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How social media fatigue feigning and altering emotion discourage the use of social media

Jack Shih-Chieh Hsu (Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan)
Chao-Min Chiu (Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan)
Yu-Ting Chang-Chien (Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan)
Kingzoo Tang (Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan)

Internet Research

ISSN: 1066-2243

Article publication date: 14 December 2023

Issue publication date: 19 July 2024

445

Abstract

Purpose

Social media fatigue (SMF) has been widely recognized; however, previous studies have included various concepts into a single fatigue construct. Fatigue has typically been explored from the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) or stimulus-organism-response (SOR) perspectives. To further investigate SMF, the authors split it into the two constructs of exhaustion and disinterest. Furthermore, the authors introduced the concept of emotional labor and identified rules that may affect surface and deep acting strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors designed and conducted a survey to collect data from social networking platform users.

Findings

Results from 364 users of social networking platforms supported most of the authors' hypotheses. First, most of the display rules affect the choice of deep or surface acting. Second, both types of acting lead to exhaustion, but only surface acting leads to disinterest. Third, discontinuance intention is affected by both types of fatigue.

Originality/value

This study contributes to SMF research by adding more antecedents (deep and surface acting) based on the emotional labor perspective and showing the impacts of communication rules on emotional labor. In addition, this study also distinguishes disinterest-style fatigue from exhaustion.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the College of Management and the Sustainable Intelligent Electronic Commerce Research Center at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, ROC.

Since submission of this article, the following author(s) have updated their affiliations: Yu-Ting Chang-Chien is at the Department of Information Management, Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan.

Citation

Hsu, J.S.-C., Chiu, C.-M., Chang-Chien, Y.-T. and Tang, K. (2024), "How social media fatigue feigning and altering emotion discourage the use of social media", Internet Research, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 1488-1518. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-06-2022-0390

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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