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In this article, I examine the use of social network website (SNS) as an influential factor for offline protest activities and organizational memberships. The properties of SNSs may help encourage interpersonal interaction, broaden social ties, and provide valuable information about how to become civically and politically involved. I test these hypotheses using data from a survey of attendees fielded at the US Social Forum (USSF) and control for individual factors as well as alternative mobilizing channels. The empirical evidence suggests that attendees who learned of the meeting through SNSs were more likely to engage in offline protest activity and have a broader array of organizational memberships than were those who learned of the USSF through alternative information channels. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for social movement mobilization and persistence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Online tools such as social media provide new opportunities for citizens and stakeholder groups to be informed, identify common interests, express and share opinions and demands, organize, and coordinate interventions. Therefore, the Internet could be expected to increase stakeholder engagement in corporate affairs and facilitate good governance. In order to provide an overview of current findings on the impact of online media on governance and stakeholder engagement, we conduct a systematic literature review. Our analysis reveals five topical categories of inquiry. We analyze studies from the field of business participation and find a strong bias towards consumer engagement and marketing issues. Only few studies are found to critically explore the effect of online media on power and value distribution between corporations and stakeholders. We then turn to the more established field of political and civic participation in order to further analyze antecedents, forms, and outcomes of online engagement in civic affairs, and derive a framework for future research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social media represents a broad range of benefits to organisations and institutions, such as enhanced brand engagement, it also presents challenges and risks to reputation and security, such as confidentiality breaches. Employee use of popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, both at work and about work has resulted in organisations developing social media policies and guidelines as part of contemporary governance practice. This paper investigates this recent approach to corporate governance by examining 20 social media policies and guidelines from a sample of corporate, government and third sector organisations that are active social media users. It develops a basic framework for social media governance based on the 13 common themes that emerge from the sample, including confidentiality, disclosure and the public-private divide of social media usage. It draws on social contract theory and considers its importance to the field of social media governance. Key implications for managers who are tasked with developing and implementing social media policies and guidelines are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To characterize the literature on social media applications used to deliver patient care. Data Sources: A search of the literature was conducted on June 11, 2014, using PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Communication Abstracts databases for clinical studies between 2004 and 2014. A combination of the search terms "social media" or "Web 2.0" or "online social networking" or "Facebook" or "Twitter" AND "patient care" or "health care" was used. In addition, 42 additional abstracts were retrieved from www.patientslikeme. com for review. Study selection: Only published, peer-reviewed journal articles were considered and only publications in English were included. The abstracts from this search were reviewed for relevance to Web-based social media platforms being used in patient care activities. Data synthesis: A total of 35 articles were included in the review. A majority of the studies published on social media and patient care used cross-sectional designs and were conducted in the United States. Multiple social media applications were studied, but Facebook was the predominant social media tool found. Pa bent care opportunities for various diseases with social media have been studied. Recurring themes included overcoming barriers, engaging and empowering patients, enhancing research, providing information for health promotion, scratching the surface, and potential pitfalls. Conclusion: Social media have the potential to help patients and practitioners overcome multiple barriers in the delivery of health care. Maintaining patient privacy, security of information shared in the platform, and integrity of information shared are all concerns when using this type of Web application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This study examined the antecedents and consequences of intensity of SNS use in a cross-cultural context. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of three IT-related consumer characteristics – privacy concern, consumer innovativeness and propensity to share information – on the use of social networking sites (SNS) and examine if there are cross-national differences in the relationships between consumer characteristics and SNS use. Design/methodology/approach – The authors developed and tested a structural equation model including consumer characteristics related to SNS usage, by using survey data of 977 SNS users in Korea and the US. Findings – Consumer innovativeness, propensity to share information and privacy concern affected intensity of SNS use and the usage of SNS enabled social capital. In addition, the effects of innovativeness and privacy concern on the intensity of SNS use were greater in the US sample than in the Korean sample. People in the culture of high peer pressure and herding behavior tend to expect more reciprocity in social surveillance, especially among in-group members