynn (Eds.), Rape Justice (pp. 218-237). Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137476159_13   DOI
9 Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161-1178. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0077714   DOI
10 Smoliarova, A. S., Gromova, T. M., & Pavlushkina, N. A. (2018). Emotional stimuli in social media user behavior: Emoji reactions on a news media Facebook page. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 11193, 242-256. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01437-7_19   DOI
11 Stinson, L. (2016, February 24). Facebook reactions, the totally redesigned like button, is here. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2016/02/facebook-reactions-totally-redesigned-like-button/
12 Turnbull, S., & Jenkins, S. (2016). Why Facebook reactions are good news for evaluating social media campaigns. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 17(3), 156-158. https://doi.org/10.1057/dddmp.2015.56   DOI
13 Giuntini, F. T., Ruiz, L. P., Kirchner, L. D. F., Passarelli, D. A., Reis, M. D. J. D. Dos, Campbell, A. T., & Ueyama, J. (2019). How do I feel? Identifying emotional expressions on Facebook reactions using clustering mechanism. IEEE Access, 7, 53909-53921. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2913136   DOI
14 Kilgo, D. K., & Midberry, J. (2022). Social media news production, emotional Facebook reactions, and the politicization of drug addiction. Health Communication, 37(3), 375-383. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1846265   DOI
15 Han, M. C. (2021). Thumbs down on "likes"? The impact of Facebook reactions on online consumers' nonprofit engagement behavior. International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 18(2), 255-272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-020-00271-2   DOI
16 Harp, D., Grimm, J., & Loke, J. (2018). Rape, storytelling and social media: how Twitter interrupted the news media's ability to construct collective memory. Feminist Media Studies, 18(6), 979-995. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1373688   DOI
17 Ikizer, E. G., Ramirez-Esparza, N., & Boyd, R. L. (2019). #sendeanlat (#tellyourstory): Text analyses of tweets about sexual assault experiences. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 16(4), 463-475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-018-0358-5   DOI
18 Larsson, A. O. (2018). Diversifying likes. Journalism Practice, 12(3), 326-343. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1285244   DOI
19 Mancosu, M., & Vegetti, F. (2020). What you can scrape and what is right to scrape: A proposal for a tool to collect public Facebook data. Social Media + Society, 6(3), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120940703   DOI
20 Mohanty, D. (2018, May 2). Odisha girl commits suicide after 'obscene' video goes viral on social media. Hindustan Times. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/odisha-girl-commits-suicide-after-obscene-video-goes-viral-on-social-media/story-2oRwtA6YmRjwv40yZMHGDJ.html
21 Mrenmoi, S. T. (2021, February 28). Rape culture in Bangladesh. New Age. https://www.newagebd.net/article/131292/rape-culture-in-bangladesh
22 Navarro, C., & Coromina, OO . (2020). Discussion and mediation of social outrage on Twitter: The reaction to the judicial sentence of La Manada. Communication and Society, 33(1), 93-106. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.33.1.93-106   DOI
23 Varanasi, R. A., Dicicco, E., & Gambino, A. (2018). Facebook reactions: Impact of introducing new features of SNS on social capital. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 850, 444-451. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92270-6_64   DOI
24 Wellman, A. P., Reddington, F. P., & Clark, K. R. (2017). What's trending? #SexualAssault: An exploratory study of social media coverage of teen sexual assaults. Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law and Society, 18(1), 88-105.
