Web-based groups as autopoietic social systems: A cybernetic perspective

IntroductionWhy should we study marketing management processes in social network platforms?Today’s rapidly growing creative companies must adopt social network platforms. Indeed, the “twenty-first century’s wealth comes from platforms” Thus “those who possess platforms dominate the wealth of the future” (Hirano & Hagiu, 2010).After the Lehman Brothers-initiated financial crisis, companies began developing platform strategies as a cutting-edge management method for assuring consistent and stable growth. Platform strategies call for gathering relevant groups of people together in a network that then creates new business. (Hirano & Hagiu, 2010)In this study, we study a social network platform to show how marketing management processes can be applied to social network platforms.Literature ReviewSocial Network PlatformsIn recent years, social network platform sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and KakaoTalk have evolved to bring people together online. Social network services (SNS) are rapidly infiltrating daily lives and facilitating communications among people by means of computers (Correa et al., 2010; Powell, 2009). Users reside at the center of social platforms where they can socialize and express a wide range of behaviors.As a force for change, social platforms are influencing marketing strategies as well. Advertising has been traditionally one-way communication from company to customers through public media and portal sites. Recently, the paradigm has changed (Yeo, 2014): companies establish relationship with customers through social platforms that allow them to talk with customers directly, exchange opinions, and share ideas. As a result, large-scale corporations, mid-sized/small companies, and one-owner companies have turned their attention to social platforms (Jhun, 2013). Moreover, the revolutionary wave has affected such diverse areas as politics, economics, society, culture, and environmental causes.Researchers have responded to social platform developments with studies that deal with concept, construction, policy, development, spatial information, social platforms, and governmental roles (Choi et al., 2012), and that deal with social platform’s social influences and future directions (Lee & Jung, 2011).Researchers have studied functions and utilization of social platform using web services and policies to support collaborative research (Pignotti & Edwards, 2012), sharing shopping information (Der Ho et al., 2010), customer engagement (Cheung, Lee, & Jin, 2011), and senior social platforms (Farkas, 2010). Social platforms emerged so recently that academic studies have failed to keep up with the urgent need to study the phenomena realistically (Yeo, 2013).MethodIn this study, we analyze phase 1 secretary platform by Cybermoon Co., Ltd., which has four main functions:Product name: On-Secretary PlatformCore Services● Phase 1. Assistant Service● Phase 2. Vision Maker Service● Phase 3. Collaboration and Sharing Service● Phase 4. Social Sales Service● Phase 5 Assistant Call Center ServiceObjectiveOn-Secretary Platform aims to yield optimized productivity by offering secretary functions to experts working for one person-companies, small-scale companies, or small traders.- Next generation SNS-based social secretary management service uses Twitter and Facebook.- Online and offline secretary management service grows with users and assists them with every aspect of their lives.- Service dispatches 90,000 online secretaries and 10,000 offline secretaries to assist clients.Target Market- General customers: individuals who want to establish businesses.- Businesspersons: presidents of one-person or small companies, and the self-employed- Experts: consultants, coaching specialists, lawyers, and professors- Public organizations such as job-search organizations, business creation support organizations, infrastructure-expansion organizations, education centers for the unemployed, social education centers, education for retired people, and lifelong learning centers.Customer Value Proposition- Survey and analysis on the services needed by single entrepreneurs.- Survey and analysis of services needed by potential entrepreneurs.- Survey and analysis of services needed by experts.- Survey and analysis of services needed by public organizations.Assets and competition- 20-years of developing IT business services and operational systems- Patents for core techniques and experts with development abilitiesFunctional strategies and programs- Secretary function: selection of AI (artificial intelligence)-type character and growth by consistent learning- Chatting function: task reporting via letters, voices, and holograms- Program: cloud-based social platform service- Service method: online service and offline call-center service.Marketing Mix(Richard & Colin, 1992)Figure 1. Managing Marketing Strategies and the Marketing Mix SWOT AnalysisFigure 2. SWOT AnalysisContribution of this research● Academic contributionsThis study could contribute to understanding diverse applications and developing theory regarding platforms to help to consolidate theoretical fundamentals regarding marketing management processes for using platforms. Finding various marketing methods and studying their relationship would contribute to future platform-based management strategy.● Practical contributionThis study could help companies, governments, society, and individuals efficiently utilize marketing management processes when using platforms for continuous growth and progress.

