Sequence of Emotions in Social Stories: Examining User Engagement with Breast Cancer Narratives on Facebook

Amid emerging information and communication technologies with unique affordances for storytelling and story sharing, most studies in narrative communication still focus on narratives delivered through traditional mediums such as television or print ads. There has been little research on how emotionally charged stories, particularly those related to cancer, can be used to engage audiences on social media. Based on the literature on emotional shifts and social media affordances, this study examined the roles of discrete emotions and emotional shifts on user engagement behaviors on Facebook. Using Facebook narratives by breast cancer organizations (N = 419), we found a primacy effect of emotional shifts in social stories, as negative sentiments in the initial segment of a post increased user engagement behaviors. Emotional shift patterns were associated with user engagement behaviors to some extent, with the shift from positive to positive receiving least interactions. Our study advances narrative persuasion and social media research and offers important implications on how cancer organizations can use social media to tell emotionally engaging stories.