Audience design in Twitter: Retweeting behavior between informational value and followers’ interests

• Criteria of content and of context influence retweeting behavior in Twitter.
• Twitter users adapt communication behavior regarding their followers’ interests.
• Influence of awareness information on retweeting is moderated by topic of a tweet.
• Retweeting behavior is strongly influenced by informational value of a tweet.

With the advent of Web 2.0 applications, practices of news spreading have changed. Now, not only journalists but also average Internet users are able to spread news. This paper examines criteria that influence the forwarding of information in microblogging systems such as Twitter. To test whether and how two different kinds of criteria (contextual criteria and message inherent-criteria) interact in influencing selection decisions of sharing information with others, a 2 × 2 × 2 laboratory experiment was conducted. Awareness information about one’s audience (guiding vs. non-guiding), news topic (educational vs. non-educational), and informational value of the message (high vs. low) were systematically varied. It was hypothesized that participants who received guiding awareness information would show audience design (i.e., adapting communication behavior towards the audience) while disregarding informational value. In contrast, participants who received non-guiding awareness information would not show audience design, but would forward according to informational value. Results confirmed that participants indeed adapted their communication behavior to their audience’s interests. However, participants still preferred messages with high informational value over messages with low informational value. Results are discussed and implications are drawn.