Dimensions Of Social Presence Research Articles

Modeling User Participation in Facebook Live by Applying the Mediating Role of Social Presence

The rapid development of mobile Internet technology has brought about the flourishing growth of social media live streaming. This study employs social presence theory as the primary framework to investigate the impact of Facebook Live’s features of sociality, immediacy, and entertainment on users’ sense of presence. These features were then considered within the dimensions of awareness, emotion, and cognition. The influence of social presence on user engagement behaviors was divided into browsing behavior, interactive behavior, and creative behavior. Using snowball sampling, an online survey was administered to Facebook Live users, and 416 valid responses were collected. The research team used software to analyze the data, primarily encompassing descriptive statistics, reliability and validity analyses, structural equation modeling, and mediation effects testing. The research findings are as follows. First, the media characteristics of Facebook Live significantly influence the sense of presence. Specifically, sociality, immediacy, and entertainment on Facebook Live have a notable impact on users’ awareness, emotion, and cognition. Second, different dimensions of social presence have distinct effects on various user engagement behaviors. Notably, the dimensions of awareness, emotion, and cognition of social presence positively affect users’ browsing and interactive behaviors, while emotion influences users’ creative behavior. The third finding was that awareness, emotion, and cognition act as intermediates between Facebook Live’s media characteristics and user engagement behaviors. Implications are discussed.

Investigation into Undergraduates’ Experiences of Social Presence in Online Learning

Online learning always piques the interest of scholars because of the potential outcomes. Social presence is associated with the degree of participation, interaction, and performance among collaborative group members and, therefore, is considered a critical variable for learning. Researchers have observed that for online learning to work well, students must feel connected to their peers and teachers. Social presence connects the real and online worlds, putting an online learner in touch with the teacher and other online learners. This study aims to investigate the interrelationships between social presence dimensions and cognitive presence, explore the critical social presence dimension influencing cognitive presence, and explore students’ experiences of social presence in online learning. The findings showed that social presence greatly influenced cognitive presence. However, affective collectiveness, open communication, and a sense of community were correlated and positively impacted cognitive presence, while the mutual attention and support dimensions were not correlated and did not significantly contribute to cognitive presence. Besides, students perceived themselves as having difficulties with open communication and online group activities. It is suggested that silence is an integral part of social presence, and it can be a silence-mediated social presence. Therefore, the role of silence should be reconsidered, as it has its own meaning. The findings imply that fostering a sense of mutual support and understanding is essential in online learning, as is providing practical guidance to ensure open communication. Moreover, instructors should focus on creating a sense of connectedness and cohesiveness in collaborative learning to achieve meaningful learning outcomes and a strong sense of community among students.

Investigating social presence in “In Real Life” streaming for community building

Watching other people share their lives in real time via streaming platforms, also known as In Real Life (IRL) streams, has gained popularity as a form of entertainment and a meaningful way for people to experience social presence and community with others. Our study focuses on IRL streams to investigate how the multiple dimensions of social presence (cognitive copresence, psychological involvement, and behavioral interdependence) with the streamers and other viewers are associated with community identification. Through an online survey of 423 IRL stream viewers, our study found that community identification is associated with different dimensions of social presence derived from the streamers and other viewers. Specifically, cognitive copresence was not sufficient to evoke a sense of community. Psychological involvement with the streamers and behavioral interdependence with other viewers were significantly associated with the participants’ community identification. The findings provide support for examining social presence as a multidimensional construct in studying online interactions on platform with asymmetrical affordances in which different groups of users have varying communication affordances.

