Elements Of Social Media Research Articles

Conceptualizing perceived affordances in social media interaction design

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to theoretically develop the concept of perceived affordance based on the existing studies, and to construct a conceptual framework to show how perceived affordances can facilitate the interaction design of social media.Design/methodology/approachThe paper provides a review of the relevant literature on affordance and perceived affordance, and conceptually proposes a typology of perceived affordances in social media and an integrative framework for interaction design from sociomateriality perspective. Furthermore, a brief empirical example on the interaction design of crowdsourcing systems is used to ground and illustrate the authors' conceptual framework.FindingsThe paper shows that the perceived affordances may have multi‐facet characteristics and the interaction design of social media should reflect the multi‐dimensional perceived affordances. The perceived affordances can support or facilitate the design of basic elements of social media, such as content and form, to enhance both usability (human‐computer interaction) and sociability (human‐human interaction). A position of constitutive entanglement does not privilege either users or social media artifacts, nor does it provide a rigid triangle among these three components. Instead, the perceived affordances play a critical role in integrating the key components in social media interaction design as an ensemble.Originality/valueThe paper attempts to explore and develop the concept of perceived affordance and employ it as a theoretical lens to underpin interaction design of social media. Overall, the authors' study contributes to the design science literature in the information management field by elaborating a new theoretical perspective and providing a conceptual framework for the researchers and designers.

Cherry: mobile application for children with cancer.

The Cherry project seeks to address the information needs of young cancer patients, their parents, and health care providers. It aims at helping the patients to understand various aspects of their disease and treatment, and allow them to assess and record their disease related quality of life. It uses elements of social media to offer a meeting point with the physician and peers. Information is presented in a way that is both understandable and appealing to young children in school age and adolescents. Preschool children will be studied as a separate user group to address their needs and possibilities to meet them. The Cherry system wants to utilize Internet and mobile technologies to benefit patient outcome.

Social Media–Delivered Sexual Health Intervention: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Youth are using social media regularly and represent a group facing substantial risk for sexually transmitted infection (STI). Although there is evidence that the Internet can be used effectively in supporting healthy sexual behavior, this has not yet extended to social networking sites. To determine whether STI prevention messages delivered via Facebook are efficacious in preventing increases in sexual risk behavior at 2 and 6 months. Cluster RCT, October 2010-May 2011. Individuals (seeds) recruited in multiple settings (online, via newspaper ads and face-to-face) were asked to recruit three friends, who in turn recruited additional friends, extending three waves from the seed. Seeds and waves of friends were considered networks and exposed to either the intervention or control condition. Exposure to Just/Us, a Facebook page developed with youth input, or to control content on 18-24 News, a Facebook page with current events for 2 months. Condom use at last sex and proportion of sex acts protected by condoms. Repeated measures of nested data were used to model main effects of exposure to Just/Us and time by treatment interaction. A total of 1578 participants enrolled, with 14% Latino and 35% African-American; 75% of participants completed at least one study follow-up. Time by treatment effects were observed at 2 months for condom use (intervention 68% vs control 56%, p=0.04) and proportion of sex acts protected by condoms (intervention 63% vs control 57%, p=0.03) where intervention participation reduced the tendency for condom use to decrease over time. No effects were seen at 6 months. Social networking sites may be venues for efficacious health education interventions. More work is needed to understand what elements of social media are compelling, how network membership influences effects, and whether linking social media to clinical and social services can be beneficial. This study is registered at www.clinicaltrials.govNCT00725959.

