Survey Experiment on Knowledge Structure and Message Publicness in Group Messaging Platforms

This project investigates how the publicness of information within group messaging platforms influences students’ engagement with learning opportunities. Group messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams are now widely used across post-16 education, where they serve as routine channels for communicating reminders, resources, and academic support. While these platforms are typically treated as neutral delivery tools, they fundamentally alter the epistemic structure of communication. Information that would otherwise be privately received may become mutually observable within a group environment or attain the status of common knowledge when responses and reactions are visible to others. The distinction between private knowledge, shared knowledge, and common knowledge is theoretically important because students’ engagement decisions are often made under uncertainty. Students are frequently unsure whether others have seen the same information, whether peers regard an opportunity as valuable, and whether their own behaviour is socially observable. Such uncertainties shape how institutional messages are interpreted and may weaken engagement where relevance or credibility is ambiguous. Institutional communications may also be discounted when recipients recognise that senders have incentives to portray opportunities as beneficial. By contrast, peer-visible signals, including visible reactions or participation, may modify behaviour by providing socially credible cues regarding relevance, expected participation, or reputational consequences. The central aim of this study is to identify whether increasing the publicness of information changes students’ willingness to engage with learning opportunities and whether any effects depend on the strategic context of the decision. The study tests whether common knowledge structures enhance engagement in coordination-dependent contexts, exert smaller effects in privately beneficial learning contexts, and produce heterogeneous or non-monotonic effects in signalling-sensitive environments. In addition, the project examines potential mechanisms through which publicness may operate, including perceived informational value for planning, beliefs about others’ participation, and visibility-related discomfort or reputational concerns. To examine these questions, the study uses a mixed factorial vignette experiment administered via Qualtrics and fielded on Prolific Academic. Participants are randomly assigned to one of three knowledge structure conditions corresponding to private delivery, shared group broadcast, or common knowledge with visible responses. Within this epistemic environment, participants evaluate multiple short scenarios representing distinct learning decisions. Outcome measures capture behavioural intentions, response tendencies, click-through behaviour, and constrained allocation of study time, allowing engagement to be assessed through both attitudinal and behavioural proxies. The expected contribution of the study is both theoretical and applied. Theoretically, the project clarifies how epistemic features of digital communication environments influence decision-making under social uncertainty. Practically, the findings are intended to inform the design of educational messaging strategies by identifying when increasing visibility and common knowledge is likely to enhance student engagement and when it may inadvertently suppress participation. The study does not assume that greater publicness is universally beneficial; rather, it evaluates the conditions under which different knowledge structures are behaviourally effective.