The Influence of Social Presence on Customer Loyalty in Emerging Market Retail Industry: The Mediating Role of Trust

ABSTRACT Whilst extensive scholarly works on social presence, trust, and customer loyalty exist, no research specifically focuses on measuring the relational effect of social presence and trust on customer loyalty in both online and store-based retail environments. This study proposes and tests a model to demonstrate the mediation role of trust in the nexus between the dimensions of social presence (web, others, and interaction) and customer loyalty. Data were collected from 200 customers and analyzed via path analysis of structural equation modeling. The results of the study show that all the dimensions of social presence had a significant direct effect on trust. Social presence of others had a significant direct effect on customer loyalty. Trust fully mediated the associations between social presence of web, and interaction and customer loyalty, and partially mediated the relationship of social presence of others and loyalty. We have established the multidimensionality of the social presence construct and highlighted their nexus between trust and loyalty in an emerging market retail business. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Effect of Social Actors Perceived Agency on Social Presence in Computer-Mediated Communication

Nowadays, both text-based and 3D online applications rely on conversational agents and autonomous characters to interact with users. Previous experiments demonstrated that perceived agency, that is to say, one’s belief in interacting with a computer- or another human-controlled entity could impact social interaction. At present, theories and results still diverge and no consensus has been reached. Therefore, we developed an experiment to investigate the effect of perceived agency and emotional communication on social presence. Participants were told that they would play an online image recognition game against a computer- or a human-controlled opponent. In both cases, participants faced a computer-controlled opponent designed to provide a challenging yet balanced competitive experience. Depending on the experimental conditions, participants were able to communicate with their opponents using emoticons between the game rounds. Results demonstrate a significant main effect of emotional communication on the three dimensions of social presence we considered in this experiment. An interaction effect between perceived agency and emotional communication was observed in copresence, another core dimension of social presence. The impact of emotional communication on participants’ sense of copresence depends on the perceived agency of the opponent. A significant increase was observed for participants facing a computer-controlled opponent when emotional communication was allowed. The sense of copresence was even higher when they were facing a computer-controlled opponent rather than a presumed human-controlled one. These results are discussed with regard to theories of social interaction in computer-mediated communication.

Towards a typology of virtual events

Despite the mounting prominence of COVID-induced virtual substitutes to face-to-face events, the boundaries and terminology between different types of virtual events have not been clearly defined. Theoretical misconceptions exist surrounding the diffusion of virtual reality and existing virtual events into the tourism, hospitality and events sectors, with conceptual ambiguity generating contention. Consequently, this paper develops a typology of virtual events designed to clarify theoretical misconceptions and establish clear limits whereby all virtual events can be classified. Integrating the three dimensions of social presence, virtuality of environment, and location, the SPEL cube is presented as a conceptual model. This paper contributes to understanding the extant literature and practices of virtual events, providing implications for the management of events in the tourism, hospitality, and events sectors; and delivering a foundation for future research into optimal adaptations of immersive technologies.

Trait Loneliness and Social Presence in Human-Human and Human-Robot Interaction

Social robots are a proposed solution to feelings of loneliness and social isolation. Given the psychological complexity of experienced trait loneliness and its potential to reduce perceived social presence, an experiment using a social robot was conducted to examine how trait loneliness impacted perceived social co-presence, psychobehavioral interdependence, and subjective mutual presence in social robot interactions. Furthermore, we explored whether these effects differed from human-to-human interactions. Although trait loneliness only affected third order subjective copresence among the three social presence dimensions, individuals with higher trait loneliness were more likely to accept the robot as a social companion.

How do Fortune firms build a social presence on social media platforms? Insights from multi-modal analytics

The exponential growth in the usage of social media platforms (SMPs) has brought most of us to a virtual space that is nowadays also being shared by firms. Firms regularly communicate over SMPs to elevate consumers' social media experience. With the theoretical underpinning of social presence theory, we have deduced a model that maps multimodal features of Firm-Generated Content (FGC) across three different levels of customer engagement (CE). The model has been empirically tested with Facebook image posts of business-to-consumer companies from the list of Fortune 100 companies of the year 2018. This longitudinal study has also been designed to identify the changes in social media communication due to the pandemic. Our contribution lies in modelling those textual and visual features of FGC that reflect the three different dimensions of social presence. We have used machine learning algorithms to automate the assessment of the experience of social presence. Ultimately, the paper offers social media post design strategies for effective communication and future directions for social media researchers.