because they are interested in tracking others in the group. This tendency might alleviate the negative impact of privacy concern on the intensity of SNS use. The positive impact of innovativeness on the intensity of SNS use was alleviated in the collectivism culture. This is maybe because the imitation factor predicts the adoption behavior better than the innovation factor in the collectivism culture. Research limitations/implications – Despite several notable contributions, this study has a few limitations, which may be overcome by further research. First, this study did not considered many other personality variables. Second, most measurements were retrospective, depending on the respondents’ memory of past shopping behavior. Third, an experimental study will be needed to obtain more accurate effects of the antecedents on the intensity of SNS use in the next stage. Fourth, there are sample limitations in the study. Although this study has some limitations, it also provides very meaningful implications. For example, both the positive impact of innovativeness and the negative impact of privacy concerns on the intensity of SNS use were alleviated in the collectivistic culture. Practical implications – This finding implies that SNS in the collective culture should focus more on group behavior than individual behavior in order to promote SNS use. In addition, it is an effective strategy to emphasize the innovative function of SNS in individualism culture. As privacy concern is not big problem of SNS usage in collectivism culture, it is an effective strategy to stimulate the needs of in-group surveillance. Originality/value – The study contributes to the literature examining cross-cultural influence on SNS use. The study presents how consumer characteristics interact with culture in order to explain the intensity of SNS use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been much discussion in recent decades on the nature of social capital and its importance in online interactions, it is my contention that these discussions have been dominated by the American Communitarian tradition. In this article, I begin with an overview of American Communitarianism to identify the key elements therein that are found in contemporary theories of social capital. Following this, I expose some of the weaknesses of this tradition and apply Bourdieu’s distinctive theoretical framework to online interactions to demonstrate the fecundity of Bourdieu’s sociological perspective when applied to contemporary online interactions. To do this, I examine interactions online that involve ‘internet memes’, as digital inhabitants themselves colloquially define them. It is my contention that an agonistic model, rather than a communitarian one, best describes the online interactions of digital inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 explored the experiences of 23 grandparents raising grandchildren to better understand the vulnerability and resiliency of grandparent-headed multigenerational families. Three key themes emerged: (a) family trauma with multigenerational impact, (b) multiple stressors impacting the custodial grandparents, and (c) family resiliency that can promote healing and growth. The discussion highlights complex intersections of trauma and stress, and resiliency and healing. Implications for social work practice include the importance of understanding the nature of trauma and resiliency in clinical interventions to ensure the healthy development of children and older adults. Implications for social work advocacy include the necessity to promote flexible policies that address the needs of grandparentheaded households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the influence of culture on the use of a website intended for tracking exercise activities. The data was collected using an online survey with 258 respondents from three national backgrounds: Germany, the USA and Spain. In the analysis, the focus was on determining whether users' cultural background impacts their use and perception of the site, especially as concerns social networking and the sharing of content. The Spanish were most interested in social networking, collaboration and sharing content with others, whereas the German participants were the least interested in these activities. The applicability of Hofstede's cultural theory in the explanation of differences between national cultures in online community use is discussed. [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]

With the rapid development of social network, people can present or share their opinions and emotions on the micro-blog, and as a result, large amount of blog texts and emotional information of different topics are produced. As the traditional text mining algorithms cannot deal with these blog texts with fractional contents and different personal emotions effectively, this paper presents a novel weighting computation approach based on the key characters of micro-blog posts to get the dynamic interests of bloggers on different times. Furthermore, based on the emotion classification, the emotion transition tendency analysis can also be implemented. Experimental results show the feasibility of the presented approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In September 2013, civilian contractor Aaron Alexis entered the Washington Navy Yard and murdered twelve people before being fatally shot by police. This incident, together with an incident three months earlier involving Edward Snowden, caused the U.S. government to critically examine their background investigation (BI) process; because both Snowden and Alexis had supposedly slipped through the cracks of their investigations, there must be some flaw in the BI procedure. The U.S. Committee on Oversight and Reform concluded that rules forbidding "background checkers from looking at the Internet or social media when performing checks" was one of the main factors contributing to defective BIs (Report, 2014). Since the report's release, the Director of National Intelligence has been debating and trialing whether information from the Internet should be used to