الفهرس 
The influence of youths’ viewing of strangers’ Instagram posts on emotional contagion: A quasi-experimental study
contentsOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 160 |  |  |
| | | from | 160 | | |
Abstract
Mimicking and catching emotions from micro-celebrities and strangers is considered a common phenomenon nowadays among youth Instagram users; that’s in addition to the continuous comparisons with them, whether on the level of opinions comparison or abilities comparison. The current study investigates why youth tend to browse strangers’ and micro-celebrities’ Instagram accounts and identifies the positive and negative effects on the level of social comparison effect and emotional contagion effect.
The researcher used the social comparison theory and emotional contagion theory to be as a theoretical foundation for this study. The effect of following strangers/ micro-celebrities was examined through a quasi-experiment method (N= 60) to compare the treatment group (N= 30) who follow strangers/ and micro-celebrities intentionally by using a list of 10 micro-celebrities and strangers to follow on Instagram application, and the control group (N= 30) who use Instagram normally by following only friends/ and relatives, and only seeing micro-celebrities/ and strangers through the explore tab on Instagram.
Current research revealed many results around social comparison effect, emotional contagion effect, and experienced negative feelings, such as youth Instagram users who follow strangers experience more negative feelings than youth Instagram users who don’t follow strangers.
The researcher also found a significant difference between the usage of Instagram for both the treatment group and the control group and their tendency towards emotional contagion effect that the treatment group’s tendency is greater than the control group’s tendency toward emotional contagion. Youth who are viewing strangers’ posts on Instagram are significantly greater than youth who are viewing only their friends’ and relatives’ posts in their tendency towards social comparison effect. It also showed that 43.3% of the treatment group followed strangers/ micro-celebrities because they also preferred their lifestyle and clothes style.