Search

New media platforms including social networking sites (SNS) have changed the media landscape and enabled many-to-many communication practices that have increased youth exposure to pro-alcohol consumption messages exponentially, blurring the lines between content generated by alcohol brands, nightclubs and consumers. This study uses qualitative methods to explore the use of Facebook to promote drinking among young consumers. Focus groups with a sample of young adults between the ages of 18 and 24, and a netnographic study investigating alcohol brands, alcohol groups and nightclubs on Facebook were conducted. Findings indicate that alcohol brands and nightclubs use Facebook as a tool to communicate, co-produce and generate alcohol-related content with young adults, which encourages drinking. Findings suggest that SNS such as Facebook are changing the roles of, and inter-relationships between, advertisers and how consumers process media content, including drinking-related marketing communications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Professional sports teams are increasingly using social networks to better connect their sports and businesses to fans and the general public with the aim of providing team-related information, fostering fandom, and building team reputation. However, few, if any, studies have been done that analyze and evaluate the efficacy of this important portion of the professional sports business model from an information-management perspective. This study employs the Facebook Assessment Index (FAI) to effectively compare, assess, and rank the Facebook sites of top European and North American professional teams. The study also shows how information artifacts in sports can be systematically analyzed, evaluated, and compared. In more general terms, the findings and analysis demonstrate how the information perspective can serve as a novel theoretical lens and important dimension in sport management. The results of the study show large differences between teams in the 3 FAI dimensions and a great improvement opportunity in the use of Facebook as a marketing tool. These results not only serve to create a ranking of sport teams but also can be used by sport managers for social-media-benchmarking analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreement persists as to whether social networking sites (SNSs) are used more frequently to facilitate cross-cutting or like-minded discussions. We examine the relationship between the use of SNSs and involvement in discussions with politically similar and dissimilar others among a sample of US Democrats and Republicans. Affective polarization is negatively related to involvement in cross-cutting discussions, suggesting that individuals extend their dislike of the opposing political party to out-party members within their online social networks. Moreover, political discussion with one’s friends on SNSs plays a mediating role in involvement in both cross-cutting and like-minded discussions. Finally, party identification moderates the relationship between SNS use and involvement in cross-cutting discussions, indicating that Republicans participate more frequently than Democrats in cross-cutting exchanges on SNSs. In the light of these findings, we discuss the contribution of SNSs to the ideals of deliberative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The directionality is a significant but inherent property of social ties, though usually ignored in undirected social networks due to its invisibility. However, we believe most social ties are natively directed, and the perception of directionality can improve our understanding about the network structures and further benefit other tasks upon social networks. In this study, we address the latent tie direction inference problem in undirected social networks. We engage in the investigation of directionality on real-world large-scale directed social networks and summarize our findings using four patterns. Upon that we propose a family of ReDirect approaches, including ReDirect-N, ReDirect-T and ReDirect-One, to inferring the hidden directions of undirected social ties based on the network topology only. ReDirect can incorporate with other predictive tasks, and introduce supervision to improve performance. We also present a simple but effective strategy to construct self-labeled data. Experimental results show that even without external information, our approach can recover the directions of networks effectively. Moreover, we find the ReDirect approaches can benefit the predictive tasks remarkably in an experimental study on link prediction. The ReDirect family can be a beneficial general data preprocess tool for various network analysis tasks by uncovering the hidden directions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Past studies have shown positive relationships between use of social network sites (SNSs) and political engagement, but an understanding of the mechanisms underlying the relationship is limited because the studies often did not take into account the diverse affordances of SNSs that can influence participation in different ways. Adopting the O-S-R-O-R (Orientation–Stimulus–Reasoning–Orientation–Response) model of political communication effects, this study examined the roles of Facebook network size, connections with public political actors, use for news, and political expression on political attitudes, protest, and participation. Structural equation analyses were conducted based on data from a national sample in Hong Kong, a city-state with one of the world’s highest Facebook penetration rates. Results showed that Facebook network size and connections with public political actors exhibit both direct and indirect effects on participation through Facebook news, expression, and efficacy. Facebook news exhibited indirect effects primarily though political expression. A discriminant function analysis also showed that age, education, and online news exposure were the most influential variables for distinguishing Facebook users and nonusers. Implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of social media is a societal trend influencing the way that individuals communicate with and relate to one another. Moreover, Facebook use may facilitate or hinder individuals' relationship growth and development. The purpose of this article is to (a) review research examining Facebook usage and interpersonal relationships, (b) present qualitative insight into the Facebook experiences of college students ( N = 16) from a large southeastern university, and (c) offer implications for college counselors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facebook is a frequently accessed social networking site with more than one billion