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Social media are increasingly used as a source of health information. Opinions expressed on social media, including Twitter, may contribute to opinion formation and impact positively or negatively the vaccination decision-making process. The paper creates networks of Greek users that talk about vaccination on Twitter, during the last quarter of 2021 and analyzes their structure and grouping. Furthermore, some content analysis is also produced by creating networks of words found within tweets. The main purpose is to locate and present the Greek public views on COVID-19 vaccination. Results show that the network of Greek users may be considered as fragmented but by all means not polarized between two different opinions. Anti-vaccination ideas were clearly present during the first period of our study but were rapidly diminished in the following months, maybe due to a large number of deaths and the advent of the Omicron strain. The persisting large percentage of the population refusing to vaccinate may be expressed in other social media platforms.

Traveling and tourism are now an essential part of people’s life and have a big influence on society [...]

Increasing numbers of museums use Twitter to attract visitors, engage effectively with them and facilitate the construction and strengthening of communities, where visitors are creating their own a...

The 2022–2023 winter period is alleged to be one of the toughest since World War II with respect to energy, especially electricity, natural gas and oil. The paper investigates the public discussions on Twitter in five widely spoken European languages and English. Networks of users are formed in order to locate possible important nodes that control the distribution of information. The networks are rather sparse and do not belong to the general class of ‘small worlds’. The communities of users seem to gather around one user; however, users also interact with others within the groups. Regarding the users’ sentiments, the negatives are definitely higher than the positive ones. Sentiments appear to be stable in their scores during the examined period and for each language; fear and sadness are dominant among them. Energy prices are frequently discussed in all languages, along with major political events. Findings may help governments to better understand public views and develop an effective strategy to communicate with and protect EU citizens.

Pictures speak louder than words. In this fast-moving world where people hardly have time to read anything, photo-sharing sites become more and more popular. Instagram is being used by millions of people and has created a “sharing ecosystem” that also encourages curation, expression, and produces feedback. Museums are moving quickly to integrate Instagram into their marketing strategies, provide information, engage with audience and connect to other museums Instagram accounts. Taking into consideration that people may not see museum accounts in the same way that the other museum accounts do, the article first describes accounts' performance of the top, most visited museums worldwide and next investigates their interconnection. The analysis uses techniques from social network analysis, including visualization algorithms and calculations of well-established metrics. The research reveals the most important modes of the network by calculating the appropriate centrality metrics and shows that the network formed by the museum Instagram accounts is a scale–free small world network.

In this paper we deal with Twitter and the presence of the keyword “Macedonia” in tweets over a period of time. We searched for the same term in three different languages, i.e. “Μακeδονiα”, “Macedonia” and “Македонска - Македониjа”, since we are primarily interested in views from Greece and FYROM without excluding views from other regions. We use methods from Social Network Analysis (SNA) in order to create networks of users, calculate some main network metrics, measure user importance and investigate the presence of possible fragmentations—communities among them. We furthermore proceed to a form of content analysis, using pairs of words within tweets, in order to obtain main ideas, trends and public views that circulated over the network.

The COVID-19 disease emerged in late 2019 in China, is still rapidly spreading across the globe. Greece as many other countries enforced strict preventative policies. As a result, the daily life of people has changed and conversation turned online. The paper aims at investigating discussions around COVID-19 on Twitter in Greece. Twitter was selected as it played a significant role during the global health crisis. The presence of the keywords “Κορονοιος”, “κορονοιός”, “κορωνοιος”, “Κορωνοϊός”, “Κορωνοιος” in tweets over four periods of time were recorded. NodeXL Pro was used to identify word pairs, create semantic networks and analyze them. Main topics of conversation were extracted. ‘New cases’ are heavily discussed all of the times showing anxiety about community transmission of the virus. A shift on different views was also recorded. Before the lockdown people showed their concerns about stocking up foods and other essentials, followed by positive hashtags in the fight to save lives and encouraging each other and finally the debate over the deaths. The paper may help policy makers regarding societal issues during the pandemic.

