Zhao awarded Best Paper Award at Hawaii International Conference
Keran Zhao, assistant professor of business analytics and information systems, recently received the Best Paper Award at the 58th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), one of the top conferences in the information systems field. Recognized in HICSS's Digital and Social Media Track, the paper entitled “The Impact of Minority Influencers: Exploring Consumer Reactions to Social Media Content”, is co-authored with Amy Pei, assistant professor at Northeastern University and Pankhuri Malhotra, assistant professor at Oklahoma University.
The research examined the impact of minority representation on consumer responses on social media. By analyzing over 10 million social media posts from brands and influencers on Twitter, the social media platform now known as X, the authors found that the inclusion of minority influencers in sponsored posts impacts how much people engage with a brand’s social media. Their findings indicated a U-shaped pattern with moderate levels of representation working less well. The results also show that brands known for supporting diversity or being popular strengthen this effect.
Learn more and read Zhao's full paper here.