active users worldwide. Although there are numerous studies on its impact on teenagers, none have investigated its impact on gifted and talented girls. This study’s aim was to understand the social media experiences of talented female student leaders. A qualitative approach, underpinned by the principles of phenomenology, was used. Individual semistructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with five participants. A modified method for phenomenological analysis was then used to distill the key essence of their experiences. This New Zealand study describes the complex challenges the participants face as users of Facebook and also argues for the value of the phenomenological method as a powerful research tool in such a study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent studies on social networking sites (SNSs) reveal that users’ social background is not a significant predictor of participation in this type of social media. The broad user bases of Facebook and other social media platforms also appear to suggest that social background no longer affects access to SNSs. A small number of studies even claim that in the participatory web environment, social content is more likely to be created by non-elites, such as lower-income people or racial minorities [Blank, G. (2013). Who creates content? Stratification and content creation on the Internet.Information,Communication & Society,16(4), 590–612]. Nevertheless, engagement with SNSs also reproduces inequalities, for example via class- and ethnic-based ‘self-segregation’ [boyd, d. (2012). White flight in networked publics? How race and class shaped American teen engagement with MySpace and Facebook. In L. Nakamura & P. A. Chow-White (Eds.),Race after the internet(pp. 203–222). New York, NY: Routledge]. Drawing on a large-scale survey (N = 2327) and a set of 56 interviews with Italian teenagers, the current paper explores the persistent influence of socio-economic background and cultural capital in adolescents’ use of SNSs. The research findings show that, although structural variables inevitably influence their participation in social media, teenagers from ‘lower-income’ families are more enthusiastic about the communication and relational features of these sites. In contrast, their peers from ‘elite’ families focus on the capital-enhancing opportunities offered by SNSs and display a critical stance that leads them to limit their social activities on these platforms. Overall, the results suggest that SNSs are not exempt from digital inequalities, but nonetheless provide novel opportunities to lower-income teenagers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past decade, Internet and politics scholarship has been concerned with the effects of the Internet on forms of civic and political participation. Recent research has moved on to examine the effects of social networking sites like Facebook. Although past studies have generally found positive – albeit weak or moderate – relationships between social networking sites use and civic and political participation, reliance on cross-sectional surveys has not produced conclusive evidence of the direction of causality. We use a two-wave panel survey of 15- and 16-year-olds to examine how Facebook use affects various forms of political and non-political entertainment-oriented participation (both online and offline). We find that Facebook use is positively related to civic and entertainment-oriented, but not to online or offline political, participation. Further analysis using structural equation modelling shows that prior levels of civic participation have a stronger effect on Facebook use than Facebook use has on civic participation. Facebook use only leads clearly to entertainment-oriented participation. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social network sites (SNS) are venues for information sharing that provide a variety of communication features capable of stirring emotions, attitudes and beliefs. This paper highlights the role of SNS feedback features and the meanings they communicate to their users, as design elements capable of enhancing the SNS experience. Based on the theories of Social Presence and Social Exchange, the study suggests and empirically validates a research model where Feedback, Perceived Social Presence, Attitude, Enjoyment and Perceived Usefulness are hypothesized to explain intentions to continue to use an SNS. The results of an online survey of 262 Facebook users found that feedback features were central SNS components that influenced perceptions of social presence and enjoyment, which in turn, along with attitude and perceived usefulness, influenced intentions to continue using Facebook, explaining 55% of its variance. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of social networking in today's global society presents new opportunities for research on computer-mediated communication and Asian cultures. Drawing from the framework of uses and gratifications theory, this study explained how acculturation influenced Chinese international students' usage of two similar--yet culturally distinct--social networking sites, Facebook and Renren. Chinese international students completed an online survey about their social networking needs and activities (for Facebook, n = 144; for Renren, n = 106). Bootstrapping analyses revealed cultural differences in participants' social networking preferences and usage. As expected, adaptation to American culture was positively associated with Facebook usage, and maintaining one's Chinese culture was positively related to Renren usage. Moreover, the effect of participants' adaptation to American culture on their Facebook usage was mediated by personal identity gratifications of media use. Implications and directions for future research are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the type and implications of user-generated content posted by users of an open access institutional repository (DSpace) on Facebook. Design/methodology/approach – The identified user-generated content was organised into three categories: personal; professional; and social information. It encompassed all content from the members of the “DSpace” Facebook group, posted during the seven-year period (2007-2014). The posts were read and analysed to identify and categorise user-generated content posted by users to determine how Facebook is used by open access repository users. Findings – The results of analysis demonstrate the importance of social information posted by users over personal and professional information. Major types of user-generated content posted by users in the social information category were request, greetings, status-update, and announcement. Further, there has been a threefold