form a data double for BIs (Kopp, 2014; Rockwell, 2014). Using this conversation as a discussion catalyst, I argue that due to the nature of the data double, if the United States were to adopt the use of social networking sites (SNSs) for security clearance purposes, neglecting to take into account basic principles of SNSs into the process of BIs may lead to misinformation and unfavorable adjudication. Ultimately, being literate about the social practices involved in SNSs and surveillance would benefit not only investigators, but anyone, including academics, looking at individuals in online spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Converging lines of research suggest that adolescents' smoking behaviors are strongly influenced by the characteristics of their social network and the social processes their network facilitates. The primary goal of this study was to conduct a detailed comparison of the social networks of adolescent smokers and nonsmokers to determine what aspects relate the most to smoking status. A secondary goal was to conduct within-group analyses to examine relationships between key measures of behavior-specific social support and (a) smoking susceptibility among nonsmokers, and (b) readiness to quit smoking among smokers. Method: A matched sample of 190 adolescent smokers and nonsmokers (Mage = 16.8 years; 51% female) completed a questionnaire in which they nominated and reported on up to 10 important people in their lives. This measure allowed us to examine adolescents' overall networks (both peers and family) and to investigate numerous aspects, including general network characteristics (e.g., size of network, average contact with network members), social support (e.g., importance of people in the network), and the pervasiveness of smoking in the network (e.g., percentage of smoking peers). Results: The pervasiveness of smoking in adolescents' social network was the strongest distinguisher of smokers versus nonsmokers. In addition, behavior-specific social support was strongly associated with susceptibility to initiate smoking among nonsmokers and readiness to quit among smokers. Conclusions: This research offers insight into potential targets for prevention and early intervention by demonstrating how social networks can both promote and attenuate risk for smoking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a participatory observation in the popular social networking site (SNS) Netlog among Northern Belgium youngsters, this paper offers insights on how SNS institutions can be understood as actors that order storytelling practices in everyday life. Specifically, this paper deals with intimate storytelling practices that give meaning to sexuality, gender and relationships, developing a feminist and queer political critique on SNSs’ focus on the production of intelligible intimate identities and endless performative flows of stories. Theoretically, this paper proposes to put central everyday media-related practices to understand SNSs as actors shaping intimate stories, dialectically brought in relation to the website’s political economies and the cultural powers through which software is designed. Empirical illustrations show how de Certeau’s concept of tactics is useful to expose a complex struggle between digital media institutions power and everyday appropriations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduction. In the current era of digital communication, users share information they consider important, using wikis, blogs and social networking Websites. The digital content includes valuable as well as biased, false and demagogic information. The objectives of this review paper are, i) To understand the perceptions of users regarding Web credibility judgment and the problems faced by them, ii) To review and list the factors used in various Web credibility judgment techniques, iii) To suggest a hybrid model that takes advantage of different credibility judgment techniques. Method. This paper adopted a systematic review methodology based on the guidelines of Kitchenham. Analysis. Over 100 papers were reviewed to compile the list of factors covered in the approaches. These analyses were summarized in the form of tables featuring the methods, types and categories of approaches as well as the factors covered. Results. Our findings show that by adopting more than one approach when assessing the credibility of a Web, measuring credibility assessment becomes easier. Therefore, a hybrid approach is presented for the conduct of credibility assessment using the different approaches available to measure accuracy, authority, aesthetics, professionalism, popularity, currency, impartiality and quality. Conclusions. This paper hopes to contribute to the body of knowledge related to the identification of the factors (and categories they belong to) affecting Web credibility judgment and highlights the importance of a hybrid model for making accurate and effective Web credibility judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. An online health community is not a closed information environment; rather, it connects with other online sources through links. Nevertheless, little is known about users' link sharing behaviour and, thereafter, the overall information environment of the community. The current study is to fill this gap. Method. One hundred eighty five posts that contain links (100 were posted by frequent contributors and 85 by occasional contributors) and associated comments, were selected from a data set of messages from a large online diabetes community. Analysis. The content analysis method was used to identify types of sites that the links led to, the format and content of the linked information, roles that the links served in posts, as well as peers' reactions to the links. Results. The majority of the links were posted by frequent contributors. Frequent contributors were more likely to post general Web-pages providing diabetes-related knowledge and evidence-based articles, whereas occasional contributors were more likely to post events, programmes and diabetes-related products. The latter were also more