Along with the development of information communication technology, there are more and more location sharing services on social networking platforms. Although China has the largest number of Internet users in the world, users just started to use location sharing services in the last couple of years. This study aims to have a better understanding of the use of location sharing services on social networking platforms in China. To address this, four research questions are presented and 43 in-depth face-to-face interviews are carried out in China. According to the results, the drivers and barriers for using location sharing services on social networking platforms were identified. Some of the key findings were presented as follows. Firstly, most users were concerned about privacy issues when they were using location sharing services on social networking platforms. Secondly, somewhat surprisingly, some of non-users indicated that they were not aware of the availability of the location sharing services on social networking platforms and they did not know how to use location sharing services. Last but not least, some interviewees wanted to use authority management to deal with private issues raised by the shared location information on social networking platforms.

Purpose Firms are increasingly using social media platforms to engage with individuals, as it is recognized that a firm’s social media activity outcomes, such as number of user comments, followers or likes, impact brand equity. This study aims to evaluate both the extent that these social media activity outcomes relate to brand equity and the classification of firms which benefit from the various types of social media activity outcomes. Design/methodology/approach This study identifies various components of social media activity and then captures specific social media activity outcomes for Fortune 500 firms. This study then performs a hierarchical regression analysis to assess the impact of the various social media activity outcomes on brand equity. Findings The results show significant relationships of social media activity outcomes with brand equity. The activity outcome measures of social networking and content communities platform are significantly related to a firm’s brand equity. This study also found that the social media activity outcome levels of various types of social media platforms are contingent upon a firm’s brand country of origin and industry classification type. Practical implications The results help firms gain a clearer view of potential applications of social media platforms, thus improving their understanding of the impact of social media. This study can enhance social media strategy and design tactics to improve brand equity. The findings can also guide firms in evaluating which social media activity outcomes enhance brand equity. Originality/value The results highlight that activity outcomes in a firm’s selected content communities platform and social networking platform are related to brand equity.

