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Red, Purple and Pink: The Colors of Diffusion on Pinterest

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  • Saeideh Bakhshi
  • Eric Gilbert

Abstract

Many lab studies have shown that colors can evoke powerful emotions and impact human behavior. Might these phenomena drive how we act online? A key research challenge for image-sharing communities is uncovering the mechanisms by which content spreads through the community. In this paper, we investigate whether there is link between color and diffusion. Drawing on a corpus of one million images crawled from Pinterest, we find that color significantly impacts the diffusion of images and adoption of content on image sharing communities such as Pinterest, even after partially controlling for network structure and activity. Specifically, Red, Purple and pink seem to promote diffusion, while Green, Blue, Black and Yellow suppress it. To our knowledge, our study is the first to investigate how colors relate to online user behavior. In addition to contributing to the research conversation surrounding diffusion, these findings suggest future work using sophisticated computer vision techniques. We conclude with a discussion on the theoretical, practical and design implications suggested by this work—e.g. design of engaging image filters.

Suggested Citation

  • Saeideh Bakhshi & Eric Gilbert, 2015. "Red, Purple and Pink: The Colors of Diffusion on Pinterest," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-20, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0117148
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117148
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Nanne, Annemarie J. & Antheunis, Marjolijn L. & van der Lee, Chris G. & Postma, Eric O. & Wubben, Sander & van Noort, Guda, 2020. "The Use of Computer Vision to Analyze Brand-Related User Generated Image Content," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 156-167.
    3. Yunhwan Kim & Sunmi Lee, 2022. "#ShoutYourAbortion on Instagram: Exploring the Visual Representation of Hashtag Movement and the Public’s Responses," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, April.

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