increase in the number of user postings in the last two years (2013-2014), when posts were analysed over a seven-year period. Research limitations/implications – This study contributes to the theory on the implications eventuating from user-generated content posted by users of an open access institutional repository. An analysis of user-generated content identified in this study implies that users of DSpace open access repository are primarily using Facebook for information seeking, relationship building, and knowledge dissemination. Practical implications – By analysing the findings, administrators and policy makers of open access repositories could identify the extent of user support in the form of technical assistance, improved sustainability of supported projects, user community development, marketing and communications required to sustain open access scholarly communication. Originality/value – Previous studies examined how social networking sites have been used for a different purpose (interaction, collaboration, and discussion), but to date there has been very little research into the use of Facebook, a public social networking site, by open access repository users. Hence, this study addresses this gap in the literature by an interpretive analysis of user-generated content posted by users on the “DSpace” Facebook group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As news organizations look toward social networking sites as a way to expand their audience, the present article explores how this trend might impact discussion among users of political news content. A content analysis of user comments left by readers of the Washington Post suggests that when it comes to discussing political news, there are significant differences in the deliberative quality of those who access the news directly through the news organization's Web site and those who access the same news via Facebook. In short, comments left by Web site users exhibited greater deliberative quality than those left by Facebook users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - As the use of social networking and social media technologies (SNT) has become pandemic amongst young people (Tess, 2013; Falahah and Rosmala, 2012) there has been an increasing drive amongst educators and researchers to explore the ways in which SNT may be utilised within the classroom ( Junco, 2012). Whilst there is therefore an increasing amount of literature available in relation to the use of SNT within the classroom it does not appear that there has been sufficient research considering the manner in which SNT results in the development of a complex, invisible and organic social network amongst students. When these networks exist outside of the classroom they may allow informal learning and peer support to occur. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these issues. Additionally this paper seeks to determine if the use of Facebook by students may provide an indication of the likelihood of student success on their course. Design/methodology/approach - This paper utilises an empirical approach to explore the nature of these invisible networks and the degree to which the use of SNT by students outside of the classroom may provide support for student learning in relation to informal learning and social interaction. This study explores the use of Facebook through the use of a case study of one cohort of 90 creative arts students who undertook a one-year Foundation in Art and Design course within a specialist arts college in the UK. This research utilises the technique of social network analysis (SNA) in order to visualise the type of interactions that occur within the online network and the strength of these interactions (Dawson, 2008). Findings - Results demonstrate that within this case study the creative arts student group created a complex and interrelated network of connections through Facebook with some students clearly placed at the centre of the network and others on the periphery. It is also demonstrated that those students who are more central within the network are more likely to remain on the course and achieve their qualification. Originality/value - This paper demonstrates that SNA provides a useful and insightful way in which to visualise what would otherwise be an invisible network of connections made by students outside of the classroom. Furthermore this paper will provide an insight for teachers and researchers into the benefits of the use of SNT within education, which will have practical implications for the future use of SNT in teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that influence users’ behavioral intention (BI) to adopt mobile social networking sites (mSNS) in facilitating formal/informal learning. Specifically, the study also investigates the association of mobility, reachability and convenience with performance expectancy (PE) and effort expectancy (EE). Design/methodology/approach – Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was applied to test on 266 valid responses. Findings – The findings indicated that learning compatibility (LC), PE, EE and copyright clearance (CC) has a significant effect on BI. The results also revealed that EE is influenced by mobility, reachability and convenience. PE however was found to be influenced by convenience. Practical implications – The results of this study provides valuable insights and references for practitioners and mobile network providers in developing mSNS in facilitating learning. Originality/value – While mSNS have the potential to become a new research area with numerous benefits for the learning community, there is little research on the adoption factors on mSNS in facilitating learning. This study therefore attempts to close the research gap by contributing to the mobile literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blogs are a type of social media that present a unique opportunity to provide information to a large audience without the constraints of traditional media's gatekeeping barriers. Within agriculture, several studies have examined agricultural blogs but not from the perspective of blog readers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to describe the uses and gratifications of agricultural blog readers. This study used a descriptive survey research design and online questionnaire to assess agricultural blog readers' demographics, Internet and blog use, attitudes toward agriculture, and motivations for reading blogs. Findings indicated most respondents had direct experience in agriculture and were supportive of the industry. The strongest motivations for accessing agricultural blogs were to find out what other people think about important issues or events and to find alternatives