Symposium 5: A Social Media Networked Learning Ecology Perspective

Learning Technology Professionals (LTPs) use social media as a networked learning environment (ecology) for their own professional learning. This is done through reading and contributing to blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, social bookmarking, etc. The various elements of social media and the connections (people, information, resources) that link them together make up the networked learning ecology. Specifically, this research draws from the literature on learning ecologies (Barron, 2004, Brown, 2002, Frielick, 2004, Nardi and O'Day, 2000, Siemens, 2008b), networked learning (Banks et al., 2004, Goodyear et al., 2004, Jones et al., 2008, Steeples and Jones, 2002, Wasson et al., 2003), and on the growing amount of literature on social media in education. The individual concepts (social media, networked learning, learning ecology) of a SMNLE have been researched in the context of elementary and higher education, but there seems to be much less research in how these concepts individually apply to professional development and learning. Furthermore, the joint concept of a SMNLE has not been researched. In addition, there seems to be little if any research in the conception held by LTPs of the relationships, connections and links that exist in their SMNLE. By researching the conceptions of connections that LTPs hold, this research aims to add to the current body of research and provide insight into the experiences of those that are pushing the envelope about social media technologies involved in connecting with learning. The phenomenon I plan to research is that of the relationships within the networked learning ecology of LTPs. The phenomenon will be researched by looking at the variation in conception and perception of these connections by LTPs. In order to investigate the variation of meaning and ways of understanding the connections in their social media based learning ecologies, a phenomenographic approach for this research is being used. This allows for a description of the range of the perceiving and experiencing the phenomenon of learning ecology connections that LTPs experience. By using a phenomenographic approach, the research will be able to show how learning technology professionals conceive and perceive of the connections within a networked learning ecology.

Usability Testing of An Online Transition Program for Adolescents with Hemophilia

Abstract 4777 Purpose:This study explored the usability of a new Internet-based educational program of disease-specific information, self-management strategies and social support for adolescents with hemophilia. Methods:A comprehensive eight-module educational website was developed, based on results of an in-depth needs assessment. The website was tested for usability, using qualitative methods that included semi-structured, audio taped interviews and observation by a trained observer. To determine the usability and intuitiveness of the user interface of the “Teens Taking Charge: Managing Hemophilia Online” intervention, testing occurred in three cycles (4 participants per cycle). Participants were asked to work through standardized parts/features of the program, with changes to the prototype made after each cycle. Thematic analysis using a collaborative and iterative process was used to organize data into categories that reflected the emerging themes. Results:A purposive sample of twelve adolescents (range 12–18 years, mean 15.4 years) was recruited from a Canadian tertiary care center. All of the participants had access to a computer at home and felt comfortable using the Internet. Teens responded positively to the content, appearance and theme of the website (promoting self-management in youth with hemophilia). Subjects thought that it was easy to navigate, use and understand. Overall, they felt the content was appropriate and geared to meet the unique needs of adolescents with hemophilia. The multi-media components (videos, animations and quizzes) were thought to enrich the experience and make the program appealing. Adolescents provided ideas on how the website user-interface could be improved in terms of its usability (navigation, format and layout). Minor changes to the website user-interface were made and tested after the first and second cycles of testing. No further problems were identified in final cycle of testing. At the teens’ suggestion, additional social media elements were added (discussion board, “ask the expert” section) to build in elements of support and increase interactivity. Most participants felt this program would be helpful prior to transition of care and beyond. Conclusions:Usability testing was the crucial first step in ensuring the acceptability and ease of use of “Teens Taking Charge: Managing Hemophilia Online”. Findings from this study were used to refine the website prototype. A pilot study is underway to determine the feasibility of using a randomized controlled trial to study the Internet-based self-management program. Disclosures:Breakey:Baxter Bioscience: Research Funding, Salary Support. Ignas:Baxter Bioscience: Salary Support.

Introducing Backstage – a digital backchannel for large class lectures

PurposeThis paper seeks to report on the conception of a novel digital backchannel, Backstage, dedicated to large classes, aiming at empowering not only the audience but also the speaker, at promoting the awareness of both audience and speaker, and at promoting an active participation of students in the lecture. In learning settings with a large and typically passive audience, the goal of Backstage is to foster active participation and facilitate collaboration akin to small‐learning groups.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present the concept of a novel kind of digital backchannel that supports different forms of inter‐student communication via short microblog messages, social evaluation, and ranking of messages by the audience. The backchannel further supports immediate concise feedback to the lecturer of selected and aggregated students' opinions, making it possible to strengthen the lecturer's awareness of students' difficulties.FindingsThe concept is the outcome of a joint effort between computer scientists and educational scientists, and unifies technical and usability aspects with educational claims.Originality/valueThe concept combines computer‐mediated communication with elements of social media that not only foster active participation and collaboration among a large and otherwise passive audience, but also provide social means to self‐regulation and management of the backchannel discourse. The design of the backchannel is strongly influenced by findings of educational sciences.

