Willingness to follow opinion leaders: A case study of Chinese Weibo

作者：

Highlights：

• Manipulations of tone of comments on Weibo have minimal effects on the willingness to follow opinion leaders.

• Mixed evidence indicates that uncivil comments may be distinguished from merely critical comments.

• There is little evidence that the overall number of followers is influential.

• It's not a personality/friendship line of reasoning driving the decision to follow the opinion leaders.

摘要

•Manipulations of tone of comments on Weibo have minimal effects on the willingness to follow opinion leaders.•Mixed evidence indicates that uncivil comments may be distinguished from merely critical comments.•There is little evidence that the overall number of followers is influential.•It's not a personality/friendship line of reasoning driving the decision to follow the opinion leaders.

论文关键词：Social media,Flaming,Negative comment,Social cue,Weibo,Source credibility,Opinion leaders

论文评审过程：Received 15 February 2019, Revised 26 June 2019, Accepted 4 July 2019, Available online 5 July 2019, Version of Record 14 July 2019.

论文官网地址：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.005