Tweeting like Elon? Provocative language, new-venture status, and audience engagement on social media

Benedikt David Christian Seigner; Hana Milanov; Erik Lundmark; Dean A. Shepherd

doi:10.1016/j.jbusvent.2022.106282

Tweeting like Elon? Provocative language, new-venture status, and audience engagement on social media

Benedikt David Christian Seigner^*, Hana Milanov, Erik Lundmark, Dean A. Shepherd

^*Corresponding author for this work

EPCE - Erling-Persson Centre for Entrepreneurship, Helsinki

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article theorizes and empirically investigates how status and provocative language influence audience engagement with new-venture posts on social media platforms. Using venture capital funding as a status proxy, we analyzed 369,142 Twitter posts by 268 new ventures. We found that status (1) increases engagement with ventures' tweets, and that it (2) moderates the effect of provocative language on audience engagement so that provocative language has a negative effect for low-status ventures but a positive effect for high-status ventures. Post-hoc analyses provide a basis for pragmatic theorizing and explore the effects of status tiers and subdimensions of provocative language.

Original language	English
Article number	106282
Peer-reviewed scientific journal	Journal of Business Venturing
Volume	38
Issue number	2
ISSN	0883-9026
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2022.106282
Publication status	Published - 2023
MoE publication type	A1 Journal article - refereed

Keywords

512 Business and Management
Audience engagement
Provocative language
Social media platforms
Status
Venture capital

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10.1016/j.jbusvent.2022.106282Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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title = "Tweeting like Elon? Provocative language, new-venture status, and audience engagement on social media",

abstract = "This article theorizes and empirically investigates how status and provocative language influence audience engagement with new-venture posts on social media platforms. Using venture capital funding as a status proxy, we analyzed 369,142 Twitter posts by 268 new ventures. We found that status (1) increases engagement with ventures' tweets, and that it (2) moderates the effect of provocative language on audience engagement so that provocative language has a negative effect for low-status ventures but a positive effect for high-status ventures. Post-hoc analyses provide a basis for pragmatic theorizing and explore the effects of status tiers and subdimensions of provocative language.",

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Tweeting like Elon? Provocative language, new-venture status, and audience engagement on social media

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Keywords

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