What it takes to get retweeted: An analysis of software vulnerability messages

Abstract A large body of research has examined the public disclosure of software vulnerability, but little attention has been paid to sharing software vulnerability information on social media. Sharing software vulnerability messages on Twitter indicates that particular messages are perceived by the public valuable enough to share with others. Building on hazard communication and terse messaging literature, this study analyzes the factors impacting the retweeting of software vulnerability related messages. Particularly, this study has two goals: 1) to identify the major content categories contained in software vulnerability related tweets and 2) to understand the impact of tweet content, tweet source, technical features of tweets, as well as software vulnerability features on retweeting the software vulnerability messages. Our analysis suggested five content categories are referred in the tweets: alerts, patch, advisory, exploit, and root-cause. Using a negative binomial regression, we found that several factors jointly influence the retweeting of software vulnerability messages. The findings could be useful for planning about effective message design for communicating the publicly disclosed software vulnerability information to end-users.