Learning in the Online Classroom: Exploring the Unique Influence of Social Presence Dimensions

ABSTRACT Exploring social presence could help create socially rich learning experiences in an online learning environment. To better understand social presence in online education, the present study conducted an online survey with 430 undergraduate students in the U.S. during the time of the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020. Results from an EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis) reveal a five-dimensional measurement of social presence in the online learning context, social richness, co-presence, actor within a medium, passive interpersonal, community within a medium. When examining how each dimension plays a role in learning experiences, results from the multiple linear regression analysis of this study suggest that social richness and co-presence are positively associated with cognitive learning, and social richness and co-presence are positively associated with affective learning. Unexpectedly, the data indicate that actor within a medium is negatively associated with cognitive and affective learning experiences. Additionally, social richness and community within a medium are positively associated with motivation to learn. Overall, the study’s findings suggest the importance of studying the multidimensional aspects of social presence because each dimension could have different roles in online learning.

Impact of avatar facial anthropomorphism on body ownership, attractiveness and social presence in collaborative tasks in immersive virtual environments

Effective collaboration in immersive virtual environments requires to be able to communicate flawlessly using both verbal and non-verbal communication. We present two experiments investigating the impact of facial anthropomorphism on the sense of body ownership, avatar attractiveness, social presence and performance in two collaborative tasks. In the first experiment participants have to solve a construction game according to their partner’s instructions using three avatars presenting different facial properties. Results reveal no significant difference in terms of body ownership and social presence, but demonstrate significant differences in terms of attractiveness and completion duration of the collaborative task. Unexpectedly, correlation analyses also reveal a link between attractiveness and performance. The more attractive the avatar, the shorter the completion duration of the game. Our second experiment was designed to investigate further the potential impact of the task carried out on the sense of social presence using the same avatars. While we observed a very high sense of social presence in both tasks (asymmetric collaboration and negotiation) with every avatar, our results did not reveal significant difference between the three conditions. However, we observed statistically significant differences between the two task types. The scores of the co-presence and of the perceived message understanding dimensions of social presence were higher during the negotiation task. The sense of social presence appears to be task sensitive, especially when non-verbal communication becomes more important during face-to-face interaction in immersive collaborative virtual environments.

How social presence influences impulse buying behavior in live streaming commerce? The role of S-O-R theory

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how presence (the social presence of live streaming platforms, of viewers, of live streamers and telepresence) affects consumer trust and flow state, thus inducing impulsive buying behaviors, personal sense of power as moderator.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, the conceptual model covers social presence, telepresence, consumer trust, flow state, personal sense of power and impulsive buying behavior. An online survey was conducted from 405 consumers with the experience of live streaming shopping in China; structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for data analysis.FindingsResults find that three dimensions of social presence (the social presence of live streaming platforms, of viewers, of live streamers) and telepresence have a positive and significant influence on consumer trust and flow state, thus triggering consumers’ impulsive buying behavior. Furthermore, consumers’ sense of power moderates the process from consumer trust, flow state to impulsive buying behavior.Practical implicationsThis study will help live streamers and e-retailers to have a further understand on how to stimulate consumers’ buying behavior. Furthermore, it also provides reference for the development of live streaming commerce in other countries.Originality/valueThis research examines the effect of social presence and telepresence on impulsive buying behavior in live streaming commerce, which is inadequately examined in extant literature.

“Nice to get to know you”

Virtual exchange comprises online collaborative activities in facilitated, educational contexts across borders. This paper offers a multimodal approach to the study of social presence in students’ asynchronous online discourse in the context of virtual exchange. It draws on the Community of Inquiry model of online learning (Garrison 2017) and interprets social presence as the dynamic discursive process of social interaction and self-presentation. The data consists of screenshots collected in a closed Facebook group during the first assignment of a Czech-Finnish virtual exchange project in 2017. The study aims to explore how the method of multimodal discourse analysis can be used to describe the three dimensions of social presence. The students’ self-introductory posts, reactions and comments were examined in three modes of meaning-making: the linguistic, the visual and the action mode. The study offers a model for the qualitative multimodal discourse analysis of social presence construction in asynchronous social media interaction.