not covered by traditional news sources. Blogs proved to be a useful source of information, but more should be done to expand reach beyond those in the industry. Additional research is needed to more fully describe agricultural blog readers' uses and gratifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acculturation refers to the degree to which immigrants maintain their ethnic culture and accept or reject the new dominant culture. While considerable studies have focused on immigrants’ acculturative processes, little is known about acculturation from the perspective of the host culture. This study examined American students’ acculturation orientations toward international students based on the concept of interactive acculturation and investigated the influence of ethnocentrism, sex, and Facebook use on such acculturation attitudes. Results from a survey of 346 American college students indicated a high degree of individualism and integrationism over other orientations, namely transformation-integrationism, exclusionism, assimilationism, and segregationism. The model with ethnocentrism, sex, and Facebook usage predicted five of the six acculturation orientations, with ethnocentrism being the most important predictor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social networking sites, particularly Facebook, have been rapidly assimilated into young people’s daily social lives. Facebook has attracted much research attention in the social sciences, although the site’s widely used photo sharing functionalities have been underexplored. In this article, we argue for the use of innovative methods to access and explore young people’s digitally and visually mediated worlds from their own perspectives. We use an illustrative research example that explored students’ drinking cultures on Facebook. Nine undergraduate students engaged in interviews with an Internet-enabled laptop, sharing their Facebook pages and discussing online photos and photo-sharing practices. Screen records of Facebook activity alongside participants’ talk provided multiple modes of data, which were analysed together to show that Facebook photos were important discursive resources that had implications for students’ identities, friendships, and drinking practices. Creative qualitative approaches such as these can provide novel insights into young people’s social worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social network services (SNSs) provide the functions for both the management of social networks and information diffusion. We considered SNS networks as the networks that embrace both the strong links formed through the making-relationship function and the weak links formed through the sharing function. For identifying the structural role of each link, we constructed the SNS networks using Twitter data and analysed them focusing not on nodes but on links of the networks at a component level and at an ego-network level. More than 200,000 tweets were randomly sampled through the streaming API of Twitter. As a result, we found that weak links formed through the sharing function play a more important role in maintaining the range of information diffusion and provide more structural advantage in acquiring and controlling information than the strong links formed through the making-relationship function. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the most common uses of the capabilities of social networks is for professional, and business purposes. The literature presents conflicting evidence as to the effectiveness of different networks for professional purposes. Therefore, our primary research aim is to conduct a comparative investigation of the effectiveness and factors which influence the effectiveness of different social networks for finding a job. This study focuses on the two most popular networks, Facebook and LinkedIn; the former is not intended specifically for professional purposes while the latter is. To this end, we conducted a user study based on over 220 responses to a questionnaire especially designed for this goal. In our analysis, we distinguish and compare between the users' perceptions and attitudes toward the effectiveness of the network and its actual helpfulness for finding a job in past experience. Our results indicate that different demographic and network usage variables influence the attitude to effectiveness and helpfulness of the networks. Thus, users with lower incomes preferred Facebook, while more educated users with higher incomes perceived LinkedIn as more effective. Interestingly, we found that despite the fact that LinkedIn was perceived as significantly more effective for finding a job by the majority of the users, the actual helpfulness of the two networks was assessed as quite similar. Our findings provide direct evidence for bridging social capital increase by online social networks. This study has practical implications and recommendations that will enable job candidates to improve their job-hunting strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks and interpersonal ties are critical to social movements. They help recruit members, sustain organizations, nourish participants' movement identities, and disseminate information. Scholarship has pointed to the formative role of social media and other information and communication technologies in online and offline mobilization. Questions remain, however, regarding how online social and friendship networks shape social movements. In this article, I draw from literature on social networks, online mobilization, and women's movements to examine the role of online feminist social networks in feminist mobilization. Presenting qualitative data from a racially and geographically heterogeneous group of college feminists, I argue that Facebook and feminist blogs enlarge and nourish feminist networks, create online feminist communities, expand recruitment bases for online and offline mobilization, and increase opportunities for online interaction with adversaries. Finally, I consider generational shifts in the feminist movement, and the broader relationship between friendship networks and online and offline mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is a longitudinal research project that analyzes the psychological aspect of belonging to a social network, more specifically Facebook. A heuristic model of qualitative research was utilized, incorporating the six stages of heuristic study: initial engagement, immersion, incubation, illumination, explication, and creative synthesis to determine the initial stage of the experience, as well as MMPI testing. As the study progressed the sample experienced 4 MMPI testing session. Data was collected from 120 participants and revealed four common