likely to leave e-mail addresses for private communications. Peer users appreciated the links. They read, evaluated, reflected on, or discussed about the linked content. Conclusions. Some users of online health communities were information brokers, linking other online sources to the communities. Links served as objects that enable users' reflections on information and foster social interactions among them. A link hub could be constructed to facilitate access to disease-related information and to promote user interaction and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Social networking sites have become an important part of the lives of millions of Internet users because they allow people without any particular technical knowledge to create an online profile and to communicate and share information with others thus becoming a central platform for the creation of political discourse. The current study examines both personal and political aspects of social networking sites use by exploring the relationship between SNS use and the following elements: (1) personal motivations; (2) social network intensity; (3) political motivations; (4) political self-efficacy, and (5) political engagement. Method. The study was conducted over two months (October-November 2012) using a survey. The population of the study consisted of 155 Israeli Information Science students. Results. Findings from the study show that social networking sites have yet to become significant enough in the users' information environment to have an impact on political behaviors since no significant relationship were found between social networking sites and political self-efficacy and political engagement. Political motivations for these social media sites were revealed as a central element that influences both political engagement and political self-efficacy. In addition, this study reaffirms the social networking sites' role as platforms for the creation and maintenance of online social connections. Conclusions. The study shows that politically motivated participants accessed social networking sites for purposes related to political information and engagement and not for socialization purposes. It also extends the existing literature on personal elements of social networking sites' use and shows that as a result of their availability and ease of use social networking sites' have become a socially motivated platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how children aged 11-16 in three European countries (Italy, UK and Spain) develop and present their online identities, and their interactions with peers. It focuses on young people's engagement with the construction of an online identity on social media through pictures, and explores how peer-mediated conventions of self-presentation are appropriated, legitimated, or resisted in pre-teens' and teenagers' discourses. In doing so, we draw on Goffman's (1959) work on the presentation of self and "impression management" to frame our analysis. Mobile communication and social network sites serve an important role in the process of self-presentation and emancipation, providing "full-time" access to peers and peer culture. Our findings suggest that there are gender differences and the presence of sexual double standards in peer normative discourses. Girls are positioned as being more subjected to peer mediation and pressure. Boys blame girls for posing sexy in photos, and negatively sanction this behaviour as being aimed at increasing one's popularity online or as an indicator of "a certain type of girl." However, girls who post provocative photos chose to conform to a sexualised stereotype as a means of being socially accepted by peers. Moreover, they identify with the pressure to always look "perfect" in their online pictures. While cross-national variations do exist, this sexual double standard is observed in all three countries. These insights into current behaviours could be further developed to determine policy guidance for supporting young people as they learn to manage image laden social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

During the Internet era, the WOM does not need to rely on word of mouth, but on the keyboard and mouse. Essentially, social networking sites (SNS) become the new Internet portal. Based on Social Cognitive Theory, social capital theory, and personal perceptions of knowledge sharing, this study explores the eWOM engagement behavior. Using 260 pretest questionnaires through the three-stage, and nine rounds of semantics confirmation, the research sample finally consists of 610 valid questionnaires. This study adopts the structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the proposed models, showing a good fit. The results indicate all of the twenty-six research hypotheses are supported. The results show that the environmental factors of social capital theory positively influence the eWOM engagement behavior and the personal factors of personal perceptions of knowledge sharing also positively influence the eWOM engagement behavior. The study also significantly show (1) the social interaction between SNS users positively influences the degree of Shared Vision; (2) the social interaction between SNS users positively influences the degree of reciprocity and trust among users as well as the community recognition; (3) the amount of shared language between SNS users positively influences the degree of community recognition and trust among user; (4) the degree of reciprocity among SNS users positively influences the eWOM engagement; (5) the degree of trust among members positively influence the eWOM engagement; (6) the degree of knowledge sharing and self-efficacy among SNS users positively influences the eWOM engagement; (7) the degree of perceived compatibility among SNS users positively influences the eWOM engagement. The study confirms that the firm needs to convey emotion to customers using the consumer sentiment. Finally, this study provides the theoretical and practical implications. [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.)

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.)

