This article theorizes and empirically investigates how status and provocative language influence audience engagement with new-venture posts on social media platforms. Using venture capital funding as a status proxy, we analyzed 369,142 Twitter posts by 268 new ventures. We found that status (1) increases engagement with ventures' tweets, and that it (2) moderates the effect of provocative language on audience engagement so that provocative language has a negative effect for low-status ventures but a positive effect for high-status ventures. Post-hoc analyses provide a basis for pragmatic theorizing and explore the effects of status tiers and subdimensions of provocative language.

本文对地位和挑衅性语言如何影响受众参与社交媒体平台上的新企业帖子进行理论化和实证研究。使用风险投资资金作为状态代理，我们分析了 268 家新企业的 369,142 条 Twitter 帖子。我们发现状态 (1) 增加了企业推文的参与度，并且它 (2) 缓和了挑衅性语言对观众参与度的影响，因此挑衅性语言对低地位企业有负面影响，但对高地位企业有积极影响企业。事后分析为语用理论化提供了基础，并探索了状态等级和挑衅性语言的子维度的影响。