Search

Livestreaming platforms have emerged as an important political communication tool for engaging with constituents. Twitch, YouTube Live, Mixer, and Facebook can broadcast real-time video contents via Web-based services and mobile app platforms. Our case study aims to determine whether livestreaming influencers generated political participation during Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election. This case study is based on a framework that integrates the literature on political communication and influencer marketing. In this article, we describe the rise of livestreaming platforms and explain the role of livestreamers in political communication. We also examine whether the characteristics of livestreaming influencers and the type of influence they exert increased political participation by their fans and followers and whether this accounted for the success of Tsai Ing-wen’s victory in her 2020 campaign for re-election as president.

Storytelling video advertising has emerged as a cost-effective creative technique to engage consumers with an advertised brand. Unlike traditional television commercials and print ads, long-form video ads can persuade consumers with an authentic and engaging brand story to develop favourable branding outcomes. Using a structural equation model with SPSS Amos 25.0, we empirically tested the effects of narrative transportation evoked by video storytelling ads on brand sensory, intellectual, behavioural experience, brand love, and brand loyalty. Our findings support the relationships between ad-elicited narrative transportation and branding outcomes across different product types. Discussions and implications are provided.

New communication technologies have enabled politicians to interact and engage with their constituents constantly and unmitigated by mainstream media. Among them, emerging live streaming platforms rise as an essential political communication tool. However, in consolidating politicians' base, these technologies similarly run the risk of polarizing the society, resulting in disruption and healthy development of democracy. This case study describes and examines the role of live streaming platforms and influencers in generating political participation to account for the success of President Tsai Ing-wen's 2020 re-election campaign in Taiwan. This study focuses on the roles of live streaming platforms and influencers in contributing to the growing and alarming global phenomenon of populism and polarization associated with politicians' campaign strategies. This study also discusses whether the employment of live streaming influencers as a viable political communication tool in this campaign may ultimately contribute to the democratic deepening in Taiwan.

The rapid ascent of data-driven advertising practices has allowed advertising professionals to develop highly-targeted and personalized advertising campaigns. The success of data-driven advertising relies on if future professionals are proficient with basics of Big Data analytics. However, past research of undergraduate advertising curricula around the world has shown that higher education institutions tend to fall behind in offering the most up-to-dated training for advertising students. Findings have shown that undergraduate advertising programs have slowly taken advantage of the potential of the data analytics tools and techniques. This trend is observed among higher education institutions around the world. Practical, research, and pedagogical implications are discussed.

Taiwan's Sunflower Student Movement on March 18, 2014 has been characterized as a social movement with its sophisticated integration of social and mobile media into mobilizing Taiwanese society through participant recruitment and resource mobilization domestically and globally. Ample research has contributed the roles of these emerging media platforms as one of the main reasons for its success. This study was based on resource mobilization theory (RMT) to examine the roles of new communication technologies on mobilizing resources. This chapter focuses on the resource mobilization strategies by activists and organizations of the 318 Sunflower Student Movement. A large-scale text mining study was developed to examine how cross-national English media have described this social movement in Taiwan. Results and implications were discussed.

The advent of mobile communication devices has become an essential part of contemporary human experiences. However, what are consumers' experiences with their mobile devices on a daily basis? This exploratory chapter used an experience sampling method to extract quantitative and qualitative experiential data to understand how concerns over location-sensitive privacy issues affect how consumers feel about mobile phone in their daily lives. Participants from both Taiwan and U.S. took part in this study and recorded their daily experiences with the presence of smartphones at different parts of one single day. The findings suggest that cross-national consumers generally agree with the functional benefits of mobile devices, but at the same time, express their disruptive effects on their daily lives. Taiwanese consumer mood states are overall consistent with those of American participants who similarly feel more disrupted with their mobile phones. Discussions and implications are provided.

The University of Texas at El Paso has launched the TeachTech Program to help its instructors to learn and implement the applications of new instructional technologies in the university classrooms. The objectives of this chapter are to examine what faculty members have experienced after taking part in the TeachTech Program. This study employed an online interview method to solicit past and present TeachTech Program participants (N=17) to share their experiences. Participants responded to a questionnaire hosted at QuestionPro. Faculty recurrent keywords and key phrases were collected from participants' experiential narratives. Using the key phrase extraction functions from QDA Miner and WordStat has found the following phrases related to their experiences: “incorporate technology,” “collaborate sessions,” “hybrid version,” “desire to learn,” and “solve problems.” Implications and discussions were provided.