Online communities provide promising opportunities to support patient-professional negotiations that address the asymmetries characterizing health services. This study addresses the lack of in-depth understanding of these negotiations, what constitutes successful negotiation outcomes, and the potential impact of negotiation on offline health behaviors. Adopting a netnographic approach, two threads were observed from each of the four online health communities focusing on breast cancer, prostate cancer, depression, and diabetes, respectively. This analysis was supplemented with 45 in-depth interviews. The evidence suggests that online health communities can be constructed as permissible spaces. Such virtual spaces facilitate the type of patient-professional negotiations that can redress asymmetries. The critical elements of the negotiation process are identified as occupation, validation, advocacy, and recording. These support patients and professionals as they debate and resolve conflicts in how they experience health. Direct tangible offline negotiation outcomes are reported (e.g., changes in treatment plans). Implications for professional-patient partnerships are also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the effect of the type of community host (consumer-hosted versus company-hosted communities) in the relationship between motivational drivers and content contribution to online communities. By presenting a typology of motivational drivers of content contribution and classifying prior research on motivational drivers accordingly, this article offers an integrated, in-depth literature review. Four motivational self- versus other-oriented and extrinsic versus intrinsic drivers were included in an empirical study of three online communities, with more than 800 community members. The results reveal that opinion leadership, self-presentation, and enjoyment positively affect content contribution; altruism negatively affects content contribution. In company-hosted online communities, the positive drivers are stronger than in consumer-hosted online communities. To encourage members' contribution, community managers should seek to attract opinion leaders, provide room for self-presentation, and enhance members' feelings of pleasure and comfort. A qualitative post hoc analysis also explicates the negative effect of altruism. Overall, this study provides a fruitful basis for several important theoretical and managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A viral advertising message on social networking sites (SNSs) has two sources: a brand that creates the message and an SNS user who passes along this message within his or her personal network. This study examined the influence of relationships with these two sources on receivers' intention to forward the viral advertising message. A significant interaction effect shows that having a strong consumer–brand relationship increases the receiver's intention to forward the viral advertising message sent by an online acquaintance, suggesting that a strong relationship with the brand can increase the effectiveness of electronic word of mouth on SNSs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Twitter is a very popular online social networking service that enables its users to post and share text-based messages known as tweets. Even though one tweet may contain at most only 140 characters, the number of tweets generated daily is enormous and hence, collectively, they can give important clues to the resolution of interesting issues such as those associated with public opinion and current trends and the retrieval or recommendation of hot multimedia contents. In this paper, we propose a spatio-temporal trend detection and related keyword recommendation scheme for tweets called TwitterTrends. Our scheme can identify hot keywords and recommend their related keywords at a given location and time by analyzing user tweets and their metadata such as GPS data. The scheme is based on a client-server collaboration model for efficiency. The client on the user device manages user interactions with the Twitter server, such as the writing and uploading of tweets. In addition, it selects candidate trend keywords from tweets by simple filtering, collects user location data from the mobile user device, and sends them to our trend processing (TP) server. Our scheme can show trend keywords and their related keywords intuitively and expand them on the fly by displaying relevant keywords collected from portal sites such as Wikipedia and Google. The TP server collects candidate trend keywords and metadata from all the clients and analyzes them to detect spatio-temporal trend keywords and their related keywords by considering their co-occurrence in tweets. Our scheme is very robust in that it can handle typical input events such as abbreviations and typing errors that occur when writing tweets on mobile devices as well as provide supplementary keywords from portal sites. We implemented a prototype system and performed various experiments to demonstrate that our scheme can achieve satisfactory performance and scalability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most recently the social media sharing websites such as Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa have allowed users to share their personal photos with friends. Moreover, people like to follow, forward their favorite images, which is one of the main source of near duplicate images. And also, the worldwide place of interests such as Roma, Statue of Liberty and London Tower Bridge etc., attract world-wide visitors. For these places, travelers take photos, write travelogues and share them with their social friends. The photos taken from the same place with or without viewpoint variations are near duplicate images. How to detect them is an ad-hoc problem in the area of image analysis and multimedia processing. The existing near duplicate image processing approaches mainly focused on finding the near duplicate images for a given input image, where a query image is needed. However, how to find the near duplicate image groups (NDIG) automatically from the web-scale social images is very challenging. So, in this paper, instead of searching near duplicates image for certain input image, we proposed an automatic NDIG mining approach by utilizing adaptive global feature clustering and local feature refinement. The proposed NDIG mining approach is achieved by utilizing a hierarchical model. It is a two-layer hierarchical structure by first utilizing adaptive global feature clustering based candidate NDIG detection and then using local feature refinement based NDIG verification. The global clustering is mainly for reducing computational cost for processing the