Jumping onto the bandwagon of collective gatekeepers: Testing the bandwagon effect of information diffusion on social news website

Cheng-Jun Wang; Jonathan J.H. Zhu

doi:10.1016/j.tele.2019.03.001

Jumping onto the bandwagon of collective gatekeepers : Testing the bandwagon effect of information diffusion on social news website

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews (RGC: 21, 22, 62) › 21_Publication in refereed journal

Overview

View graph of relations

Author(s)

Cheng-Jun Wang
Jonathan J.H. Zhu

Related Research Unit(s)

Department of Media and Communication

Detail(s)

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	34-45
Journal / Publication	Telematics and Informatics
Volume	41
Online published	6 Mar 2019
Publication status	Published - Aug 2019

Link(s)

DOI	DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2019.03.001 Final Published version
	Check@CityULib
Link to Scopus	https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85062592138&origin=recordpage
Permanent Link	https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/publications/publication(eeee079c-18e8-4f6b-8b93-274de45bbec4).html

Abstract

Based on collaborative information filtering and information aggregation services, the social news website carries out a collective gatekeeping function, supplying an empirical ground to test the bandwagon effect on information diffusion. Modeling the interpersonal effect and bandwagon effect in collective gatekeeping with threshold models, we confirm the bandwagon effect of collective gatekeeping on news diffusion with two novel datasets. The results demonstrate that the bandwagon of collective gatekeepers is the primary driver for online news diffusion. Interestingly, the bandwagon effect of collective gatekeeping is moderated by the strength of interpersonal effects. The theoretical generalizations of this research contribute to our understanding about the impact of collective gatekeeping on information diffusion.