This chapter examines the structure and sentiment of the Twitter response to Nathan Broad's naming as the originator of an image-based sexual abuse incident following the 2017 Australian Football League Grand Final. Employing Social Network Analysis to visualize the hierarchy of Twitter users responding to the incident and Applied Thematic Analysis to trace the diffusion of differing streams of sentiment within this hierarchy, we produced a representation of participatory social media engagement in the context of image-based sexual abuse. Following two streams of findings, a model of social media user engagement was established that hierarchized the interplay between institutional and personal Twitter users. In this model, it was observed that the Broad incident generated sympathetic and compassionate discourses among an articulated network of social media users. This sentiment gradually diffused to institutional Twitter users – or Reference accounts – through the process of intermedia agenda-setting, whereby the narrative of terrestrial media accounts was altered by personal Twitter users over time. Keywords Image-based sexual abuse Informal justice Social network analysis Technology facilitated violence Twitter Digital criminology Citation Broadbent, E. and Thompson, C. (2021), "Justice on the Digitized Field: Analyzing Online Responses to Technology-Facilitated Informal Justice through Social Network Analysis", Bailey, J., Flynn, A. and Henry, N. (Ed.) The Emerald International Handbook of Technology-Facilitated Violence and Abuse (Emerald Studies In Digital Crime, Technology and Social Harms), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 689-709. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-848-520211051 Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited Copyright © 2021 Ella Broadbent and Chrissy Thompson. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This chapter is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these chapters (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode. License This chapter is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these chapters (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode. Introduction On the evening of September 30, 2017, the final siren sounded on the Australian Football League (AFL) season, and the Richmond Football Club (RFC) secured their first Premiership cup in 37 years. In the hours following the evening's celebrations, an image of a young woman with a premiership medal around her neck – her face cropped and breasts exposed – began to circulate through social networking platforms and fan forums. This image was quick to disperse through social media channels, becoming a symbol for the victory celebrations of the young men within the team and their army of supporters. It later emerged that the woman photographed had not consented to having the image shared. In the month after this incident, a formal police inquiry was conducted at the request of the victim to protect her anonymity, leading to a gradual reduction of the image's appearance within social and terrestrial media. Following the closure of this investigation, the victim's lawyers issued a statement maintaining that while the image had been taken with her consent, she was under the impression that it had been deleted shortly after – and certainly not distributed via social media (Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, 2017). She sought to drop the charges police laid against the accused both to protect her identity and to prevent further distress (SBS, 2017). On 29 October 2017 – almost a month after the image's release – premiership player Nathan Broad was identified as the person responsible for taking and distributing the original image. A press conference was held with Broad and the president of the RFC, Peggy O'Neal, where Broad issued a statement claiming he would take full responsibility for his actions and confirmed he took and distributed the image without consent (Cherny, 2017). The only formal sanction Broad received from the RFC was a three-week suspension at the beginning of the 2018 AFL season (Cherny, 2017). This incident (henceforth referred to as the “Broad incident”) 1 represents a high-profile case of a certain form of technology-facilitated violence (TFV) – image-based sexual abuse (IBSA). Due to police intervention, attempts were made to remove the original image from circulation on social media. While this image can still be located today, its circulation decreased significantly after police attempted to remove it. As a result of these efforts, the ability to analyze the diffusion of the original incident of nonconsensual sexual imagery was limited. However, the subsequent identification in late October 2017 of Nathan Broad as the individual who took the image generated significant social media interest, and produced a body of historical Twitter data that provided a valuable substrate for us to analyze how social media users sought to contest or condone Nathan Broad's naming and sanction. Incidents such as these hold value for criminological analysis, as they can provide a window into public sentiments on the perpetration of, and institutional responses to, IBSA. Moreover, as criminologists such as Powell, Overington, and Hamilton (2018) have demonstrated, examining responses to high-profile crimes on social media can provide a valuable means of researching the content and diffusion of narratives about crime in the contemporary mediascape. In undertaking such projects, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) methodology provides important insights into the degree of homophily within networks who respond to crimes on social media, and the role of central “nodes” in diffusing narratives about crime and perpetration. 2 Such insights are important given that early work within digital criminology has emphasized the “networked” morphology of contemporary harms – speaking, for example, of “networked misogyny” (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016; Thompson & Wood, 2018, p. 12) – but has yet to examine the structural properties of these networks. To date, criminologists have yet to explore the utility of an SNA approach for examining social media–based responses to IBSA and other criminalized acts. To demonstrate the utility of SNA within this context, this study examined this incident of IBSA in Australia. In addition to answering the questions below, this project was concerned with not only the what of the research process but also the how. Readers are encouraged to consider the results and analysis as they would a pilot study – wherein qualitative Twitter data and a network of user relations were operationalized to generate an initial framework for understanding how structural analysis of incidents of IBSA can better demarcate the spread of sentiment through a network. In examining the Broad incident using this methodology, we sought to address the following questions: What are the structural and intermedia features of Twitter users' responses to IBSA? In what ways do Twitter users contest and/or condone IBSA? These questions enabled us to explore user engagement as a process involving both personal and media accounts, and the interactions they share to contest and/or condone a narrative on an incident of IBSA. Furthermore, our analysis offers a novel approach to analyzing public sentiment toward an incident of IBSA, providing structural and intermedia analysis of the response to the incident. This chapter is divided into four main sections. In section one, we review the relevant literature relating to online engagement, digital platforms, and IBSA. In the next section, we discuss the methodological contributions of this work and reflect on the utility of the methods