large scale image set. The local refinement is for improving NDIG detection performances. Experiments on four datasets show the effectiveness of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The renewed interest in personal essays in composition complicates the contested, tricky personal identity negotiations for students and faculty in first-year writing, particularly in manifestations and representations of the body in both the classroom and writing spaces. This is especially complex for minority subjects, including queer students and faculty. Such collections as The Teacher's Body (edited by Freedman and Holmes) and Professions of Desire (edited by Haggerty and Zimmerman) explore the pedagogical underpinnings of the body, and Ellis Hanson's essay in the Gay Shame collection (2009) further complicates and interrogates the ways queer bodies are represented and problematized in the classroom. This article explores our own experiences in first-year writing: as students within a mind/body binary exploring through the scaffolding of composition, and as faculty who are increasingly exposed through our body projections in the classroom and depictions of our body and sexuality in an increasingly savvy media in which Google, Facebook, and social networking sites create matrices of identifications and disidentifications that inform our classroom experiences. The article traces the ways our bodies are aligned with cultural norms, and the ways that first-year writing complicates, contests, reifies, or disrupts these norms' for both students and faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Youth Participatory Observatory" is a social network released in July 2013 by the Brazilian government to encourage the collaboration of the youth over discussions addressed to youth policies. This interactive environment renders an integrated work with digital social networks for the purpose to get to know the youth and its concerns. The proposition is to enable debate to furnish subsidies towards public policies, legislation and other important subjects for the Brazilian youth. The essay document of Youth Participatory Observatory highlights that young people have long been askingfor a reliable space to discuss with researchers, managers and all the youngsters over the focal point of interest. Upon this article, we describe the creation process of the Participatory and furnish the analysis by means of the created groups as per the focal interest of the attending youngsters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of social media is transforming proximity cyber media, especially the impact these models have on local communities. The evolution of the new media ecosystem over the past ten years has involved the proliferation of proximity cyber media, both born-digital and digitised media. Only time will tell whether these proximity cyber media are sustainable and whether they will manage to adapt themselves to the ongoing transformations of network society. The purpose of this article is to identify the new ways in which proximity cyber media establish bonds with their communities, while highlighting the difference between born-digital and digitised media. The analysis focuses on the channels used by proximity cyber media to enable citizen participation in the product, the strategies they implement in social media, their volume of followers, as well as the socio-cultural initiatives they undertake with community associations and institutions. The study will be based on the analysis of four born-digital news media that stand out as new forms of proximity cyber media: The Spanish websites somosmalasaña.com, granadaimedia.com and elporvenirclm.com; and the Portuguese setubalnarede.com. In addition, the study offers an overview of the local news media owned by Adriano Lucas, one of the most important media groups in Portugal and the most influential in terms of coverage of proximity cyberjournalism. This study shows that only very few media initiatives make the most out of the potentialities of the context of web 2.0 to increase their digital communities and encourage and manage users' feedback. [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]

Introduction. This article analyses the profile of the television audience and its behaviour in social networks from different points of view, and across different TV formats and genres. Method. The study is based on a computer-assisted telephone interview applied to a sample of Spanish people over 18 years of age. A total of 1,201 interviews were conducted, with an absolute sampling error of ±2.8 percent and a confidence level of 95.5 percent. The participating households were selected by means of a simple random sampling technique, while the selection of participants tried to assure representativeness in terms of sex, age and geographical location. Results. The most talked-about TV programmes in social media belong to the fictional, entertainment and sports genres, although there are differences depending on the age, sex and educational level of the TV audience. Conclusions. The study confirmed that there is a growing trend to talk about TV programmes on social media. However, it is necessary to carry out a detailed content analysis to better understand the audience's attitudes and the issues explored on those TV programmes that are talked about on social media. [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]

Online platforms are increasingly used as a means to present brand characteristics to key target groups. Within a political context, websites can act as a shop front from which parties or candidates can advertise their policies and personnel. The increasing use of more interactive forms of communication informs visitors about the overall brand character of the host. This article explores the impact on branding of interactivity by analyzing the online activities undertaken by UK parties and their members elected to the House of Commons during the period 2007 to 2010. Through a process of creating narratives for each of the brands analyzed, based upon a content analysis of the websites and other online presences, this article identifies what characteristics the online shop front is designed to project. This article finds overall that interactivity within online environments is becoming one aspect of the branding of parties, though this is in limited forms and linked more to a marketing communication strategy than seeking to involve or understand site visitors. Members of Parliament who use social networking sites or weblogs, in contrast, have a developed i-branding strategy that enables them to present a strongly interactive brand personality to visitors to their online presences, offering impressions of them as