Social Presence of Ruangguru in Social Media during Covid-19 Pandemic

<p><em><span lang="EN-ID">Covid-19 Pandemic gives many social changes in society specially in communications study. One important policy made during Covid-19 is related to students who are required to study at home. Ruangguru is top of mind in digital based learning company, especially during this pandemic. Covid-19 and this policy made Ruangguru as Indonesia online learning company with the most followers, to adapt in giving online communication message, especially in @ruangguru (Instagram). This research aims to see the social presence of Ruangguru in social media (Instagram) during Covid-19 Pandemic through three dimensions of social presence, which are: social context, online communication, and interactivity. On previous research, it was mentioned that social presence relates to brand engagement. Brand's social presence in social media is important to be researched due to more brand using social media as primary communication tool to gain brand engagement. Method used in this research is case study with qualitative approach. Through Ruangguru's post on Instagram, researcher observes using three dimensions of social presence. The result of this research depicts Ruangguru as showing good social presence based on three dimensions of social presence during Covid-19 Pandemic in social media Instagram.</span></em></p>

Social presence, telepresence and customers’ intention to purchase online peer-to-peer accommodation: A mediating model

As essential features of cyberspace, social presence and telepresence play critical roles in online commerce. However, it remains unclear whether and how they can shape P2P accommodation customers' purchase intention. This study models the impact of social presence and telepresence as being mediated by three emotional responses – trust, enjoyment and sociability. The model was then tested by structural equation modeling using online survey data comprising 571 Chinese P2P accommodation customers. Results suggest that three dimensions of social presence (social presence of Web, other buyers and sellers) and telepresence indirectly influence customers' purchase intention via different mediating routes. These findings point to a new marketing strategy where consumers’ participation can be encouraged by improving presence elements, and thus can be valuable for P2P accommodation operators to retain and develop customer base.

Investigating the role of social presence dimensions and information support on consumers’ trust and shopping intentions

Social presence of consumers is increasingly important in social commerce and online merchants are looking for ways to enhance that for boosting consumers? trust and product sales. The prior studies have recognized the influence of social presence on trust, while it is not explicit which dimensions of social presence will enhance consumers? trust. Moreover, as a key factor how information support affects the relationship between social presence and trust is unclear. This study aims to examine how does information support moderates the relationship between different social presence dimensions and trust in social commerce. Further, the influence of consumers' trust in online merchants is examined on shopping intentions. Based on information support and social presence theory, we construct a theoretical model integrating the above relationships. The quantitative data is collected from different cities of China (n = 389) and analyzed through Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings demonstrate the validity of three dimensions of social presence: interactions between consumers, interactions between consumers and merchants, and interactions between consumers and commodities. Particularly, information support is not positively moderating the relationship between social presence through consumers? interactions and consumers? trust in online merchants, while information support moderates the effect of the other two dimensions on trust. Finally, consumers? trust in online merchants has a significant effect on shopping intentions. The findings have some theoretical enlightenment and practical implications.

Using 360 VR video to improve the learning experience in veterinary medicine university degree

We present the results of the Quality of Experience (QoE) evaluation of 360 degree immersive video in university education. Fourth-year Veterinary Medicine students virtually attended some practical lessons which had been recorded in immersive 360 video format, covering topics of Surgical Pathology and Surgery related to horses. One hundred students participated in the experience. They evaluated it through an extensive questionnaire covering several QoE factors, including presence, audiovisual quality, satisfaction or cybersickness: 79% evaluated the experience as excellent or good, and they acknowledged an improvement of the learning process by the implementation of VR as didactic tool, and 91% reported that they would recommend it to other students. Female students consistently gave slightly better average scores than their male counterparts, although mostly within confidence intervals. Strongest inter-gender differences appeared in active social presence dimensions, according to the Temple Presence Inventory. The study also evaluates the suitability of synthetic measurement protocols, such as the Distributed Reality Experience Questionnaire (DREQ) and Net Promoter Score (NPS). We show that NPS is a valid tool for QoE analysis, but that its clustering boundary values must be adapted to the specificities of the experiment population.