themes: 1) Authenticity, 2) Integration of On and Offline Lives, 3) Social Network As a Social Microcosm, 4) Undefined Boundaries . The identified themes indicate that the active participation tends to have a negative impact over the individual perception of safety, and creates a distorted perception, even an alienation of reality. The MMPI results were showing that after prolonged active participation( minimum 2 hours per day), subjects progressed towards cognitive, emotional, thought and behavioral dysfunctions, with paranoid tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates students' involvement in Facebook® as a course management system (CMS), Facebook acceptance, and the relationships between the two. The study used Facebook as a CMS in two freshman courses and employed mixed method as part of an action-research approach. Forty-two students participated in the study, and 12 of those students were selected for face-to-face interviews through maximum variation sampling. Quantitative data were collected through questionnaires and course Facebook page logs. Qualitative data were collected through the interviews. The quantitative data analysis consisted of descriptive statistics and correlation analyses. The findings indicate that the relationships between course Facebook page involvement and Facebook acceptance differed according to the course. The findings support that Facebook as a CMS has the potential to increase student involvement in discussions and out-of-class communication among instructors and students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many studies have examined organizations’ use of specific types of online media, but few studies have examined how organizations generate dialogues and develop relationships by using multiple online communication platforms. This study takes an integrated approach by examining how top global organizations incorporate brand Web sites, Facebook, and Twitter to cultivate relationships with stakeholders. Its findings suggest that those particular online media are used similarly, that is, more for information dissemination than user engagement and more for one-way than two-way communication. The findings also suggest that the types of products promoted can affect the way that organizations use different online media to develop relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Facebook forms one of the most widely used online social networks, through which people manage their communication with diverse contacts or 'friends', ranging from members of the family and schoolmates to work colleagues and popular cultural idols or other people, whom they admire. Hence, it can be seen as an integral part of people's digital presence. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is to investigate the ways politeness is constructed in a context, in which it is not very typical to find politeness in the Western world: The reception of birthday wishes. The focus is on the (para)linguistic reception of birthday wishes on behalf of 400 native Greek users of Facebook, aged between 25-35 years old, as evidenced in the ways they respond to birthday wishes posted on their walls. By using a combination of interactional sociolinguistics, discourse-centered online ethnography and offline ethnographic interviews, I argue that native speakers of Greek do not just stick to the politic behavior found in other languages, like English, of personally thanking their friends for their birthday wishes; rather, they employ contextualization cues, such as shifts in spelling, emoticons and punctuation markers, in order to construct frames and footings of politeness by actually reciprocating the wishes they received from their friends. The value of this study lies not only in being, to my knowledge, the first description and interpretation of an important cultural phenomenon for Greeks, which is the exchange of birthday wishes, but also it contributes towards understanding politeness in online environments, such as Facebook, which in turn is used for establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relationships, hence it can lead to smooth communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Features of political communication in Russian-speaking segment of the Facebook network are analyzed in the article. According to researchers unlike their counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere, Russian bloggers prefer platforms that combine features typical of blogs with features of social network services like Facebook. So, varied presented data shows the difficult situation and the presence of opposing trends in the development of social networks in the modern Russian-speaking area. The data were collected into a complicated political period (violent events in Ukraine), which is considerably stimulated the activity of the Russian opposition and manipulative processes in the Russian social networks. Objectives. The objectives were: classification of actors in the political groups in the Russian-speaking segment of Facebook and analysis of their sociolinguistic behavior. Method. The interdisciplinary analysis based on scope of politically active groups (N 200) and actors (N 291) during January -- May, 2014. Results. Actors were classified by politic opinions into mainstream, oppositional and nationalist Clusters and based on network activity into designers of communication space, manipulators, graphomaniacs and local cluster authors. Their communicative and speech behavior was also analyzed and shown shaped specific virtual identities, which demonstrate distinguished sociolinguistic behavior. Discussion and Conclusion. Today the analysis of communication processes in politically active communities in the network environment is of great importance as the virtual sphere becomes more and more significant for achieve of various political aims both in Russia and around the world. The prospect of an actual study is to identify the ratio of online and off-line communication activity of actors in the political sphere in the Russian segment of Facebook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of dedication- and constraint-based mechanisms on users' post-adoption behavior in the social networking site (SNS) context. Design/methodology/approach -- The proposed framework uses user satisfaction and trust belief to capture the dedication-based mechanism and perceived switching costs and social norms to capture the constraint-based mechanism. Hypotheses were tested by applying partial least squares to data from 250 experienced Facebook users. A structural equation modeling was used to test the validity of the proposed research models. Findings -- The analysis results show that SNS users' continuance intention