used in this research for future studies into TFV and IBSA. In section three, we detail the major findings from this research; drawing on an Applied Thematic Analysis (ATA) we outline the narrative promulgated by both journalist and news media accounts, alongside personal Twitter users, and how interactions between these users generated a reverse-flow of sentiment. This is represented within a hierarchized visual framework characteristic of SNA to outline the flow of information and sentiment between different types of users responding to the Broad incident. This process enabled us to identify three “user roles” – Reference, Mediator, and Listener – with each performing distinct functions in the diffusion and reception of sentiment within the network. These user roles demonstrate how responses to crime on social media may be structured by clear hierarchies, with some users occupying dialogically significant positions within these networks. Through an ATA of the tweets responding to Broad's naming in the media, we identified an informal justice-seeking response by users to Broad and his actions, alongside a replication of this sentiment within Reference users over time. The counterhegemonic discourses that appeared in response to Broad disrupted the neutral narrative of the Broad incident within Reference accounts and produced a more favorable and balanced consideration of the harms to the victim. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on the implications of this research for online responses to IBSA. We posit that demarcating the connections between social media actors – Mediators, Listeners, and Reference accounts – may enhance our understanding of their specific role in contesting and altering passive narratives of sexual harm online. Literature Review This chapter is situated amid a burgeoning literature on the spectatorship of, and engagement with, TFV and IBSA (Henry, McGlynn, Flynn, Johnson, Powell, & Scott, 2020; Henry & Powell, 2018). It is important to note that such spectatorship involves not only individual observation of an incident of IBSA but also their response to this observation. Here, the act of spectatorship is not confined simply to the object and viewer, or “the spectator and the spectacle,” but also involves “the association between spectators,” or in this instance structural relations between Twitter users (Wood, 2017, p. 9). This grounds our methodology, in seeking to demarcate the connections that shape engagement on social media platforms, a process which is mediated not only by social forces but also the technological (infra)structure of social networking platforms. Twitter has been described as a “personal public” (Schmidt, 2014, p. 4) – a communicative space framed by the dimensions of software, relations, and rules. The concept of personal publics is not limited to Twitter and operates as a foundation for understanding the mechanics of Web 2.0 and user-generated content and interactions. Within a personal public, information is selected and displayed according to personal relevance criteria such as the social network a user situates themselves within. This is then mediated through ties made explicit by the platform – such as following, retweeting, and liking. Twitter itself can be distinguished from other social networks by the specific articulation of these user relations which are utilized to structure communicative flow – “the nexus of social ties and textual references, based on code-enabled connections” (Schmidt, 2014, p. 6). The foundational concept guiding these Twitter relations is that of “following” users – a unilateral relationship used to subscribe to other users' tweets and calculate user visibility metrics. Replies, retweets, and mentions, function as communicative references that allow for navigation to user profiles. These factors produce a stable and dynamic social networking service consisting of networked and distributed conversations (Schmidt, 2014), which enables potentially exponential public distribution and engagement with nonconsensual sexual imagery such as the image released by Broad. Researchers have noted that social media platforms such as Twitter have allowed for a redemocratization of the public sphere (Papacharissi, 2002). The assembly of counterpublics (Fraser, 1990) by girls and women on social media to contest social exclusion and subordination has been documented within criminological literature (Khoja-Moolji, 2015). Technology has, for example, allowed victims and their supporters to engage in “name and shame” tactics to ensure that behavior of abusers is not excused, and to contest the inadequacy of institutional responses to sexual violence such as TFV (Powell, 2015; Salter, 2013; Wood, Rose, & Thompson, 2019, p. 3). Considering the inadequacy of existing institutional responses to rape and violence against women in the form of state-sanctioned justice (Powell, 2015), social media–enabled informal justice-seeking plays an important role in the way victims of sexual violence and their supporters can create counterhegemonic discourses online. Informal justice and contemporary digital activism movements have been conceptualized as an asymmetrical and nonhierarchical endeavor within Powell, Stratton, and Cameron's (2018) theory of rhizomatic justice. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) figuration of the rhizome, Powell, Stratton et al.’s (2018) theory accounts for the diversity of activist behaviors in a digital context, where organizations, groups, and individuals are linked loosely and embody significant diversity (Funke, 2014). The resulting spread of motivations and agendas can lead these forms of activism to both enhance democracy and new forms of bigotry, which may outweigh the original infraction (Powell, Stratton et al., 2018). This is a constructive explanation for the consequences of informal justice-seeking. The utilization of a rhizomatic analogy, however, implies a flattening of hierarchies within these communities, which minimizes the “algorithmically-curated information environment” (Wood, 2019, p. 573) of social media, the in-built architecture that structures social media use. Identifying key nodes and influencers residing within a network who occupy a more significant role in information diffusion (Wood et al., 2019) holds the potential to identify information flow to institutional social media accounts. This chapter compliments the rhizomatic model of informal justice-seeking through an identification of the structural relations that underpinned online users' informal justice response to the Broad incident. Methodology Our study utilized a parallel mixed methods research design that combined a quantitative SNA and qualitative ATA (Borgatti, Everett, & Johnson, 2018) to establish a structural understanding of the social media response to the 2017 Broad incident. These methods enabled the assessment of differing components of the phenomenon, enhancing its interpretability. We collected and analyzed these quantitative and qualitative data sources separately before integrating them in the second phase of the project (Creswell & Clark, 2007). To begin this process, an SNA was conducted to develop a quantitative representation of different user types with a corpus of data relating to an incident of IBSA. SNA enabled the visualization of relational ties between social actors – in this case individual Twitter users, such as journalists, institutional news media accounts, and personal Twitter users. This included interactions such as liking or retweeting user content, and follower/followee relationships. These ties could be typologized through user type differentiation established by Beguerisse-Díaz, Garduno-Hernández, Vangelov, Yaliraki, and Barahona (2014) in their SNA of the London riots:

Along with the development of information communication technology, there are more and more location sharing services on social networking platforms. Although China has the largest number of internet users in the world, users just started to use location sharing services in the last three years. This study aims to investigate why and how people use location sharing services on social networking platforms in China. To address this, four research questions are presented and 43 in-depth face-to-face interviews are carried out in China. Our results indicated that most users were concerned about privacy issues when they were using location sharing services on social networking platforms. Somewhat surprisingly, some of the interviewees indicated that they were not aware of the availability of the location sharing services on social networking platforms and they did not know how to use location sharing services. Furthermore, with respect to privacy protection, most interviewees indicated that WeChat did a better job than Weibo in China. Lastly, the results revealed that users wanted to use authority management to deal with private issues raised by the shared location information on social networking platforms.

This study used social media posts of the related effect of earthquakes to derive seismic shake scale distributions in regions of Taiwan and compared it with the regional seismic scale reported by the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) of Taiwan. This study conducted a context searching to scrawl the relationship phrase on the social media network platform, PTT bulletin board system (BBS), to detect the earthquake shake scale using the keywords of the context. In this investigation a decision tree model for analyzing the semantic words from the context of the target event to detect the earthquake shake scale was devised. The results indicate that we can pick out the keywords to use to detect the earthquake shake scale at about 85%. Furthermore, the results of the derived shake scale show that the four studied cases are in a good agreement with the presented news from the CWB of Taiwan. In this study, the author attempted to develop a quick earthquake shake scale detection model by semantic analysis of the collected earthquake disaster information reported on the social media network platform.

Navigating Social Media in #Ophthalmology

The most important technological trend of the last years has been the rise of social networking systems to social phenomena involving hundreds of millions of people, attracting users from several social groups. Social networking systems blur the distinction between the private and working spheres, and users use such systems both at home and in the workplace, both professionally and with recreational goals. Social networking systems can be equally used to organize a work meeting, a dinner with colleagues or a birthday party with friends. For example, the chat systems that are embedded in social networking platforms are often the most practical way to contact a colleague to ask an urgent question, especially in technologically oriented companies. Moreover, several traditional information systems have been modified in order to include social aspects. Currently, social networking platforms are mostly used without corporate blessing, maintaining their status as feral systems.

This chapter discusses how media use changes when everyday life undergoes change, focusing on major life transitions. I briefly introduce different perspectives on evolving media repertoires across the life course, and argue for the relevance of studying periods of destabilization and reorientation, when elements of media repertoires and modes of public connection are temporarily or more permanently transformed. I argue that easily adaptable media technologies such as smartphones tend to become more important in unsettled circumstances, as easy-to-reach for tools for new forms of self-expression, information-seeking or social contact, in accordance with shifting social roles and everyday circumstances. The primary empirical material analyzed in the chapter is a small qualitative interview study with mothers, about their media use the first year with a new-born.

The use of social networks platforms for interactions, cooperative learning, and knowledge sharing for sharing information to improve students’ educational achievement seems to be one of the more widely examined topics in the Information Systems (IS) domain compared to the adoption of other technologies. However, as social networks platforms use distracts from studies and affects study habits, using social networks platforms can result in academic difficulties. Therefore, this research seeks to identify the interaction elements such as interaction with peers, cooperative learning and engagement for sharing information and perceptual elements such as perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use social networks platforms to improve educational achievement among students. This study is designed in accordance with the theory of constructivism. Qualitative research was applied to interviews conducted with a sample of 37 students. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics 20, and NVivo 11 was used for qualitative coding to investigate relationships between variables. The study found that interactions among students and interactions with lecturers enhance learning significantly. Additionally, the perceived overall benefits of using media platforms for learning and knowledge sharing that enhances satisfaction and affects educational achievement were high. Furthermore, the impact of social networks platforms use for education and knowledge sharing was also significant. Finally, the results indicate that students are satisfied with the use of media platforms as a means of learning and knowledge sharing. Findings show that using social networks platforms for learning and knowledge sharing should positively affected educational achievement of students.