In this research article, we aim to study the proposed role of human&ndash, machine interactive (HMI) technologies, including both artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR)-enabled applications, for the post-COVID-19 revival of the already depleted tourism industry in Vietnam&rsquo, s major tourist destination and business hub of Ho Chi Minh City. The researchers aim to gather practical knowledge regarding tourists&rsquo, intentions for such service enhancements, which may drive the sector to adopt a better conclusive growth pattern in post-COVID-19 times. In this study, we attempt to focus on travelers who look for paramount safety with the assurance of empathetic, personalized care in post-COVID-19 times. In the current study, the authors employ structural equation modeling to evaluate the intentions of tourists both structurally and empirically for destination tourism with data collected from tourists with previous exposure to various kinds of these devices. The study shows that human&ndash, machine interactive devices are integrating AI and VR and have a significant effect on overall service quality, leading to tourist satisfaction and loyalty. The use of such social interactive gadgets within tourism and mostly in hospitality services requires an organization to make a commitment to futuristic technologies, along with building value by enriching service quality expectations among fearful tourists. This research shows that tourists mainly focus on the use of such HMI devices from the perspective of technology acceptance factors, qualitative value-enhancing service and trustworthy information-sharing mechanisms. The concept of the tour bubble framework is also discussed in detail. The analysis of this discussion gives us a more profound understanding of the novel opportunities which various administrative agencies may benefit from to position these devices better in smart, sustainable destination tourism strategies for the future so that, collectively, service 5.0 with HMI devices can possibly bring back tourism from being disintegrated. Such service applications are the new social innovations leading to sustainable service and a sophisticated experience for all tourists.

One of the major roles of governments is to create a favorable business environment for fostering entrepreneurial activities, including good infrastructure and a culture that encourages the adoption of technologies. In such a policy context, the Greek National Electronic Public Procurement System (ESIDIS) was developed. The use of ESIDIS is mandatory for the employees, and its success depends on users' satisfaction. The chapter investigates the factors influencing employees' satisfaction when using the system. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, perceived risk, and willingness to learn were investigated using empirical research. Structural equation modeling was used for the analysis of the data. Perceived usefulness has the most significant role in determining user satisfaction while risks importance is diminished when users understand the usefulness of the system for their job performance. Managers and policymakers should take these factors into consideration in order to improve users' satisfaction and consequently maximize the added value of the system for the entrepreneurs.

The Greek National Electronic Public Procurement System (ESIDIS) was developed with the aim to provide direct supplies of goods and services for the public administration more effectively and efficiently. The paper aims at investigating the factors that influence users’ satisfaction from ESIDIS. Usefulness, ease-of-use, risk perception and willingness-to-learn were investigated. A structured questionnaire was used for empirical research. The regression model shows the existence of an important prediction model between three independent variables (usefulness, ease-of-use, and willingness-to-learn) and user satisfaction (dependent variable). The resulting regression model can be used to predict user satisfaction when interacting with ESIDIS.

Instagram, the photo and video sharing social network platform, has enjoyed exponential growth since its launch. As Instagram’s popularity is growing fast, museums are moving quickly to integrate it into their marketing strategies, provide information about exhibitions and objects, engage with audience and connect to other museums Instagram accounts. This paper aims at investing the interconnections among the Instagram accounts of the most visited museums worldwide. The analysis uses techniques from Social Network Analysis, including visualization algorithms and calculations of well-established metrics. The research shows that the network formed by the museum Instagram accounts is a scale-free small world network and reveals the most important nodes of the network. Depending or their marketing policies, other museums may follow the most important in the network, be aware of the information that flows in the network and also to be motivated and inspired by them.

Social media marketing is a connection between brands and consumers, offering a personal channel for user centered networking and social interaction. The research employs constructs adapted from the Technology Acceptance Model, integrates them with other constructs and investigates factors affecting Greek consumers’ acceptance of social media marketing in the hotel industry. The conceptual model is tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. The study identifies six factors that directly or indirectly influence intention to perform Social Media Marketing Activities. These factors are: Perceived ease of use, Perceived usefulness, Permission Based Acceptance, Fear about social media marketing, Social media Use, and Attitudes towards marketing with social media. The model raises fundamental issues that hotel managers, decision-makers and social media specialists should take into account to increase customers’ intention to perform social media marketing activities, like booking, using social media applications.

