A mechanism-driven approach to encourage sharing
Extant sharing research frequently studied which content characteristics encourage sharing without explaining the mechanisms of these relationships. For instance, is emotional content shared often (Instead, a sharer-focused, mechanism-driven approach, like the one tested here, asks why people share content and supports sharers in identifying opportunities to use content sharing to fulfill these sharing motives. This approach is easily scalable across pieces and types of content because it guides how would-be sharers think about the content rather than modifying individual pieces of content.