President Donald Trump’s positions on climate change issues have caused many worries among conservation activists in the United States. To examine whether Trump’s Presidency in 2017 marks an important historical event to influence climate change narratives in the United States, we employed a text mining method to study media representations and discourses on climate change issues. Our theoretical foundation is based on framing theory that investigates whether media framing building may be affected by political changes in the United States. A total of 70 U.S. newspaper articles were analysed to identify and compare repetitive words and phrases before and after Trump’s Presidency. Key phrases such as “global warming”, “national security”, “carbon dioxide”, “carbon emissions”, “weather events”, and so on have emerged from our media corpus. Noticeable differences before and after Trump’s Presidency are observed in how U.S. newspapers frame climate change issues, suggesting the possible effect of political changes on the media framing building of climate change issues. The study concludes with a discussion of how the text mining techniques may help environmental communication practitioners and researchers. Limitations and future research directions are also provided.

Gamification has been widely used in the higher education to enhance users' learning experiences through the integration of game-like elements into the course materials. This study explores whether and how different levels of gamification in the instructional methods will influence student engagement with the course, overall learning experiences with the course, and learning outcomes with the course materials. The findings suggest that, among four indices to measure the success of gamification, three out of four show the positive gamification effects with a highly gamified class leads to higher level of student engagement than no or lowly gamified classes. The same positive gamification effects can be found in students' overall learning experience. Highly gamified classes result in better student learning outcomes as measured by their grades at different data collection points. Limitations of this study include small class sizes and no statistically significant results and only two gamified elements used. Implications and discussions were presented.

The global AR, MR, and VR markets will reach USD$40.6 billion in 2019. As a result, digital reality technologies have become a key component of promoting art exhibition and museum industries to the general public around the world. Emerging applications such as ARCHEOGUIDE, ARCO, and 3D-MURALE have allowed museum-goers to access archeological artefacts and sites remotely without physically visiting the museums. Digital reality technologies have therefore been perceived to have the great potential to promote (creative) cultural industry contents, because of the characteristics of these platforms (e.g., interactivity, realism, and visualization). This chapter employs a case study approach to discuss the current state of digital reality technology applications in museums and art exhibitions around the world. The study provides several best practice examples to demonstrate how digital reality technologies have fundamentally transformed the art exhibitions and museums.

Thanks to the rapid development of asynchronous and synchronous instructional technologies (such as Blackboard and Moodle), many college instructors have flipped their classrooms to create a more student-centered learning environment. The emphasis on cultivating students' life-long learning abilities through the enhancement of information literacy or technology-enabled learning has transformed the pedagogical approaches used by many college instructors. This text mining study was based on a corpus of a three-year experiential narrative collected by the instructor from over 15 college-level courses to identify keywords, main topics/themes, and associations of these topical concepts in students' experiential narratives during and after taking these hybrid classes. QDA Miner text mining software was used to analyze these experiential narratives. Results, implications, and limitations were presented.

Creative culture industry refers to industries that combine the creation, distribution, production, and commercialization of creative contents in advertising, design, film & video, interactive leisure software, music, publishing, and television and radio. This chapter focuses on the museum sub-sector of the creative cultural industries. These sub-sectors have eagerly embraced digital technologies to promote cultural heritage by transforming their archaeological finds into more immersive creative and cultural contents. However, the pervasive nature of mobile technologies and the heavy reliance on consumers' locational information have caused rising privacy concerns among consumers. This chapter employed a text mining study to explore how potential privacy infringement, as one of the most observable social impacts of mobile-based and location-sensitive AR and VR technologies, is discussed in major media outlets around the world. Discussions and implications conclude the chapter.

Western scholars have previously predicted Weibo and social media will provide Chinese netizens with an opportunity to foster its nascent civil society. However, the growing applications of surveillance technologies have challenged this rosy, yet deterministic prediction. This chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas's concept of public sphere is less likely to function properly, given the pervasive applications of surveillance technologies in China, which has fundamentally challenge its many assumptions. Using Habermas's analytical framework that is used to better comprehend the role of social media in Chinese politics, the authors argue that information technologies turn out to deteriorate the formation and maintenance of a public sphere for Chinese civil society. The authors employ a case study to examine the interrelations among social media, surveillance technologies, civil society, state power, economic development, political process, and democratization in China as demonstrated in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Protests.

