Boon, Susan D.Paulin, Mélanie2022-05-092022-05-092022-05-03Paulin, M. (2022). Revenge via Social Media: Social Engagement and its Impact on the Reputations of Actors Involved (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.http://hdl.handle.net/1880/114637After being hurt, harmed, or provoked in interpersonal relationships, individuals sometimes use social media platforms to get even with relational partners. The use of this medium to get even adds a layer of complexity to consequences at stake for actors involved in that vengeful posts can reach widespread audiences in very little time and remain in the cyber-space indefinitely, causing the possibility for continuing harm. In this research, I examined some of the repercussions associated with being involved in an act of social media revenge. I explored these repercussions both from the actors’ perspectives (i.e., the victim and the perpetrator of revenge via social media) in Study 1 (N = 478) as well as from the perspective of observers in Study 2 (N = 244) using hypothetical Facebook revenge scenarios. In Study 1, I found that victims expected their reputations to suffer as a consequence of being targeted online, whereas perpetrators did not believe that enacting revenge via social media would negatively impact their reputations. Additionally, social engagement associated with vengeful social media posts did not influence actors’ perceptions following the revenge. In Study 2, I found that observers of revenge via social media judged both victims and perpetrators more negatively following the revenge, and that social engagement associated with vengeful posts influenced observers’ judgements of perpetrators. The findings of this research revealed important implications such that being involved in a single and comparatively mild act of revenge via social media can negatively affect the reputations of actors involved, perpetrators may be blinded to the consequences of enacting revenge via social media, and a poster-observer discrepancy in terms of the effects of social engagement may exist. Other implications as well as the limitations and future directions of this research are also discussed.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.RevengeSocial mediaReputationSocial engagementPsychology--Socialdoctoral thesis10.11575/PRISM/39752