Social media and communication technology have become used to describe new types of communication and have made users to share and spread information for other users. One of the well known social media, Twitter is a powerful communication tool for firms to inform information and get feedback about their product or service. Many firms have made an effort to diffuse information for driving success of advertising or sharing product information through social media. Therefore, there are various discussions about how information can be disseminated on Twitter, ranging from the media's role in the diffusion of information to understand the attributes which contribute to information broadcasting.
Nevertheless, existing research focus on information related to social or common issues such as earthquakes, political opinions. It is limited to know what kinds of the determinants influence information diffusion for firms which use Twitter. To understand information diffusion, this study examines what contents are proper to spread information and relationship between patterns of tweets and diffusion on Twitter. Furthermore, this study looks into the impact of user characteristics on information diffusion and considers the moderating effect of information contents on the link between user characteristics and information diffusion.
Using data collecting real Twitter dataset, this study performs content analysis of tweets for classifying the contents of information as three types ('Information providing' type, 'Advertisement' type, and 'Information_Advertisement' type) and conducts cluster and non-parametrics ANONA analysis to know what types of information contents influence information diffusion. Also, it considers three types of user characteristics (connectivity, involvement and innovativeness) and examines the relationship between user characteristics and information diffusion by conducting non-parameter regression test.
This study finds that various information contents have a significant effect on information diffusion. Of three types of user characteristics, only the involvement is associated with an increase in information diffusion. Further, it demonstrates that according to information contents, the impact of user characteristics has a significant difference on information diffusion. These results provide that the patterns of information diffusion are different according to information contents and users who actively participate communication increase information diffusion. It expects to broaden the mechanism of information diffusion on online social media and guide how to use social media for firms.