Digital technologies are instrumental in helping Chinese environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) to tackle local environmental problems. Technologies such as mobile social media and QR Code have the capacity to integrate, involve, initiate, and individualize environmental communication campaigns to create more effective local impacts. From an organizational capacity-building perspective, this chapter demonstrates how these emerging digital technologies have helped Chinese ENGOs to enhance environmental activism, engagement, and networking with other ENGOs, and increase political participation among local stakeholders. Our work describes social media and QR Code applications among these ENGOs to better understand how digital technologies have created a seamless integration with other media platforms. This integration supports collaboration with other ENGOs, mobilization of financial and human resources, volunteer recruitment, and stakeholder education at the local level. We propose a technology-enabled capacity-building framework where ENGOs take into consideration China’s political-social-cultural factors so that the full potential of digital technologies can be realized.

Huawei, a major Chinese player in 5G mobile communication infrastructure and equipment, has caused many national security concerns among the Western countries. Using a computational framing approach, this study aims to examine how global news organizations frame Huawei. This study depends on a media corpus of 1527 articles from Nexis UNI (previously Lexis/Nexis Academic) database after using “Huawei” and “national security” as the keyword pair. Prominent key phrases include “national security,” “security concerns,” “security threat,” and “security fears” among non-Chinese media, while Chinese media focus on “trade war,” “Donald Trump,” and (the arrest) of Huawei’s CFO, “Meng Wanzhou.” Linear regression analyses also confirmed the positive relationship between a country’s animosity against China with how Huawei will be framed by news organizations. Increased animosity perceptions against China are found to be positively associated with more likely to frame Huawei with national security and security fear concerns.

Because of its popularity and rapid growth, Facebook has become a viable advertising medium for corporations to communicate with their consumers. The experiences of Facebook users are important to ensure the success of any Facebook advertising campaign. This chapter reports the findings from a qualitative study using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) after recruiting Facebook college participants in a large university in the Southwest U.S. The ESM technique is a powerful tool to collect data to demonstrate participants' actual experiences and reflections when using Facebook and Facebook advertising. The authors use a signal contingent protocol to record participants' experiences in using Facebook and Facebook advertising after prompting participants to record their using experiences randomly. The findings will help online advertising researchers to better understand the feasibility of using Facebook as a potential advertising medium through a non-survey-based method to better assess potential impacts on businesses.

Email advertising has evolved from simple text, untargeted mass mailings to visually sophisticated, highly targeted, permission-based interactive communication for non-profit organizations. This study employed a self-administered survey method to collect data from 400 participants, randomly selected from 1,806 supporters of a National Public Radio (NPR; KTEP-FM) station in El Paso. A total of 106 responses was received. Several linear regression models were run and showed that NPR members’ innovativeness variables significantly predicted their attitudes towards email advertising ( F = 5.86, p < 0.01). β coefficients further demonstrated that the more technologies and online activities NPR members adopt, the more positive their attitudes towards email advertising will be. Results also showed that NPR members’ innovativeness (measured by their online activities) negatively predict their attitudes towards postal direct mail advertising. β coefficient demonstrated that the more online activities NPR members undertook, the less favourable their attitudes towards postal direct mail advertising were. Similar results were found for NPR members’ preference of postal direct mail advertising ( F = 3.76, p < 0.05). Online activities also negatively predicted NPR members’ preference of direct mail postal advertising as shown by β coefficient in the regression model. The study also discussed managerial implications for non-profit organizations to better use email advertising.

The rapid rise of China as an economic and geo-political superpower has been accompanied with its environmental causalities. According to World Health Organization, more than one million Chinese die of air pollution each year. Non-profit conservation organizations, foreign or domestic, have launched environmental marketing communications campaigns to address these problems. This chapter describes and explores the role of mobile social media in conducting environmental marketing communications in China. Using Rare's Pride Campaign in Yangtze River and other environmental conservation organizations to protect endangered species and natural resources as examples, this chapter demonstrates the benefits and limitations of mobile and social media in promoting environmental causes in China. Discussion, implications, research limitations, and future research directions were presented.

Digital reality technologies have become a key component of promoting creative and cultural industries in Taiwan. In 2016, Taiwan's Ministry of Culture funded 45 projects to promote creative and cultural industries in this island country. A total of USD$25.6 million dollars have been granted to this project. Among these projects, the applications of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have been found to be the latest trend in Taiwan's creative and cultural industries. This chapter employs a case study approach to survey the current state of digital reality technology applications particularly in the area of creative and oceanic cultural industries in Taiwan. Using a detailed description of these best practices among creative and cultural industries to promote Taiwanese oceanic culture, this chapter aims to provide a detailed examination of digital reality applications in the creative and cultural industry sectors in a non-Western context.