Le présent article expose les principaux concepts et les grandes lignes de l’argumentation de la théorie des systèmes sociaux de Luhmann. L’auteur montre que Luhmann a fondé uns système théorique d’option constructiviste, totalement différente du système de tendance fonctionnaliste de Parson. Dans ce contexte on discutera partant d’exemples de la problématique écologique les implications sociales de cette construction théorique. L’auteur esquisse pour terminer quelques aspects du débat déclanché par la théorie de Lumann dans les milieux sociologiques allemands. La thése qui soutend l’exposé est qu’une la théorie des système sociaux foncti-onnellement différenciés telle que la propose Luhmann est une théorie fondamentale novatrice avec une solide cohérence interne. Cette théorie ne peut être sérieusement discutée, selon l’auteur, à partir des arguments utilisés dans le soi-disant débat positiviste et la critique de la théorie antérieure dans la tradition de Parson. En esta contribución son presentados algunos conceptos centrales y líneas de argumentación de la teoría luhmanniana de los sistemas sociales auto-poiéticos. El autor muestra que Luhmann ha fundado una teoría sociológica de sistemas de carácter constructivista que se diferencia claramente de la teoría fun-cionalista de sistemas de Parsons. Sobre esta base son discutidas en el ejemplo de la problemática de la ecología las implicaciones de esta construcción teórica para la teoría de la sociedad. A este aporte subyace la tesis de que la teoría de los sistemas sociales auto-poiéticos funcionalmente diferenciados constituye una teoría sociológica fundamental, innovadora y con una gran consistencia interna. Una discusión acerca de esta teoría no puede ser llevada a cabo adecuadamente con los argumentos que fueron esgrimidos en la llamada disputa acerca del positivismo y en la crítica a la vieja teoría de sistemas de inspiración parsoniana.

PurposeCustomers are increasingly interested in reading discussions, experiences, recommendations and reviews on social media platforms related to services and products in which they are highly interested. The purpose of this paper is to find the availability of user-generated content (UGC) in the context of Islamic banks and how it can enhance the level of brand engagement and purchase intention of customers.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology for this research is designed by following the features of qualitative research methods and a social constructivism approach. Furthermore, non-directive and semi-structured in-depth interviews are constructed to accumulate research data from marketing teams and customers of Islamic banks. The respondents have been carefully chosen on the basis of purposive sampling and their level of awareness related to Islamic banks.FindingsIslamic banks are more frequently using traditional marketing tools that are unable to enhance levels of information among the targeted population and prove an expensive way of marketing. The findings reveal that Islamic banks lag behind in adopting the latest information exchanging technologies compared to conventional banking systems. A lack of skilled people, reputation and trust, lack of e-marketing strategy and lower levels of investment in social media platforms are major barriers to generate UGC, brand engagement and purchase intention among the targeted market of Islamic banks.Practical implicationsThe effective and competent use of various social networking platforms can enhance UGC related to Islamic banking products and services. UGC can generate interactive communication, services reviews, feedbacks, intention to purchase, social influence, social trust and positive customer perception among the targeted population of Islamic banks. The study has summarized and offered practical recommendations to show how Islamic banks can address challenges and enjoy a high level of profitability compared to conventional banking systems.Originality/valueThe present study uncovered the steps that must be taken by the top management of Islamic banks to enhance levels of awareness, online product reviews and recommendations, e-word of mouth and purchase intentions of the targeted market. The study enhanced understanding regarding how a higher level of investment in social networking platforms, safe and secure banking systems and skilled IT professionals can address the challenges of Islamic banks. Furthermore, these factors can create positive UGC, social influence, social brand engagement and purchase intention of customers in Islamic banks. These primary factors must be considered by Islamic banks to compete with conventional banking products and services.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine both the Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ social media adoption (SMA) for business purposes and the influence of culture on personal versus business social network platform (SNP) selection.Design/methodology/approachThe Technology Acceptance Model’s (TAM) factors of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) as drivers of Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ social network platform selection are examined as well as the effect of SMA on revenue. Data was collected from 633 small business owners across the United States via an online survey administered in English and Spanish.FindingsResults indicate that Latino/Hispanic business owners use personal SNP more than business SNP for business purposes. PU and PEU were not found to predict personal SNP for Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs. However, for Non-Latino/Hispanics, PU was significant while PEU was marginally significant. Findings for PU and PEU as predictors of business SNP indicate similar results for both Latino/Hispanic and non-Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs, where only PEU was significant. Finally, there was no relationship between either business or personal SNP and revenue for either Latino/Hispanic or non-Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs.Practical implicationsThis research provides more insight into Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ self-directed engagement in personal SNP (Facebook) and business SNP (LinkedIn) for business purposes and invites future research in this population to further examine cultural influence and business performance. The findings support the need for Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ strengthening their competency in social media usage to remain competitive, as doing so will enhance their capability for building customer relationships, brand development, and equity financing.Originality/valueThis investigation 1) examines SMA’s role in Latino/Hispanic small and medium enterprises (SMEs); 2) distinguishes between personal and business social network platforms; 3) investigates TAM’s relevance for Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ use of social media for business; and 4) explores SME social media usage as a predictor of revenue. We seek to provide practitioners with a greater understanding of how they may influence business success and sustainability through better competency development and usage of social media platforms.

