Essentially, the topic is the Correlation between social media and online emotional expression; the primary research question is How do personal characteristics of web users influence their emotional expression on the web? Thus, the article written by Beneito-Montagut (2017) was chosen because it focuses on how different variables, such as gender, age, and social engagement, affect web users’ emotional expression. Consequently, the author analyzes online social interactions and offers an analytical framework to discover different online interaction strategies.
The article includes the following major sections: introduction, literature review, research questions, data and method, results, discussion, and conclusion. In the introduction part, the researcher highlights the social media interaction significance in everyday life of many individuals. Consequently, the core of social relationships is emotions; thus, Beneito-Montagut (2017) discusses feelings as practices and affirms that people express emotions online. Therefore, studying how people show emotions when interacting online and what aspects affect their social behavior is crucial. Additionally, the researcher mentions the paper’s content in the introduction part. The second section, namely literature review, demonstrates the secondary data by discussing the current finding in the field; Beneito-Montagut (2017) focuses on differences in emotional expression online and emotions online in social relationships. The author aims to emphasize how age and gender influence internet usage, especially regarding emotional expression online. Moreover, Beneito-Montagut (2017) presents data on three types of cues to express emotions online: non-verbal, action, and verbal. Notably, the researcher aims at proving that gender, age, and social web engagement may impact emotional expression.
Thirdly, the research questions, data, and method section introduces the reader to the study’s methodology. The data used is the sample analysis of “Spanish frequent Internet users (n=301) (Beneito-Montagut, 2017, p. 6). The paper is quantitative, as it demonstrates a quantitative research design through an online questionnaire consisting of 21 questions regarding emotional expression online, users’ background information, and social web engagement measures. The researcher aimed to identify users’ self-reports on emotional expression and obtain social web engagement details. Moreover, the research approach is inductive as it collects data to develop a new framework.
Consequently, the data analysis section determines and explains how the data were proceeded and analyzed. The results observe the obtained research findings. For instance, the author uses figures and tables for a better visual results presentation. The discussion part concerns findings, crucial aspects, limitations, and study suggestions. For instance, one of the findings is that female users report more emotional expression. In addition, the research proves that variations of the ways people use social media impact and formulate their emotional communication on the web. Finally, in conclusion, the researcher summarizes the findings and highlights his unique theoretical and methodological approach. Thus, Benito-Montafut (2017, p. 15) states the future research perspectives via “probabilistic and larger samples, as well as different types of social web users.”
To sum up, the paper looks for the association because it illustrates the relationship between users’ personal characteristics, such as age, gender, social web engagement, and online emotional expression. As a result, the research affirms that individual traits and social web engagement influence emotional communication on the web; thus, the variables are statistically dependent; there is a strong connection between variables. Therefore, the article is helpful to the topic as it provides crucial data on web users and their emotional expression.
Reference
Beneito-Montagut, R. (2017). Emotions, everyday life, and the social web: age, gender, and social web engagement effects on online emotional expression. Sociological Research Online, 22(4), 1-18. Web.