Research seminar by Prof. Ashish Kumar Jha

Posted on March 11, 2026 by administrator

IIM K hosted its eleventh research seminar on March 10, 2026, for the year 2025-26. It was conducted by Prof. Ashish Kumar Jha, Professor of Business Analytics, Trinity Business School, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

The topic was Opinion and Information on Social Media: Role of Human agency

Abstract of the talk given below

Humans are critical stakeholders in the discussion on how and why information is shared and beliefs formed on social media. However, the role of human agency as an active stakeholder in the process is lot less researched in the IS domain compared to the technocentric focus of the nudges, figures and data that shape human action. Through a series of experimental studies, we attempt to study the role of human idiosyncrasies in this process. We first study how humans form opinions and turn them into beliefs that shapes their future engagement on social media. In the second study, we analyse the role of human moods through the lens of mood congruence theory to analyse how our state of the mind enables higher engagement on certain types of information in social media. Finally, we look at the role of the way humans evolve through evolutionary psychology perspective in defining the way we react and interact to different kinds of fake news on social media platform. Our findings, rooted in long established theories and tested through rigorous experiments over a period of 4 years, extends the discussion in information systems literature about the way humans engage with social media platforms and shape the flow of information that further perpetuates this cycle.