This chapter deals with emerging augmented, mixed, and virtual reality platforms and their applications in cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns. This chapter provides definitions and examples of augmented, mixed, and virtual realities and explains their importance CRM professionals. Compared with traditional marketing platforms, reality-creating technologies are characterized with their capabilities to interact with marketing contents through their geolocation specificity, mobility, and synchronization of virtuality and reality. These technological characteristics have made reality-creating technologies very promising for many cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns. This chapter surveys current discussions in the existing literature and ends with three cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns. The study concludes with an overview of emerging issues, future directions, and professional best practice recommendations.

Narrative advertising has emerged as a popular advertising practice to communicate an authentic and engaging brand story. New media platforms such as YouTube and video advertising have allowed advertisers and marketers to tell longer brand stories. Scholars have attempted to explain the effectiveness of narrative advertising and storytelling execution through narrative transportation or self-referencing perspective. This chapter employs a combination of critical literature review and a case study approach. This book chapter provides an assessment of current practices and theoretical explorations in narrative advertising. The authors conclude this chapter by providing two best practices in narrative advertising to explain this popular advertising practice and explore its implications for the advertising and marketing communications industry.

On February 4, 2015, China announced its new regulations that require all Chinese Internet users to register with their real names. The heightened control of Internet clearly demonstrates Chinese government's concerns over increasing social unrests and the abilities of Chinese Internet users to access information not censored by the government. However, the real-name registration regime has posed the greatest challenge to the anonymity of the Internet that many Chinese users have valued in an authoritarian society. Furthermore, the real-name registration system also impinges on Chinese Internet users' privacy, political freedom, and freedom of speech. This book chapter analyzes microblog discussions to examine existing Chinese censorship and control systems on the Internet, to investigate government's rhetoric to justify its censorship and control systems, and to identify major themes in Chinese netizens' reactions and discourses.

With the advancement of mobile and other information-communication technologies, the Cloud application services have gained increasing usage in recent years. The study of adoption factors is a topic worthy of further exploration. This research investigates critical factors, affecting users’ continuance intention to use Cloud services. Our research is based on the model of continuous using information system to explore these relationships. Results were obtained from 313 valid samples, using an online survey test the research model. Empirical results from the SEM conclude that (1) innovation acceptance, perceived safety, confirmation, and perceived usefulness positively affect satisfaction; (2) confirmation positively affect perceived usefulness; (3) knowledge sharing, perceived usefulness, and satisfaction positively affect continuance intention; (4) users’ motivation has a moderating effect between satisfaction and continuance intention. Practical suggestions to the vendors of Cloud application service are provided.

Because of the rapid demographic shifts in the United States (US), it is vital to examine how voters of different ethnic backgrounds perceive the ethnic source cue of a candidate in political advertising and how such perceptions influence voting behaviour. We used a post-test-only experiment to investigate the effects of candidate’s ethnic source cue and party affiliation on voters’ homophily perceptions and voting intent. A total of 335 college students from a large southwestern university in the US were recruited to take part in a post-test-only experiment. Results from multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) found that candidate’s ethnic source cue and party affiliation have significant main effects on voters’ homophily perceptions and voting intent. The moderating effects of voters’ own ethnicity, party identification and gender were also found to have statistically significant effects on voters’ homophily perceptions and voting intent. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Mobile communications have played an indispensable part in contemporary human experiences. The combination of social networking and mobile technologies presents an interesting phenomenon because the pervasive nature of mobile technologies significantly impacts on users’ privacy concerns about highly personal social media like Facebook. The massive amount of data collected from users’ mobile social media usage behaviors is beneficial to strategic communication professionals and practices. However, there are significant privacy concerns as a result of these big data applications. Because cultural context provides what is considered to be private and how individuals should respond to any infringement with their own privacy, Geert Hofstede’s 5-D cultural dimension framework was used as an interpretive framework to understand cross-cultural data collected from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). The data were analyzed by examining country-specific differences in mobile social media users’ experiences, partic...

U.S. Hispanic purchasing power is estimated to reach $1.5 trillion by 2015. Because of this growing importance, there has been a surge of Hispanic consumer behavior research in recent years. Latinas account for 49.5 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population and increasingly become tech-savvy to adopt new mobile social networking technologies. In spite of their growing importance, there still lacks a thorough examination on factors affecting female Hispanic consumers' decision-making process related to mobile social media applications. This book chapter collected qualitative in-depth interview data that were interpreted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and TAM2 as theoretical lenses. Four major themes were identified: 1) family and peer influence; 2) perceived functional benefits of mobile social media; 3) Latinas as a primary decision-maker to adopt; 4) cultural and sub-cultural influence.

