Abstract
Social Media (SM) users have many reasons to hate the technology (i.e., fake news, cyberbullying) and thus, discontinue its use. Yet, billions of people use SM daily and cannot escape it. We posit that users love and hate SM simultaneously. In the Stockholm Syndrome, such a duality of love and hate is documented for the victims to their hostage-taker. The question that comes to mind is whether SM is holding its users hostage by affording and amplifying a similar love-hate duality? In a scoping literature review of 370 articles, we apply the Stockholm Syndrome’s three tensions (i.e., closeness-distance, kindness-hostility, dependence-resistance) to published works about SM use. The result is a taxonomy of SM tensions that explains why and how users “love hating and hate loving” the technology. We conclude with future research topics to better understand the factors that pull and push users away from SM.
Recommended Citation
Bello Rinaudo, Nadia; Matook, Sabine; and Dennis, Alan R., "Social Media’s Stockholm Syndrome: A Literature Review of User’s Love and Hate" (2022). ACIS 2022 Proceedings. 66.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2022/66