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Happiness and Fear: Using Emotions as a Lens to Disentangle How Users Felt About the Launch of Facebook Reactions

Authors:

Pamela Wisniewski,

Karla Badillo-Urquiola,

Zahra Ashtorab,

Jessica VitakAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Social Computing, Volume 3, Issue 4

Article No.: 20, Pages 1 - 25

https://doi.org/10.1145/3414825

Published: 16 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

In February 2016, Facebook launched Reactions, an interactive feature expanding the Like button to include five additional emotional responses: Love, Sadness, Anger, Wow, and Haha. In this article, we examine users’ feedback about this new feature and identify important design implications of this significant modification of Facebook's interface. We did this by applying theories of human emotion and emotion-specific influences on cognitive appraisals to conduct a heuristic evaluation of Facebook Reactions and a thematic content analysis of the 3,000 “top” comments posted by Facebook users on the official pre- and post-launch announcements about Reactions. Prior to launch, many users were concerned that the addition of a Dislike button would lead to abuse; thus, they favored the more nuanced design of Reactions. After launch, users were more positive about the feature as many of their misconceptions were clarified through actual use. Overall, we identified several design constraints of this new feature, including users’ inability to express conflicting emotions. We conclude the article by discussing the implications of our findings and the challenges around research and design for sociotechnical systems that involve complex human emotions.

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Cited By

Moudene YIdrais JEl Abassi RSabour A(2024)Gender-Based Analysis of User Reactions to Facebook PostsBig Data Mining and Analytics10.26599/BDMA.2023.90200057:1(75-86)Online publication date: Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.26599/BDMA.2023.9020005
Zhu KKhern-am-nuai WYu Y(2024)Negative Peer Feedback and User Content Generation: Evidence From a Restaurant Review PlatformProduction and Operations Management10.1177/10591478231224941Online publication date: 8-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10591478231224941
Nourriz SBezabih ASmith C(2024)On the Design Risks of Empathy FatigueProceedings of the 3rd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual10.1145/3661790.3661798(34-39)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Index Terms

Happiness and Fear: Using Emotions as a Lens to Disentangle How Users Felt About the Launch of Facebook Reactions
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Social Computing

ACM Transactions on Social Computing Volume 3, Issue 4

December 2020

144 pages

EISSN:2469-7826

DOI:10.1145/3426976

Editor:
Kevin Crowston
Syracuse University, USA

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Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 16 October 2020

Accepted: 01 July 2020

Revised: 01 January 2020

Received: 01 November 2018

Published in TSC Volume 3, Issue 4

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Cited By

Moudene YIdrais JEl Abassi RSabour A(2024)Gender-Based Analysis of User Reactions to Facebook PostsBig Data Mining and Analytics10.26599/BDMA.2023.90200057:1(75-86)Online publication date: Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.26599/BDMA.2023.9020005
Zhu KKhern-am-nuai WYu Y(2024)Negative Peer Feedback and User Content Generation: Evidence From a Restaurant Review PlatformProduction and Operations Management10.1177/10591478231224941Online publication date: 8-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10591478231224941
Nourriz SBezabih ASmith C(2024)On the Design Risks of Empathy FatigueProceedings of the 3rd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual10.1145/3661790.3661798(34-39)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661790.3661798
Erickson JYan B(2024)Affective Design: The Influence of Facebook Reactions on the Emotional Expression of the 114th US CongressProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641935(1-9)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641935
Smith CMiller Hillberg HLevonian Z(2023)"Thoughts & Prayers" or " ❤️ & 🙏 ": How the Release of New Reactions on CaringBridge Reshapes Supportive Communication in Health CrisesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100357:CSCW2(1-39)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610035
Figl KKießling SRemus U(2023)Do symbol and device matter? The effects of symbol choice of fake news flags and device on human interaction with fake news on social media platformsComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2023.107704144(107704)Online publication date: Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107704
Lee SThomer ALampe C(2022)The Use of Negative Interface Cues to Change Perceptions of Online Retributive HarassmentProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35552266:CSCW2(1-23)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555226
Zhu KKhern-am-nuai WYu Y(undefined)Any Feedback is Welcome: Peer Feedback and User Behavior on Digital PlatformsSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.4009873
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4009873

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