Hunting for Likes: Legitimate Distinctiveness in the Context of Social Media

New ventures face the paradox of striving to be simultaneously understood by audiences - and fitting into known institutional environments - yet maintaining their distinctiveness that makes the essence of their identity. While prior literature has highlighted the complexities of doing both at the same time, in the dynamic and instantaneous context of social media, any separation of the two narratives is not feasible. We study the extent to which independent vs. combined narratives containing conforming and non-conforming statements result in greater audience recognition. We collected data from Twitter and CrunchBase on 435 US-based start-ups, and will test the effects of ventures' minimal narratives containing conformance and non-conformance claims on the reactions of their audiences in a panel study design.     «

New ventures face the paradox of striving to be simultaneously understood by audiences - and fitting into known institutional environments - yet maintaining their distinctiveness that makes the essence of their identity. While prior literature has highlighted the complexities of doing both at the same time, in the dynamic and instantaneous context of social media, any separation of the two narratives is not feasible. We study the extent to which independent vs. combined narratives containing con...     »