Proceedings of the 52nd International Academic Conference, Barcelona

PROFILING SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE AND TROLLING INCIDENCE: A GENDER EXAMINATION OF UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS STUDENTS

CARL J. CASE, DARWIN L. KING, JULIE A. CASE

Abstract:

While social media participation continues to reach unprecedented levels, so has the incidence of online hate and harassment, also known as trolling. Because undergraduate business students will be the future users and managers of social media, this study was undertaken to empirically examine social media participation and trolling incidence by gender. Results demonstrate that although there are more than a dozen social media sites, undergraduates primarily use five sites. When comparing gender, females spent more minutes per day and had a higher subscription per site on nearly all study sites than males. In terms of trolling, while both genders received nearly the same volume of trolls per person, a larger percentage of males versus females were trolled in nearly all the study sites. Overall, findings suggest that gender is a factor both with respect to social media participation and trolling incidence.

Keywords: Trolling, Social Media Usage, Empirical Study, Online Behavior, Gender, Business Students

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2019.052.011

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