Nowadays, museums, galleries and other cultural institutions use social media to reach millions of people, to build communities of interest, to perform marketing, engagement-focused and educational activities. Use of mobile devices in India is widespread, in contrast to Internet use which is low and it is, therefore, interesting to study the adoption and use of mobile applications like Instagram. The paper aims at investigating the use of Instagram by cultural institutions in India and takes into consideration four main performance indexes namely, the total number of followers, total number of accounts following, total number of posts and number of likes attracted by the last ten posts of the accounts in order to construct a weighed performance index. The proposed index shows that some of the Instagram accounts attempt to exploit the possibilities offered by Instagram to connect and effectively engage with their fans and boost their presence on the platform. Cultural institutions are important heritage destinations and generators of income. The creation of Instagram content that engages fans and followers and hopefully turn a proportion of followers to visitors may have positive impact for the institute and largely for the country.

Twitter offers tremendous opportunities for people to engage in discussion regarding the Oscars awards through information sharing, expressing opinions, disappointment or enthusiasm on movies, casts, and productions. Despite the huge number of tweets generated and the notable excitement about the Oscars, there is a void in the literature about the dynamic interconnections of users interacting in Twitter. In this paper, we use social network analytic techniques to record and create networks of users discussing and interacting in Twitter around the search term 'Oscars'. We subsequently present and study the users' networks gaining insights regarding their clusterability in communities and some of their discussion topics. We also study the macroscopic structure of the users' network and prove that they belong to a class of networks bearing the scale-free topology. Finally, we create new networks based on the actual content of the tweets, based on word adjacencies and we proceed with a similar investigation on these semantic networks.

Today, social media have become a major trend, and consumers are engaging more and more in the social media platforms used by hotels. This does not mean that they book a hotel room via social media, as the booking process is a complex one. The paper investigates the factors that affect users&rsquo, intention to book a hotel room using social media applications. The recent enforcement of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California may have an impact on consumers&rsquo, behavior. To investigate this further, the study integrates into a model the following constructs: Perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, trust in online hoteliers, social media use, and permission-based-acceptance. The survey was conducted on Greek users of social media. An online questionnaire was used for data collection. The conceptual model was tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. The study identified four factors that directly or indirectly influence consumers&rsquo, intention to book hotel rooms through social media. Usefulness directly affects intention to book online. Permission-based acceptance plays a core role in the model. Both constructs trust in online hoteliers and social media use, and have a direct positive effect on permission-based acceptance, whereas permission-based acceptance has a direct positive influence on intention to book through social media. The validated model stretches the need for hoteliers to obtain permission from consumers in carrying out their marketing activities. It is important for hotel owners, managers, and social media specialists to keep consumers in mind, offer them useful information and services, and have a trustworthy behavior in order to boost bookings through social media.

Purpose – Environmental awareness has significant impact on hotel selection. As hotel customers’ become more ecologically conscious tend to prefer hotels that have environmental policies in place. The purpose of this paper is to examine customers’ perceptions of what a green hotel should do or should be and exploring intentions to choose a green hotel. Design/methodology/approach – An empirical research study was conducted using an online survey. The questionnaire used investigates what a green hotel should do or should be environmental concerns, eco-friendly attitudes, eco-friendly activities, awareness, overall image, intention to pay more and intention to visit a green hotel. In total, 159 completed and usable questionnaires were received. Findings – Findings reveal that potential customers’ are highly environmentally conscious. However, they are not fully aware about green hotels and do not always intent to visit a green hotel, or are willing to pay more. Originality/value – Hotel customers’ perceptions towards intention to visit a green hotel are different among various ages and geographic locations. Thus, the study focuses on perceptions of Generation Y in Greece. Hotel managers should be aware of customers’ buying behaviour towards green practices and communicate more, green hotel practices.

ICT, use of web and web 2.0 applications have deeply affected the way travel and tourism organizations distribute up-to-date content and their products in the marketplace. Traditional intermediaries, like travel agents, tour operators or even the Global Distribution Systems are progressively disappearing. Consumers undertake their entire tourism product search and booking on-line and therefore a wide range of new tourism e-Mediaries emerge, like single supplier provisions, web-based travel agencies, portals and hotel booking websites. Twitter allow hotel e-Mediaries to spread information and deals, to listen to customers, increase customer engagement, enhance customer satisfaction and obtain deeper insight into the customers’ experiences. Up to now, no research has been devoted at investigating the use of Twitter by hotel e-Mediaries. The paper fills this gap and records major hotel e-Mediaries websites and their Twitter accounts. Twitter performance indexes are used to describe the activity and performance of these accounts. Statistical analysis investigates if significant differentiations among hotel booking websites exists, regarding Twitter performance. It is investigated whether Twitter performance is in accordance with hotel booking websites’ web traffic data and analytics.

