{"id":220133,"date":"2023-02-14T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/?p=220133"},"modified":"2023-02-14T09:50:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T14:50:29","slug":"valentines-day-2023-is-all-about-gifts-less-about-love-research-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/2023\/02\/14\/valentines-day-2023-is-all-about-gifts-less-about-love-research-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Valentine\u2019s Day 2023 is All About Gifts, Less About Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A romantic at heart may assume most people around the U.S. are preparing for their Valentine\u2019s Day date by posting famous love poems or searching lovey-dovey queries like, \u201cHow do you say \u2018I love you\u2019 in Farsi?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But they would be wrong. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/school-of-communication-and-media\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2023\/02\/Montclair-State-2023-Valentines-Day-Commercialization-Study.pdf?\">New research<\/a> from the Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication at 精品成人福利在线 University shows that the commercialization of Valentine\u2019s Day is more prevalent than ever, and a more realistic social media post would be less about romance and more about gifts and shopping.<\/p>\n<p>To investigate the themes of Valentine\u2019s Day messaging in social media, Montclair researchers analyzed more than 80,000 posts using \u201c#Valentinesday\u201d and \u201c#Valentinesday2023\u201d on various social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram over a month in the leadup to February 14.<\/p>\n<h2>Key takeaways from the Valentine\u2019s Day 2023 study:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Analysis of social media data using \u201cValentine\u2019s Day\u201d as a keyword shows the most associated term was \u201cshop,\u201d with \u201cshop\u201d and \u201cgift\u201d identified 131.17% more frequently than the term \u201clove.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Four of the top five recent Google search queries related to Valentine\u2019s Day were for Nike\u2019s Valentine\u2019s Day Air Force 1s and Squishmallows.<\/li>\n<li>The commercialization of Valentine\u2019s Day appears to have created a context that creates significant mental health challenges.<\/li>\n<li>Among Valentine\u2019s Day social messages targeted toward singles, popular hashtags included \u201c#selflove,\u201d \u201cselfcare,\u201d \u201cvalentinesgift,\u201d \u201c#chocolate day,\u201d and \u201c#roseday.\u201d Particularly, supportive messages encouraged singles to focus on setting healthy boundaries, focusing on mental health, prioritizing personal goals, launching positive changes, seeking love from friends and families, purchasing personal dreams, learning strategies to manage loneliness, seeking balance by turning inward, staying physically active, etc.<\/li>\n<li>According to the National Retail Federation, Valentine\u2019s Day accounted for an estimated $23 billion in purchases in 2022, up after a noticeable decline in 2021 spending due to the pandemic.<\/li>\n<li>A word cloud generated to show term use frequency in the studied data set further reveals the extent to which commercial and advertising messages are embedded in social media messaging about Valentine\u2019s Day. Related terms included \u201c#buyartnotcandy,\u201d \u201c#shopindie,\u201d \u201c#etsyshop,\u201d \u201c#giftsforher\u201d and \u201c#valentinesdaygift.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Separate research in 2022 cites the mental health challenges linked to buying around the holiday. A study of over 2,000 participants found that \u201cgeneralized depression was greater for those not receiving a gift relative to that expressed by those who did receive a Valentine\u2019s Day gift\u201d with depression continuing longer than three weeks after the holiday in participants studied.<\/li>\n<li>The coupling of love with commoditization is indicative of the need for continued vigilance against acceptance of online messaging as being rooted in truth and legitimacy. Media literacy and the ability to unpack manipulative online content should be a focus for all populations, with a significant emphasis on Gen Z.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Valentine\u2019s Day advertisements skew meaning of love<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cThe data on #Valentinesday is heavily cluttered with advertisements rather than messages of love on social media\u201d said Jin-A Choi, assistant professor of Advertising at Montclair. \u201cBrands are prepared to sell and consumers are ready to buy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow more than ever it\u2019s important that heavy users of social media, especially young people, understand the difference between what they consume online, what actually might be happening, and how that might affect them,\u201d said Bond Benton, associate professor of Public Relations at Montclair. \u201cValentine\u2019s Day has always been heavily commercialized, but ubiquitous social media messages about buying something nice perhaps lead us to a skewed view of the meaning of the holiday and love in general.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is the sixth study released by the Center for Strategic Communication, located within the School of Communication and Media. The Center provides social media analytics tools and training for faculty and students for classroom learning and research projects.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/school-of-communication-and-media\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2023\/02\/Montclair-State-2023-Valentines-Day-Commercialization-Study.pdf?\"><strong><em>Full Report: Love Loses, So Says the Data<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more information or to set up an interview,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/contact-media-relations\/\">contact the Media Relations team at 精品成人福利在线 University<\/a>.<\/p>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n\/\/ Output tags as a list for Google Analytics custom dimension\nwindow.MSU_TagList = [\"Research Scholarship and Creative Activity\"];\n<\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The commercialization of Valentine\u2019s Day is more prevalent than ever on social media, which may negatively impact mental health<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":220134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,111],"tags":[446],"class_list":["post-220133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication-and-media","category-press-releases","category-research","tag-research-scholarship-and-creative-activity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220136,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220133\/revisions\/220136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}