Pet Avatars, Performance Visualization, and Social Presence

Lack of social presence is one of the many challenges that online education is facing right now in spite of its numerous benefits and growing popularity. While different strategies, primarily behavioral- or cognitivebased, have been proposed and adopted to improve online social presence, affect-based intervention remains a novel approach to increasing learners’ experience of connectedness. The Social Performance Optimization Tool (SPOT) is a university-funded, web-based interactive environment in which students interact with classmates through animated dog avatars that reflect their learning performance health and emotional states. This paper reports on an early, exploratory stage of research study wherein the SPOT users’ experiences of social presence are explored through interviews. Tu and McIsaac’s (2002) framework for social presence was used to analyze three dimensions of social presence: social context, online communication, and interactivity. Findings suggest that the SPOT personalizes the learning environment and helps learners feel more connected.

Snap back to reality: Examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying Snapchat

This paper identifies and examines the factors that make Snapchat a unique social medium. Snapchat departs from mainstream media forms in that they are fundamentally visual and occur real-time, thus demonstrating a stronger sense of “being present” in multiple spaces at the same time. Specifically, we argue that what adds to the appeal of Snapchat is a focus on Social Presence as well as on Theory of Mind, a construct that could potentially play a key role in the degree of Social Presence generated by a medium. A sample of 656 Snapchat users, aged from 18 to 29, showed significant links between measures of various precursors and components of Theory of Mind with dimensions of Social Presence, Snapchat Intensity, and frequency of Snapchat usage patterns. Further, the results of a mediation analysis suggest that increasing elements of Social Presence underlie the relationship between mechanisms of Theory of Mind and the intensity of a social media (Snapchat) in users’ daily life. Taken in context of different social media platform uses, the results highlight how a platform that emphasizes such visual and real-time features over other features can fulfill a desired gap in established social media platforms and their practices.

We’re All in This (Game) Together

This study applies theories of computer-mediated communication and human-computer interaction to the study of transactive memory systems (TMS; how small groups coordinate expertise, for which communication is the central mechanism) in video game teams. A large-scale survey ( N = 18,627) of players from the small group video game League of Legends (LoL) combined with server-side data provided by Riot Games (the creators of LoL) was conducted to look at the relationship between TMS and win/loss outcome as well as the role of team size and past team member acquaintanceship on the formation of TMS, using social presence as a mediator. Results found that TMS was highly predictive of the likelihood of a team winning a game, and that while past team member acquaintanceship predicted TMS, team size did not. Furthermore, only two dimensions of social presence, copresence and perceived comprehension, were related to TMS. These two dimensions fully mediated the relationship between past team member acquaintanceship and TMS.

The impact of computer self-efficacy, situational interest and academic self-concept in virtual communities of inquiry during the distance learning procedures through Second Life

The current study investigates a case where the online learning procedure in three-dimensional (3D) technologically-advanced environments of the Web 2.0 is growing at an exponential rate. In this occasion it is highly imperative need to understand students' interactions in this innovative mode of e-Education that requires from educators and scholars not only analysis conceptually, but also an empirically-driven optimization. The community of inquiry (CoI) model (or framework) consists to be as one of the most prominent multi-dimensional constructs that it is widely used to represent several distinct dimensions of social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence, as a unique and fundamental theoretical concept to measure students' interactions in contemporary electronic environments. Although, the effectiveness of these multi-dimensional constructs creates a dilemma to researchers who want the breadth and comprehensiveness of this model for the precision and clarity of users' (instructors and students) dimensions with other motivational and learning variables. To address this dilemma, the current empirical study presents statistical analyses from the "trinity" constructs of the CoI model by utilizing correlation and hierarchical regression analyses with two fundamental motivational (computer self-efficacy and situational interest) and another one learning (academic self-concept) variables. This study goes one step further and introduces the conspicuously indisputable intervention of a virtual (V)CoI and its utilization in multi-user virtual worlds, like Second Life (SL). The study findings of one hundred thirty-five (135) participants who enrolled in several online sessions unveiled that the situational interest was the only significant predictor of social presence. The computer self-efficacy was not a significant predictor of the CoI model, while on the other hand academic self-concept was a significant predictor in a revamped attempt to validate the strong relationship among constructs within it. According to the aforementioned reasons, it can be surmised that the successful combination of the VCoI in Second Life, surpassing irrefutable and inherent shortcomings to a future-driven sustainable use and growth.