Social Media Engagement & Color
Location
Science Center: Bent Corridor
Document Type
Poster - Open Access
Start Date
4-28-2023 12:00 PM
End Date
4-28-2023 2:00 PM
Abstract
News organizations strive to be the center of attention in an extremely saturated market. In that mass of advertisement it is difficult to understand what makes a post successful on social media. Social neuroscience research on online advertisement interactions have been focused on individual characteristics of a broad audience pool rather than the posts themselves. Recent research has found that colorful posts on Facebook drive more interactions from users. However, no research on newspaper advertisements has been done on Instagram posts. Our research investigates whether grayscale posts are more engaging to Instagram users or if colorful posts drive more interactions. We hypothesize that grayscale posts promoting news content will be more engaging to a college student (18-24) audience. Research has found that Colorful images are more stimulating to college students and drive more engagement; but black and white images convey a more authoritative tone, which, when advertising a newspaper, may be more engaging to an audience. Posts were made to advertise articles of a college newspaper from different sections: arts, news, opinion pieces, etc. 6-7 new articles were advertised on Instagram every week. Posts were randomly assigned to being in full color or in grayscale. Over the course of a school year, two 14-week semesters, likes on these posts were counted to find if the lack of color in posts made them more engaging to viewers. Our analysis indicated that, contrary to our hypothesis, colorful images increased user engagement, and was correlated with more interactions(likes) on each post.
Keywords:
Advertisement, Social, Neuroscience, Instagram
Recommended Citation
Hinton-Williams, Hillel and Ates, Ada, "Social Media Engagement & Color" (2023). Research Symposium. 17.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/researchsymp/2023/posters/17
Major
Psychology
Project Mentor(s)
Dar Meshi, Michigan State University
2023
Social Media Engagement & Color
Science Center: Bent Corridor
News organizations strive to be the center of attention in an extremely saturated market. In that mass of advertisement it is difficult to understand what makes a post successful on social media. Social neuroscience research on online advertisement interactions have been focused on individual characteristics of a broad audience pool rather than the posts themselves. Recent research has found that colorful posts on Facebook drive more interactions from users. However, no research on newspaper advertisements has been done on Instagram posts. Our research investigates whether grayscale posts are more engaging to Instagram users or if colorful posts drive more interactions. We hypothesize that grayscale posts promoting news content will be more engaging to a college student (18-24) audience. Research has found that Colorful images are more stimulating to college students and drive more engagement; but black and white images convey a more authoritative tone, which, when advertising a newspaper, may be more engaging to an audience. Posts were made to advertise articles of a college newspaper from different sections: arts, news, opinion pieces, etc. 6-7 new articles were advertised on Instagram every week. Posts were randomly assigned to being in full color or in grayscale. Over the course of a school year, two 14-week semesters, likes on these posts were counted to find if the lack of color in posts made them more engaging to viewers. Our analysis indicated that, contrary to our hypothesis, colorful images increased user engagement, and was correlated with more interactions(likes) on each post.
