Our article “Unraveling the Shape of Social Media Narratives: Analyzing the Effects of Online Interaction and Narrative Structure on Attention to Digital Asset Transactions” has been accepted for publication in Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.

Zhang, Yaotian; Sun, Yixiao ‡; Wang, Cheng-Jun * (2025) Unraveling the Shape of Social Media Narratives: Analyzing the Effects of Online Interaction and Narrative Structure on Attention to Digital Asset Transactions. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 69(3), 200–218. doi: 10.1080/08838151.2025.2484347. Data & Code: https://osf.io/zhwxy/

ABSTRACT

Social media narratives are considered crucial in shaping the attention of digital assets. The interactive narrative model posits that online interactions and narrative structures affect individuals’ attention. Yet, the conceptualization of narrative structure’s temporal and spatial dimensions and their effects remain limited. Furthermore, few studies have addressed how online interactions influence narrative structure. We construct a three-wave panel data for 1,226 active users based on 16 million tweets and quantify narrative circuitousness, speed, and volume using the Word2Vec model. The results of two-way fixed-effects models reveal that high-speed, low-circuitousness, low-volume, and emotional narrative increase transaction attention. In addition, narrative structures mediate the relationship between online interactions and transaction attention. We contribute to the interactive narrative model by formulating and quantifying the temporal and spatial dimensions of narrative structure.

Data availability statement

The data analyzed is available in the Open Science Framework (OSF), and the hyperlink is https://osf.io/zhwxy (DOI: 10.0.68.197/OSF.IO/ZHWXY). The raw data will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.