Technology ranks second among the top topics on blogging. However, little research effort has been devoted to investigating “tech” blogs while it is interesting to provide insights on their network, as they may have strong influence in the way that readers act and make decisions. In this vein, the paper records Greek “tech” blogs and their incoming links reported through their blogrolls. A directed network was created where blogs are noted as nodes and linked as directed arrows—arcs. The resulting network is analyzed using centrality and topological measurements and results are discussed in the social network analysis context. The network is a small world, with sparse density for a real-life social network and is low in-degree that shows off a kind of immaturity. Bloggers prefer to link to nodes with smaller degrees perhaps due to the fact that they are afraid of the growing competition thus they have reservations.

Blogging in the wine industry has become widespread. This article explores linkage patterns of the Top 100 Wine Blogs. The analysis aims at finding the central wine-blog groups among them. Central blog groups are located using blog inter-linkages through blogrolls. Because of the methodology used, they may be considered to be authority blogs, in terms of search engine optimization. They serve as focal points where interesting conversation and exchange of information takes place. The article describes the features of these blogs in an attempt to explore the characteristics that distinguish these blogs and make them appreciated and worth visiting.

Recently, museums worldwide started to use social media and have developed initiatives to provide widespread access to museum information resource, engage audiences and attract more visitors. Twitter, the most popular microblogging platform, allows museums to spread small time-sensitive amounts of information and transform audiences from passive observers into active participators. However, little research effort has been devoted at investigating the use of Twitter by museums. The paper aims to fill this gap and records the top-60 European museums and their Twitter accounts. Eleven Twitter performance indexes are used to describe the activity and performance of these accounts. Descriptive statistics, Principal Components Analysis and correlational analysis reveal that there is a significant differentiation among museums regarding Twitter performance. Performance of the accounts is described using three principal components: networking, tweeting activity, time that the account is active and involvement. A group of the more active museums on Twitter is constructed. Partially, Twitter performance is in accordance with museums popularity and ranking, while there are a significant proportion of museums which do not use Twitter. Implications and suggestions are provided for the museums to use Twitter as a marketing and promotion channel, especially for the museums which are placed lower within the ranking list.

Technological developments and governments’ understanding of what citizens need usually determine the design of public online services. For successful implementation of e-Government services, governments have to place the user in the center of future developments, understand what citizens need and measure what increases citizens’ willingness to adopt e-government services. The paper uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the extended TAM, the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory and the important determinants of user acceptance perceived risk and trust, in order to describe teachers’ behavioral intensions to adopt e-Government services. A model containing trust and risk, along with cognitive, social and intrinsic factors is used to study the intentions of e-Government use by Greek primary and secondary education teachers. Two hundred and thirty teachers responded to an online survey. Findings reveal that cognitive and intrinsic factors have significant effects on intentions to use e-Government websites.

Today's process of globalization has urged countries to brand themselves like corporations. The Internet is a valuable tool in this process. Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) are a part of a company's strategy and contribute to their sales. This article attempts to investigate whether efficient selling propositions' usage is associated with efficient websites' structure and design. It analyzes branding elements and explores possible associations among design characteristics and USP delivery. The research focuses on websites of Mediterranean countries. Results show that most websites do not effectively deliver a USP. On the contrary, brand-building components of the websites orchestrate effectively clear targeting and are delivering messages to target markets.

PurposeUsing Travelpod.com, this paper aims to provide a methodology to locate central groups of travelers and to describe pattern characteristics of central travelers.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses snowball sampling to locate travelers and analyze their hyperlink interconnections to identify central travelers' groups. Analysis of the adjacency matrix of the social network of travelers using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to identify core travelers' groups follows.FindingsIn total, 7 percent of travelers are considered central travelers. They form core groups containing the most active and information providing travelers. Group membership is correlated with common travelers' characteristics.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is limited to a specific network of travelers, to a specific time interval, and to a specific sampling method. Repetition of the study in other travelers' networks in several time instances using a full list of member travelers would help to generalize the findings. Also, graph theoretical approaches other than the statistical analysis used could reveal more properties.Practical implicationsTravelers in core groups are more likely to be reached by others who navigate through a series of incoming links that lead to them and it is probable that these travelers have the potential to address many visitors and therefore to have a significant impact on the provision of information.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper lies in the use of multivariate statistics on the network adjacency matrix to locate core travelers groups and on finding groups of the most influential travelers.