is jointly affected by two distinctive mechanisms: a dedication-based one and a constraint-based one, the former playing a more critical role. The findings indicate that both perceived relative benefits and perceived enjoyment significantly influence user satisfaction. Learning and network size were found to be the key predictors of perceived switching costs. Research limitations/implications -- This study applies the dedication- and constraint-based models by incorporating numerous sets of antecedents. The framework provides a theoretical lens of how two distinctive mechanisms influence SNS users' post-adoption behaviors. Practical implications -- The analysis results provide several insights that can aid SNS providers understand SNS users post-adoption behaviors. Moreover, the findings will help SNS providers effectively facilitate dedication- and constraint-based mechanisms by enhancing the key antecedents of two distinctive mechanisms. Originality/value -- SNSs have become an important component of individuals lives. However, few systematic works investigate the fundamental mechanisms leading to SNS users' continued usage. In an attempt to extend the horizons of SNS research, this study incorporates a set of antecedents to dedication- and constraint-based models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the cultural specificity of privacy practices on social network sites (SNSs) by comparing 10 college-age American Facebook users' and 10 college-age Chinese Renren users' in their photo sharing of significant events during winter vacation. Using communication privacy management theory, we show that Chinese participants more tightly controlled their privacy boundary permeability than American participants. Also, Chinese participants' relationships with Renren friends-potential information coowners- featured more distance and formality than American participants' close interactions with Facebook friends. We interpret the findings in light of American and Chinese cultures to contemplate the cultural manifestation in SNS privacy practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I have published a paper about social network sites in the journal Television & New Media, criticising some ideas of Christian Fuchs, who considers the mere act of surfing on commercial websites using targeted advertising, such as Facebook, a form of labour. His rejoinder deserves some responses from me. We share the same concern about the need to analyse the Internet from a Marxist perspective--revealing its dominative features and its functions as an instrument of exploitation, while considering the counter-hegemonic possibilities allowed by the system structure or, as Fuchs puts it, regarding the fact that "alternatives to Facebook and the capitalist Internet are needed". Although, Fuchs in his response concerns mainly one major idea, he makes the same mistake as Dallas Smythe regarding the labour theory of value. In his rejoinder he refers to some old polemic issues known in the Marxist debate that have nothing to do with the problem itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restraining the spread of rumors in online social networks (OSNs) has long been an important but difficult problem to be addressed. Currently, there are mainly two types of methods 1) blocking rumors at the most influential users or community bridges, or 2) spreading truths to clarify the rumors. Each method claims the better performance among all the others according to their own considerations and environments. However, there must be one standing out of the rest. In this paper, we focus on this part of work. The difficulty is that there does not exist a universal standard to evaluate them. In order to address this problem, we carry out a series of empirical and theoretical analysis on the basis of the introduced mathematical model. Based on this mathematical platform, each method will be evaluated by using real OSN data. We have done three types of analysis in this work. First, we compare all the measures of locating important users. The results suggest that the degree and betweenness measures outperform all the others in the Facebook network. Second, we analyze the method of the truth clarification method, and find that this method has a long-term performance while the degree measure performs well only in the early stage. Third, in order to leverage these two methods, we further explore the strategy of different methods working together and their equivalence. Given a fixed budget in the real world, our analysis provides a potential solution to find out a better strategy by integrating both types of methods together. From both the academic and technical perspective, the work in this paper is an important step towards the most practical and optimal strategies of restraining rumors in OSNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has been diversified by the advent of social networking websites. Because of this innovation, individuals are now able to share their ideas and notions regarding brands, products, or services with their friends through the Internet. For this reason, companies interested in attracting more attention from consumers create their official accounts on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. This strategy provides instant communication between companies and their current and potential customers. These social networking sites, however, are not totally the same; they create different customer engagement opportunities for companies. To define and discuss the difference, this paper compares posts at Vine, Facebook, and Twitter in terms of customer engagement. Results not only confirm that these three websites have different customer engagement ratios, but also reveal that the ratio of Vine is higher than the ratios of both Facebook and Twitter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper first explores the factors that affect the use of social networks to enhance teaching and learning experiences among students and lecturers, using structured questionnaires prepared based on the Push–Pull–Mooring framework. A total of 455 students and lecturers from higher learning institutions in Malaysia participated in this study. Multiple linear regressions revealed five factors: E-Learning Perception, Academic Reasons, Ease of Use, Convenience and Social Networking to be positively associated with Teaching and Learning Benefits obtained from the use of social networks. These factors were then used to develop Book2U – a social e-learning tool which integrates the popular features of social networks. User testing revealed Book2U was well received by the majority of the respondents. It is believed that teaching and learning activities in educational sectors can be improved by using social network and e-learning-integrated tools, such as Book2U. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the number of social networking sites is rapidly increasing, and the number of users joining these sites is dramatically increasing as well. This paper aims at comprehensively comparing three social networking sites, and provides an in-depth analysis. We compare three of the most popular social networking sites, i.e., Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Specifically, we evaluate those social networking sites based on four criteria (i.e., navigation, interactivity, source credibility and intelligence). For each criterion, we propose a list of measures for the comparison. The comparison essentially explores the differences and commonalities among those social networking sites. Based on the analysis of the comparison, a user study is conducted to evaluate the three websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Psychology, Society & Education is the property of Psychology, Society & Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Questioning the transparent construction of emerging Web 2.0 discourse communities, this article asks in what ways structural options and restrictions of the software service ‘Facebook’ offer new semiotic resources and set up (novel) conditions for participation. More specifically, it holds that the medium in use and the particular software service acts as a kind of third author : The electronic environment and its functional properties facilitate and delimit a variety of discourse patterns and thus intervene in the communication between profile owner and profile recipients. To assess the impact of the electronic environment on user participation within Facebook, the present article will first introduce the notion of (technological) affordances and discuss characteristic ‘action possibilities’ that are typically offered by Social Network Sites. It will then give background information on general features of participation in online environments and identify key functions of the Facebook environment. On the basis of these findings, the article will discuss how Facebook's communicative properties enable and constrain textual practices and social interaction (functional affordances). Data from actual Facebook members give weight to how individuals adapt in different ways to software-biased action possibilities (relational affordances). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies indicate that Latino immigrant youths engage in a wide range of sophisticated literacy practices outside of school that are often transnational, crossing various linguistic, cultural, and social spaces. However, Latino immigrant youths drop out of U.S. schools at disproportional rates, suggesting that their literacy practices are not recognized or valued by the educational system. This collective case study investigated the range, form, and purpose of the Out-of-School literacies of four Latina/o adolescent English learners who are new arrivals. Findings demonstrated that the most prevalent out-of-School literacies that the participants practice take place on the social networking site Facebook, in their workplaces, and through entertainment media sources. A cross-case analysis suggests that the literacy practices in these spaces have unique and purposeful roles for the individuals that allow them to connect to their home countries and maintain their Latina/o identities. Additionally, the participants use their out-of-school literacy practices to acquire English, support themselves, and establish a place to succeed. The five aforementioned spaces that their Facebook, workplace, and entertainment literacy practices fill are virtually absent from their in-school literacies. This study suggests that literacy pedagogy must not continue to impose a narrow monolingual, monocultural, monoliterate, and monomodal view of Latina/o immigrant students that essentially divests them of their greatest resources. Their literacy practices demonstrate that they are emerging as multilingual, multiliterate, and multicultural transnationals who competently engage in multimodal means of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade there has been great discussion around how social networking sites can be used in academic settings. Social networking sites have attracted a wide range of researchers who have been interested in exploring the use of Facebook to benefit university students during their transition to academic life. This article will discuss a pilot project that started in July 2013 using Facebook as a new way of supporting students and creating a sense of community amongst them. The project aims to reach students across programs, connect with them and provide a community for students to support and talk to each other. This article will present a literature review on the use of Facebook in an academic setting. The pilot project will be described, main trends will be identified and students' feedback will be presented. The article will end with a discussion about this pilot project in the light of the literature and it will provide some steps to help student services professionals integrate social media to support tertiary students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors synthesize 3 years of social technologies research, including studies of Facebook, Twitter, and GitHub, to present a theory driven framework to guide future social scientific research using “Big Data.” They connect levels of analysis derived from empirical study of influence to the electronic trace data generated by social technologies. Specifically, the authors outline a relationship between social media technology platforms, individual goals for participation, and emergent small groups to inform future research on influence in social technologies. They incorporate theory from small group literature, communities and networks of practice, and media theory to explicate a contextual framework for measuring influence. In their discussion, the authors build on the contrast between influence indicators in Facebook, Twitter, and GitHub to argue for a greater focus on the influence abstractions of articulation and affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prior studies in other specialties have shown that social networking and Internet usage has become an increasingly important means of patient communication and referral. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the prevalence of Internet or social media usage in new patients referred to a major academic orthopedics center and to identify new avenues to optimize patient recruitment and communication. New patients were surveyed (n=752) between December 2012 to January 2013 in a major academic orthopaedic center to complete a 15-item questionnaire including social media and Internet usage information. Data was collected for all orthopaedic sub-specialties and statistical analysis was performed. Fifty percent of patients use social networking sites, such as Facebook. Sports medicine patients tend to be higher social networking users (35.9%) relative to other services (9.8-17.9%) and was statistically higher when compared to the joints/tumor service (P<0.0001). Younger age was the biggest indicator predicting the use of social media. Patients that travelled between 120 to 180 miles from the hospital for their visits were significantly more likely to be social media users, as were patients that did research on their condition prior to their new patient appointment. We conclude that orthopedic patients who use social media/Internet are more likely to be younger, researched their condition prior to their appointment and undergo a longer average day's travel (120-180 miles) to see a physician. In an increasingly competitive market, surgeons with younger patient populations will need to utilize social networking and the Internet to capture new patient referrals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Global Media Journal: Turkish Edition is the property of Global Media Journal, Turkish Edition and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In signed social networks, users are connected via directional signed links that indicate their opinions about each other. Predicting the signs of such links is crucial for many real-world applications, such as recommendation systems. The authors mine patterns that emerge frequently in the social graph, and show that such patterns possess enough discriminative power to accurately predict the relationships among social network users. They evaluate their approach through an experimental study that comprises three large-scale, real-world datasets and show that it outperforms state-of-the art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article introduces the functional model of self-disclosure on social network sites by integrating a functional theory of self-disclosure and research on audience representations as situational cues for activating interpersonal goals. According to this model, people pursue strategic goals and disclose differently depending on social media affordances, and self-disclosure goals mediate between media affordances and disclosure intimacy. The results of the empirical study examining self-disclosure motivations and characteristics in Facebook status updates, wall posts, and private messaging lend support to this model and provide insights into the motivational drivers of self-disclosure on SNSs, helping to reconcile traditional views on self-disclosure and self-disclosing behaviors in new media contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given Facebook’s popularity for the maintenance of interpersonal relationships, this investigation examined the extent to which frequency of Facebook communication with a specific friend predicts relational interdependence. The chief goal of the investigation was to extend media multiplexity theory by examining whether attitudes toward (a) online self-disclosure and (b) online social connection moderated this association. Results not only replicated previous findings that multiple media are associated with relational interdependence, but also supported the hypothesized moderation of online communication attitude. Based on these results, the manuscript explores how media multiplexity theory might be extended to account for communicator cognitions about communication media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the medium-specific and spill-over effects from various aspects of using social networking sites (SNS) to other forms of online and offline political participation. The study relies on a two-wave panel survey of undergraduate students at a major Canadian university, which was designed to measure detailed aspects of political participation on social networking sites (SNS) and various other forms of political engagement. Our results show that prior political Facebook participation fosters other forms of online participation, but also reveals some spill-over effects to offline protests. Indeed, we find a reciprocal relationship between the posting of Facebook messages and offline protest, confirming that Facebook political activity is both mobilizing and reinforcing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a distinct lack of research that has considered university staff use of and attitudes towards Facebook. The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of how teaching staff at one UK university use Facebook, and their attitudes towards Facebook and online professionalism, in terms of the student–staff relationship. An online survey was developed that included the Principles of Adult Learning Scale to explore whether attitudes towards the use of Facebook as an academic tool differed between teaching staff with a teacher-centred style and teaching staff with a learning-centred style. This article offers insight into teaching staff attitudes towards the use of Facebook in an educational context. The results shed light on whether or not teaching style is related to attitudes towards use. Differences in attitude were found which indicate those with a teacher-centred style do not view online and offline identities blurring as much. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This study investigates how group awareness support and argumentation scripts influence learning in social networking sites like Facebook, which may be conducive to informal learning, but often lacks argumentative quality. Supporting participants' group awareness about the visibility of the arguments they construct and about prospective future debate with peers in order to promote argument quality may be particularly suited for learning in Social Networking Sites. Additional argumentation scripts may directly foster argumentative knowledge construction. In a 2 × 2 study (N = 81), we isolated and investigated the effects of group awareness support and argumentation scripts during individual preparation in a Facebook app on domain and argumentative knowledge. Our results reveal that group awareness support of upcoming argumentative processes can be counterproductive for learning in Social Networking Sites. Argumentation scripts in Facebook may remedy possible negative effects of such awareness. Process analysis showed that group awareness support promotes individual argument elaboration but reduces broad analysis of the domain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]