accessible and effective representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Micro-blogging services and location-based social networks, such as Twitter, Weibo, and Foursquare, enable users to post short messages with timestamps and geographical annotations. The rich spatial-temporal-semantic information of individuals embedded in these geo-annotated short messages provides exciting opportunity to develop many context-aware applications in ubiquitous computing environments. Example applications include contextual recommendation and contextual search. To obtain accurate recommendations and most relevant search results, it is important to capture users' contextual information (e.g., time and location) and to understand users' topical interests and intentions. While time and location can be readily captured by smartphones, understanding user's interests and intentions calls for effective methods in modeling user mobility behavior. Here, user mobility refers to who visits which place at what time for what activity. That is, user mobility behavior modeling must consider user (Who), spatial (Where), temporal (When), and activity (What) aspects. Unfortunately, no previous studies on user mobility behavior modeling have considered all of the four aspects jointly, which have complex interdependencies. In our preliminary study, we propose the first solution named W4 (short for Who, Where, When, and What) to discover user mobility behavior from the four aspects. In this article, we further enhance W4 and propose a nonparametric Bayesian model named EW4 (short for Enhanced W4). EW4 requires no parameter tuning and achieves better results over W4 in our experiments. Given some of the four aspects of a user (e.g., time), our model is able to infer information of the other aspects (e.g., location and topical words). Thus, our model has a variety of context-aware applications, particularly in contextual search and recommendation. Experimental results on two real-world datasets show that the proposed model is effective in discovering users' spatial-temporal topics. Themodel also signi?cantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines for various tasks including location prediction for tweets and requirement-aware location recommendation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the analysis of the ways of forming students' collaboration skills based upon the usage of information and communication technologies. The authors specify the conception of effective students' collaboration while studying as one of the skills of the 21st century. The main task in the organisation of students' collaboration is providing a definition of the common aim in the studying process which is shared by everyone, and a strict division of roles for the solving of problems and tasks. Separately is examined the conception of students' e-collaboration, separate elements and forms of this conception are defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is increasingly apparent that social media is a unique and important resource to explore spontaneous relations and discourses among individuals. Data analysis in social media, however, is difficult because approaches have not been streamlined. In this paper, we move from the discussion of present perspectives in the analysis of social media to then discuss the methodological strategies available and their limits. We finally discuss the value of choosing a mixed methods approach to the analysis of social media, exemplifying its heuristic contribution by a real research case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increase in popularity and continued globalisation of social networking sites, it is important to define the theoretical boundaries of research in this area. While previous research has evaluated social networking trust based on the community perspective, the current study extend trust at two levels: community level trust and trust in connections made. Two data samples were used to ensure valid and reliable results on the findings. The first sample included a group of university students and the second data sample was randomly selected from a population of members within an active social networking site. The results from two samples establish a clear distinction between two levels of trust (i.e., trust in connections made and trust in the community). These results were applied to a previous study on social networking to provide an example of how these two levels can individually influence the research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research wants to identify the factors that impact the use of the social networking sites for knowledge exchange based on the open and sparse structure of virtual communities. Thus, we have adapted the technology adoption model (TAM) to evaluate the perceptions of the members of virtual communities of professionals hosted inside social networking sites regarding their autonomy, the openness of the sites, the diversity of the members of the networks and the interactivity when using these sites. Social networking sites are beneficial for knowledge exchange since their openness influences diversity of members and ideas. Usefulness increases when users feel to have more autonomy in managing their activity in the sites. Autonomy and diversity of the members are key factors because they influence the level of interactivity inside the network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their documented importance in the labor market, little is known about how workers use social networks to find jobs and their resulting effect on earnings. I use geographically detailed US employer-employee data to infer the role of social networks in connecting workers to jobs in high-paying firms. To identify social interactions in job search, I exploit variation in social network quality within small neighborhoods. Workers are more likely to change jobs, and more likely to move to a higher-paying firm, when their neighbors are employed in high-paying firms. Furthermore, local referral networks help match high-ability workers to high-paying firms. [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]

The paper presents research on the potential role of online personal ad platforms, specifically Craigslist, in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States. It suggests an increase of casual sex partnerships due to an extended social group via the Internet, provides analysis of the prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) cases between 1999-2008 within 33 U.S. states, and nonmarket-related casual sex relations. It concludes that Craigslist site entry may influence HIV transmission trends and offers implications for healthcare industry professionals.