25 Zaleski, K. L., Gundersen, K. K., Baes, J., Estupinian, E., & Vergara, A. (2016). Exploring rape culture in social media forums. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 922-927. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.036   DOI
26 Al-Rawi, A. (2020). Networked emotional news on social media. Journalism Practice, 14(9), 1125-1141. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019.1685902   DOI
27 Ellis-Petersen, H. (2020, October 12). Bangladesh approves death penalty for rape after protests. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/12/bangladesh-approves-death-penalty-for-after-protests
28 Badache, I., & Boughanem, M. (2017). Emotional social signals for search ranking. SIGIR 2017 - Proceedings of the 40th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 1053-1056. https://doi.org/10.1145/3077136.3080718   DOI
29 Freeman, C., Alhoori, H., & Shahzad, M. (2020). Measuring the diversity of Facebook reactions to research. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3375192   DOI
30 Akoglu, H. (2018). User's guide to correlation coefficients. Turkish Journal of Emergency Medicine, 18(3), 91-93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjem.2018.08.001   DOI
31 Al-Zaman, M. S. (2017). The "rape culture" in Bangladesh. The Daily Observer. https://www.observerbd.com/details.php?id=106097
32 Allen, M. (2017). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483381411   DOI
33 Allison, R., & Risman, B. J. (2013). A double standard for "Hooking Up": How far have we come toward gender equality? Social Science Research, 42(5), 1191-1206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.04.006   DOI
34 Orth, Z., Andipatin, M., & van Wyk, B. (2021). "These women are making a statement against rape and yet the only thing y'all can focus on is 'Eww they're naked'": Exploring rape culture on Facebook in South Africa. Gender Issues, 38(3), 243-259. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-020-09268-x   DOI
35 Baresch, B., Knight, L., Harp, D., & Yaschur, C. (2011). Friends who choose your news: An analysis of content links on Facebook. 12th International Symposium on Online Journalism, 1, 1-24. http://online.journalism.utexas.edu/2011/papers/Baresch2011.pdf
36 Belair-Gagnon, V., Mishra, S., & Agur, C. (2014). Reconstructing the Indian public sphere: Newswork and social media in the Delhi gang rape case. Journalism, 15(8), 1059-1075. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884913513430   DOI
37 Brady, E. C., Chrisler, J. C., Hosdale, D. C., Osowiecki, D. M., & Veal, T. A. (1991). Date rape: Expectations, avoidance strategies, and attitudes toward victims. Journal of Social Psychology, 131(3), 427-429. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1991.9713868   DOI
38 Pennington, R., & Birthisel, J. (2016). When new media make news: Framing technology and sexual assault in the Steubenville rape case. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2435-2451. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815612407   DOI
39 Prendergast, M., & Quinn, F. (2021). Justice reframed? A comparative critical discourse analysis of Twitter campaigns and print media discourse on two high-profile sexual assault verdicts in Ireland and Spain. Journalism Practice, 15(10), 1613-1632. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2020.1786436   DOI
40 Raisa, T. S. (2018). Impact of Facebook obsession among university students in Bangladesh. International Journal of New Technology and Research, 4(2), 89-94.
41 StatCounter. (2021, February 28). Social media stats Bangladesh. StatCounter. https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/bangladesh
42 Sakaki, T., Toriumi, F., & Matsuo, Y. (2011). Tweet trend analysis in an emergency situation. Proceedings of the Special Workshop on Internet and Disasters, SWID'11, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1145/2079360.2079363   DOI
43 Sarraipa, J., Luis-Ferreira, F., Jardim-Goncalves, R., & Kadar, M. (2016). Smart techniques for emotional status detection of students during classroom attendance. Smart Applications & Technologies for Electronic Engineering, SATEE 2016, October, 1-4.
44 StatCounter. (2020, October). Social media stats Bangladesh. Stat Counter Global Stats. https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/bangladesh
45 Tran, T., Nguyen, D., Nguyen, A., & Golen, E. (2018). Sentiment analysis of marijuana content via Facebook emoji-based reactions. 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2018.8422104   DOI
46 Hess, A., Iyer, H., & Malm, W. (2001). Linear trend analysis: A comparison of methods. Atmospheric Environment, 35(30), 5211-5222. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1352-2310(01)00342-9   DOI
47 Brunell, K. F., Craun, S. W., & Davis, B. (2019). The relationship between Facebook reactions and sharing investigative requests for assistance. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 34(4), 410-416. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-018-9297-6   DOI
48 Check, J. V., & Malamuth, N. M. (1983). Sex role stereotyping and reactions to depictions of stranger versus acquaintance rape. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), 344-356. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.2.344   DOI
49 Eberl, J. M., Tolochko, P., Jost, P., Heidenreich, T., & Boomgaarden, H. G. (2020). What's in a post? How sentiment and issue salience affect users' emotional reactions on Facebook. Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 17(1), 48-65. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1710318   DOI
50 Dodge, A. (2016). Digitizing rape culture: Online sexual violence and the power of the digital photograph. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 12(1), 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659015601173   DOI
51 Ekman, P. (1992). An Argument for Basic Emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3-4), 169-200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939208411068   DOI
52 Franzke, aline shakti, Bechmann, A., Zimmer, M., Ess, C. M., & Research, T. A. of I. (2020). Internet research: Ethical guidelines 3.0 Association of Internet Researchers. https://aoir.org/reports/ethics3.pdf
53 Fraser, L. (2022, January). What data is CrowdTangle tracking? CrowdTangle. https://help.crowdtangle.com/en/articles/1140930-what-data-is-crowdtangle-tracking
54 Freeman, C., Roy, M. K., Fattoruso, M., & Alhoori, H. (2019). Shared feelings: Understanding facebook reactions to scholarly articles. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 2019-June, 301-304. https://doi.org/10.1109/JCDL.2019.00050   DOI
55 Geboers, M., Stolero, N., Scuttari, A., Van Vliet, L., & Ridley, A. (2020). Why buttons matter: Repurposing Facebook's reactions for analysis of the social visual. International Journal of Communication, 14, 1564-1585.