Purpose Customers are interested in finding service recommendations, reviews and word of mouth using social networking platforms. These service reviews are useful for enhancing service quality, level of information and engagement, and purchase intention of customers. The purpose of this paper is to uncover which social networking platform is more useful for the exchange of service reviews and how organizations are improving purchase intention as well as service quality in the light of customer’s reviews/experiences. Design/methodology/approach The study is exploratory in nature because it aims to understand the use of social networking platforms for enhancing service quality and the purchase intention of customers using a purposive sampling technique. To meet the objective of this study, non-directive and semi-structured interviews have been conducted with customers and marketing teams in the banking sector and internet service providers. Findings The results show that social networking websites are helpful in fostering responsiveness, awareness, assurance, reliability and empathy. However, respondents revealed serious concerns regarding the privacy of personal and financial information especially in the context of the banking sector. It has been found that official Facebook pages of service-providing organizations, open and closed local community Facebook groups, sponsored ads and promotional advertisements on Facebook, WhatsApp groups and YouTube video comments are more frequently used to exchange service reviews (i.e. influence the process of purchase decision) among friends, friends of friends, family members and the general public. The selected customers and market team respondents revealed that local community Facebook groups (i.e. open groups and closed groups) have gained prime importance for enhancing service quality and purchase decisions. Practical implications The effective and well-organized use of social networking platforms can foster service reviews, word of mouth, level of service awareness, interactive communication, intention to purchase, social influence, social trust and services quality. Furthermore, online social networking platforms require a lower level of advertisement costs and offer huge amounts of information, discussions, enquires, service stories, word of mouth, transactions and interactions of consumers. Originality/value The present study is exploratory in nature because it selects an under-researched issue regarding the use of social networking applications to enhance levels of purchase intention and service quality. There is limited literature which has combined the multiple constructs in a single study (i.e. social media platforms, cross-platform platforms, service quality and purchase intention of consumers). Most of the previous studies are dependent on various dimensions of service quality (i.e. “reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empath and tangibles”). However, the present study extracted that respondents have given more preferences of services awareness and privacy compared to traditional elements of service quality.

This article is concerned with redefining the notion of information from a perspective of systems theory. In recent years, the notion of information, which was closely related to the framework of old cybernetics, has been refined in parallel with the emergence of new cybernetics, especially second-order cybernetics and autopoiesis. The systemic view of new cybernetics provides us with the notion of “informationally closed system.” This notion is congruent with the epistemological implications of radical constructivism. In order to help understand this argument, we aim at highlighting the development of autopoietic systems theory in Japan. Autopoiesis has often been considered as a thoroughly closed system in Japan, where the relationships between autopoiesis and radical constructivism have frequently been overlooked. This is mainly because the importance which autopoietic systems theory originally attaches to the notion of observer and observation has been inadequately discussed, and autopoietic systems theory is regarded as distinct from second-order cybernetics and radical constructivism. However, they must be dealt with together, and Humberto Maturana should be given credit for his ontology of observing. Since the publication of his paper “Biology of Cognition,” Maturana has been attempting to explain the notion of observation as a biological phenomenon in his own way. Likewise, by taking into consideration the notion of observation, we can build a unified theory of information. Fundamental Informatics, which is being developed by Toru Nishigaki, outlines a unified approach to information by putting human observers at the center of his theory. Social and mechanical information is generated only when human observers conduct observations on the basis of biological information, and this mechanism of generation of information is discussed through the notion of “hierarchical autonomous system.” For an autopoietic organi- zation to be realized, of course, no hierarchy of systems is required, but observers are likely to construct some hierarchy between two systems. The construction of certain hierarchies of systems by observers is of great use for the explanation of fictitious phenomena of information transmission.