Exploring the Role of Syntactic Information on User Behavior in Online Social Platforms

The proliferation of information technologies, applications and online services has changed the way users access information. In particular, an increasing amount of users engage with online social platforms on a daily basis where they are exposed to a continuous stream of information. A great deal of this information is available through numbers and numbers as self-representative visualisations such as likes, views, shares, endorsements and diggs, which sparked an interest in its role in influencing users. This study thus explores the role of syntactic information on user behaviour in online social platforms. The investigation introduces a taxonomy based on four categories (push,
pull, personal, and public) as a possible departure point for discussion. The results suggested that users are particularly interested and motivated by personally attributed syntactical information and claim to dismiss the equivalent of public information. Nevertheless, it became clear that public syntactic information was still unconsciously processed and applied as a measure or benchmark on the online social content.