Search

Introduction Design Methods Results Conclusion Clinical Relevance The effectiveness of health interventions delivered via a combination of in‐person and electronic social networking services for caregivers of stroke survivors remains uncertain. This study evaluates the feasibility of implementing educational and peer support programs for these caregivers through such platforms.Quasi‐experimental design.This study included 105 caregiver–survivor dyads, with 54 dyads allocated to the intervention group and the remaining 51 to the control group. The LINE intervention comprised a combination of in‐person and electronic social networking services including stroke and rehabilitation education, problem‐solving skills training, long‐term care information support, and 24‐h peer and professional support for caregivers. The outcomes were assessed at baseline, after 1 month, and after 3 months, and encompassed caregivers' care burden, depressive symptoms, perceived social support, and quality of life, as well as the rehabilitation adherence and depressive symptoms of stroke survivors. Generalized estimating equations were used to examine group differences. The data were collected between August 2021 and October 2022.The average age of the caregivers was 48.3 years. Caregivers in the intervention group reported reduced care burdens and enhanced perceptions of social support and quality of life as compared to those in the control group. Additionally, stroke survivors in the intervention group were less likely to exhibit high‐risk depressive symptoms.Delivering a stroke caregiver support intervention via in‐person and electronic social networking services, such as LINE, effectively reduced the care burden for caregivers of stroke survivors. Additionally, it enhanced caregivers' perceived social support and quality of life.This study demonstrated that caregiver education and peer support programs administered through a combination of in‐person and electronic social networking services can serve as an effective support system for the psychosocial health of stroke caregivers. These findings support the integration of such interventions into standard clinical practice by healthcare providers or governmental bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common for users of social networking sites and services (SNS) to suffer from technostress and the various associated strains that hinder their well‐being. Despite prior SNS stress studies having provided valuable knowledge regarding SNS stressors and their use consequences, they have not examined the various strains related to well‐being that those stressors can create nor the underlying SNS characteristics. To address this gap in the research, we used a qualitative approach involving narrative interviews. As a contribution, our findings reveal four types of strains related to well‐being (concentration problems, sleep problems, identity problems, and social relation problems) as well as two different patterns with distinct sets of SNS stressors and SNS characteristics that generate those strains. As practical implications, the findings of this study can help technostressed users to identify their strains, understand their underlying SNS characteristics and SNS stressors, and increase the possibility that they will be able to avoid the strains in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of Facebook and WhatsApp on success in English vocabulary instruction and the learners' opinions about the implementation process. In the study, mixed method model, which combines both quantitative and qualitative data, was used. The success of the students in Facebook, WhatsApp, and control group showed a significant difference between the pretest and posttest, meaning that the learning environments had different effects on the increase of success of students. The analysis revealed that the difference in the mean scores of the students in WhatsApp, Facebook, and control group was significant, and WhatsApp has been more effective in the increase of the success. Although more increase in the mean scores of Facebook group was observed compared with control group, this increase was not found significant. Furthermore, students expressed their willingness to go on the practice not only in their present course, but also in their other courses as well. They also opined positive opinions that learning could also take place unconsciously. However, a few students reacted negatively against the unnecessary messages and the timing of some messages. The results indicated that, compared with Facebook, WhatsApp is more effective in teaching vocabulary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The civic potential of pervasive computing technologies has been increasingly explored within academic and urban planning communities. One vision is of communities and cities enriched with pervasive computing, where citizens can leverage the new technology and interfaces for their own purposes, and at the same time be empowered to be heard through the use of such technology. This article reports lessons learned from a project that created public human interfaces for interacting with city officials in Oulu, Finland. We focus on civic engagement and reflect on a deployment of public interactive crowdsourcing technologies that are openly available to everyone, right in the heart of the city. The series of field trials reported here involve public displays, mobile phones, and Internet technologies. We find differences in the performance of different kinds of input mechanisms, and present lessons learned from cooperating with officials in a joint civic engagement effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Mobile phone users are demanding an efficient convergent communication approach for efficient communication and information sharing with their real life social circles. Unfortunately, the existing telecom services and the popular Internet services are not organically integrated to provide convenient convergent services. To overcome this issue, one of the promising convergent communication services considered by telecom carriers is RCS (Rich Communication Suite). However, existing issues, such as insufficient interoperability among different operators, shortage of terminals and heavy dependence on large-scale IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) network deployment, mean that it will take time to implement RCS across worldwide networks and for it to become a service equally universal as voice and short message. Instead of a heavyweight RCS solution, in this paper, we propose a lightweight, quick deployment mobile phone book application system based on cloud computing without a fully deployed IP multimedia subsystem infrastructure, which seamlessly integrates traditional telecommunication services, instant messaging services, social networking services and automatic contact information management. Based on this, ' Telco-OTT' service provision approach, telecom carriers can allow their subscribers to enjoy conveniently the rich convergent personal service experience quickly without a large initial investment. Thus, it is a low-risk opportunity for telecom carriers to meet subscriber demand for advanced user-centric convergent service features. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social computing, such as social networking services (SNSs) and social Networking Platforms (SNPs) provide a coherent medium through which people can be interactive and socialize. The SNP is a Web‐based social space, specifically designed for end user‐driven applications that facilitate communication, collaboration and sharing of the knowledge through a variety of SNSs, such as text, video and audio streams. In the conventional SNPs, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, computers are not capable of acquiring the information based on the common intelligence and human behaviour. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of the current SNSs and discusses different possibilities of incorporating the existing SNSs into the context‐aware techniques that include semantic Web, social search and social recommendations. The context‐aware computing provides services customisation based on the individual human characteristics, such as human preferences, mood, behaviours, and emotions. The Integration of contextual information with SNSs can be more useful and productive for the development of the intelligent social communicational services. This survey provides several possible future research directions especially in the field of social search and recommendation that can provide better social communication capabilities. Moreover, this study will provide new directions to the future researcher for designing future generation context‐based SNSs that provide services based on the on‐demand collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increased popularity of online social networking services ( SNS) such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+, we propose that a wealth of new resources is available for medicolegal death investigation. Recognizing this potential, we identified cases in which social media had been useful in the past in our office and asked our investigative staff to consider using social media in current cases. These cases provided illustrative examples for this primer regarding how information from SNS was used in death investigations in our office. Information gleaned from online social media aided in establishing preliminary identification of a decedent, locating next-of-kin, investigating the circumstances of death as relevant to the manner of death, corroborating eyewitness accounts, and providing information relevant to time of death. Potential pitfalls were identified, such as shared accounts or online impostors. SNS proved useful to the medicolegal death investigator and medical examiner, so long as their limitations were recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]