How Social Versus Informational Motivations Affect the Language of User-Generated Content

Abstract

This research proposes a novel conceptual distinction between two motivations of online communication – social motivation and informational motivation – and tests five linguistic features characterizing user-generated content that was posted driven predominantly by one of these two motivations. We employed an open-source text analysis tool to analyze real-world and experimentally obtained datasets and supported our theory by experimentally manipulating motivation and measuring linguistic outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.