This study uses network analysis to examine Twitter’s level of autonomy from external influences, being the political and the media field. The conceptual framework builds upon Bourdieu’s field theory, appropriated on social media as mediated social spaces. The study investigates conversation patterns on Twitter between political, media and citizen agents during election times in Belgium. Through the comparison of conversational practices with the positions users hold as political, media or citizen agents, we understand how the former is related to the latter. The analysis of conversation patterns (based on replies and mentions) shows a decentralized and loosely knit network, in which primarily citizen agents are present. Nonetheless, the prominence of citizens in the debate, mentions or replies to political and media agents are significantly higher, placing them more centrally in the network. In addition, politicians and media actors are closely connected within the network, and reciprocal communication of these established agents is significantly lower compared to citizen agents. We understand different aspects of autonomy related to the presence, positions and practices of the agents on Twitter and their relative positions as politicians, media or citizens. To conclude, we discuss the promises of Bourdieu’s relational sociology and the limitations of our study. The approach proposed here is an attempt to integrate existing work and evolve towards a systematic understanding of the interrelations between political, media and citizen agents in a networked media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social networking applications have gained huge popularity. With the widespread use of smart devices (e.g., on-board units, smartphones), these social networks are increasingly going mobile. As a result, a new trend of networking has emerged, referred to as vehicular social networking (VSN), which combines the wireless communications between vehicles with their social relationships. In a broader view, VSNs are social networks formed on roadways by users who have social relationships, interactions, and common interests. The exploitation of vehicular users? social properties provides better networking and social support to innovative applications and services. This article overviews recent achievements in VSN by providing an organized view of existing approaches. Its contribution lies in a taxonomy for content dissemination approaches in the context of VSN. Also, a framework is outlined to tackle a major new challenge: supporting user satisfaction. Finally, this article emphasizes open research and future trends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The world's upward trend of increasingly intense involvement and use of modern Web 2.0-based services, aimed at addressing politics and political campaigns, has been definitely manifested in the Republic of Macedonia recently. The Internet and social media have exhibited a gradually greater impact on Macedonian politics and political marketing than ever before. During the last presidential and parliamentary elections held in April 2014, Facebook, being a social network with a leading role in the country, has promoted itself as an extremely important arena for intensive political activism. The majority of Macedonian voters have shared both politicians' and political parties' posts through this social medium. This phenomenon can be considered a definite confirmation of the great role Facebook has in the country, not only regarding the dissemination of political ideas among the electorate, but also in the process of mobilizing potential voters, including the act of making a voting decision, especially regarding the politically undecided citizens. To the best of our knowledge, the paper presents a first attempt to describe the typical Facebook profile of a Macedonian voter, the level of his/her political engagement or indifference, as well as the most important features of his/her online behaviour during election campaigns, in correlation with his/her demographic and socio-economic characteristics. This profile is built up based on the results of an online survey being carried out during a time period of one month among Macedonian Facebook users, in the dawn of the 2014 political elections. The research has undoubtedly affirmed the fact that the virtual support Macedonian Facebook users give to individual politicians and political options during political campaigns can not only be strongly felt, but can also significantly affect the election outcomes, regardless of Macedonian Facebook users' 'alleged' indifference towards political Facebook posts and numerous contradictions held within the survey answers. [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]

Social networking sites (SNSs) have established an important presence in our daily lives and at work. This study explores how public service professionals use SNSs and how they perceive the potential of SNSs. This study further examines the relationship between the use of SNSs and social trust and civic participation. Last, this study identifies the challenges and opportunities facing public administration practitioners who use SNSs to build collaboration and promote public interests. Based on the nationwide survey results, this study provides a broader understanding of SNS use among public service professionals. Furthermore, it also provides management recommendations on how public service professionals can make full use of SNSs to facilitate their interactions with other public service professionals and citizens, and foster collaboration to pursue public interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe the social network of CouchSurfing as an innovative, non-monetary model for the traditional international hospitality and travel market. This paper is written to describe our understanding of how it can operate and expand in spite of potential risks and uncertainties. We present the results of an exploratory qualitative research project that was conducted in Hungary in 2012/13. The findings indicate that: (1) a high level of trust as a personality trait characterizes members; (2) trust can be interpreted as a strong cultural rule; (3) members perceive a low level of risk and have limited practical knowledge about the safety features of the system; and (4) trust towards a given member is not based on rational calculation but on emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]