Among many popular digital game platforms, MMORPGs is a popular game genre that attracts a lot of attention. Companies have increasingly used digital game platforms to target young gameplayers. In examining digital games in general and MMORPGs in particular, digital game and advertising scholars often conceptualize gamers' interactions with hybrid interactive contents in advertising embedded in digital game platforms as an object that can be studied and analyzed to develop a theory of intertexuality to understand its praxix as demonstrated in this popular advertising platform. This chapter introduces the concept of hybrid interactive rhetorical engagement (henceforth, H.I.R.E.)—to examine players' multi-modal interactions as intertextual objects when they interact with digital game advertising. The chapter examines how H.I.R.E. can be applied to study the intertextuality of digital game advertising by exploring its theoretical and methodological implications for digital game as well as intertextuality scholars.

The representation of same-sex relationships in digital games has been a contentious issue. Using Nintendo’s Tomodachi Life controversy as a case study, this chapter employs theories of procedural rhetoric and media representation to discuss the representation of same-sex relationships in digital games. Based on a textual analysis method, the authors examine online discourses about same-sex relationships in digital games. Several recurring themes emerged, revealing that the creation of same-sex relationships in games may be affected by various ecological factors such as game designers’ preference, players’ role as consumers, industry assumptions, and socio-cultural-economic context.

The advertising industry has increasingly integrated digital game as a viable platform to deliver messages. The economic impacts of this emerging platform can also be seen globally. Digital game revenue in Asia is predicted to reach $20 billion, about 38% of the world market. As a result, higher education institutes around the world have enthusiastically developed programs to educate future multi-platform advertising professionals. In this book chapter, the author identifies selected departments, programs, or curricula in digital games among higher education institutes in both U.S. and Taiwan. This chapter describes, reports, and analyzes curricula from over 387 programs in the U.S. and 35 programs from Taiwan. An overview of these digital game curricula enables educators to better assess these programs to discuss how digital game has been taught as a viable platform. The chapter also discusses trends in program assessment to better educate future digital creative industry professionals.

Despite intense debates over the use of computer and networked technologies in composition classrooms, research has been limited by one dimensional support or criticism of integrating technologies into classrooms. The inability to consider students as a central role in the literacy acquisition process has led to many problems in the rhetoric of technology as well as in the implementation of computer and networked technologies in a composition classroom. This study employed a triangulation method to gather empirical data to better assess and critique the rhetoric of technology in composition pedagogy literature. The author collected both quantitative and qualitative data to uncover issues critical to students’ technology literacy in a technologized composition classroom. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 62 bi-cultural undergraduate students conveniently recruited from a large southwestern university near the U.S.-Mexico border. Findings from the quantitative method discovered that English instructors’ technology literacy had significant impacts on students’ own technology literacy. Furthermore, narratives from the qualitative method identify the following themes about technology: effectiveness, practicality, instrumentality, and institutional enforcement. In conclusion, the author discusses the importance of technology literacy in composition classrooms to demonstrate its implications on global literacy theory and practices.

With the assistance of new computing technologies and consumer data collection methods, advertising professionals are capable of generating better targeted advertising campaigns. Big Data analytics are particularly worth noticing and have presented ample opportunities for advertising researchers and practitioners around the world. Although Big Data analytic courses have been offered at major universities, existing advertising curricula have yet to address the opportunities and challenges offered by Big Data. This chapter collects curricular data from major universities around the world to examine what Big Data has posed challenges and opportunities to existing advertising curricula in an international context. Curricula of 186 universities around the world are reviewed to describe the status of integrating these developments into better preparing advertising students for these changes. Findings show that only selected advertising programs in the U.S. have begun to explore the potential of the data analytics tools and techniques. Practical and educational implications are discussed.

Accompanied China's stellar economic developments in past decades, over-population has worsened the negative impacts of rapid industrialization and urbanization upon China's already fragile environment. Rare, a U.S.-based social marketing non-profit organization on global environmental conservation efforts, has expanded to China to train 120 local campaign managers at 2,400 remote areas. This book chapter aims to examine how Rare's grass-root approach in its PRIDE campaigns has helped alleviate the effects of over-population on environmental causalities in China. This multi-campaign case study explores whether cultural norms can be used by local campaign managers as a change agent and a transformative practice tool. Results found that recurrent appearance of family values in the PRIDE campaigns that generate message relevance with the target audiences. This study supported that a family-oriented message is able to frame the campaign to generate message relevance and subsequent behavioral changes among Chinese stakeholders.