Future Link Prediction in the Blogosphere for Recommendation

The phenomenal growth in both scale and importance of social media such as blogs, micro-blogs and user-generated content, has created a need for tools that monitor information diffusion and make recommendations within these platforms. An essential element of social media, particularly blogs, is the hyperlink graph that connects various pieces of content. There are two types of links within the blogosphere; one from blog post to blog post, and another from blog post to blog channel (an event stream of blog posts). These links can be viewed as a proxy for the flow of information between blog channels and to reflect influence. Given this assumption about links, the ability to predict future links can facilitate the monitoring of information diffusion, making recommendations, and word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. We propose different methods for link predictions and we evaluate these methods on an extensive blog dataset.

Geographic information from georeferenced social media data

In the last few years, we are witnessing an emerging class of communication and information platforms some call social awareness streams (SAS) [15]. Available from social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Flickr, and others, these hugely popular platforms allow participants to post streams of lightweight content items, from short status messages to links, pictures, and videos, in a highly connected social environment. Many of these items are associated with location coordinates in the form of latitude and longitude, or with a business or venue that is in turn associated with a precise location. The number of "geotagged" items is likely to grow with the number of people using geo-enabled devices to access and produce SAS data. The vast amounts of SAS data offer unique opportunities for understanding local communities and people's attitudes, attention, and interest in them. Robust methods for learning from SAS data about geographies and local communities, using methods from Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing, can greatly improve the state of geographic information retrieval. Such contributions, from better modelling of geographic areas, to improved knowledge about these areas and how they are used by individuals and communities, have begun to surface in the last few years, and are summarized in this article. The structure of this work borrows from Lynch [13], who referred to five elements that make up an individual's perception of city: districts, landmarks, paths, nodes, and edges. This article borrows from Lynch in the context of social media and SAS, proposing the four elements that make up the geographic information that can be derived from social media about a city or area: districts, landmarks, paths, and activities. This article presents a simple model for geographic SAS data, and then considers the four social media elements, or main types of applications of SAS data to geographic information systems. These applications include boundary definition and detection (district); computation of attractions (landmarks); derivation and recommendation of paths; and evaluation of activities, interests and temporal trends.

President's page

We had successful Information Architecture and Research Data and Preservation Summits. We had another great year of publications in JASIST and the Bulletin and another superb issue of ARIST. We established the ASIS&T Annual Lecture Series. We welcomed a new student chapter at McGill University. We created new participation scholarships that allow new members to be mentored for chapter and national leadership. We made substantial efforts to expand interactive communication to include social media elements for ASIS&T members and held two teleconference conversations with ASIS&T leadership. There was tremendous energy put into the 2010 Annual Meeting, which attracted a record number of submissions. We increased ASIS&T international activities, including support for a doctoral consortium to be held in Ireland in the spring of 2011. We appointed a task force to be chaired by Toni Carbo to plan for the ASIS&T 75th anniversary in 2012. Our society is in strong financial shape thanks to the skill of our treasurer and the budget committees over the past several years and especially as a result of the reputation of JASIST and the ASIS&T members who worked with Wiley-Blackwell to negotiate our revenue sharing package. We saved a bit of money and reduced our carbon footprint by having a teleconference Spring Board Meeting rather than a face-to-face meeting. On the negative side, even though we welcomed some new members, who I hope will bring energy and vision to ASIS&T, our efforts to grow membership have been challenged by the difficult economy, and our membership has declined by almost 200 over the past year. Membership is the key to a strong society and I urge every member to redouble your efforts to recruit new members. For those who say that ASIS&T is too narrow, too broad, too this or not enough that, challenge them to get involved and help shape the society. Members do make a difference and our future depends on new people and ideas to thrive and serve the research and development needs of information professionals everywhere. I look forward to seeing you at the Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh. We will have full papers, short papers and posters, as well as stimulating special panels and activities that should engage researchers and practitioners alike. A great series of continuing education seminars is available to help members advance their careers, and a range of focused workshops will address key information R&D challenges. Considerable effort will be given to recruitment and placement for faculty and information professionals. As always, there will be many opportunities for networking and meeting colleagues. This year, several important meetings will be co-located with ASIS&T, including the Dublin Core International Conference and the International Conference on Knowledge Management. It should be a rewarding experience for all of us.

Looking across the Hearing Line?: Exploring Young Deaf People’s Use of Web 2.0

Looking across the Hearing Line?: Exploring Young Deaf People’s Use of Web 2.0

Harnessing ‘e’ in Storyworlds: Engage, Enhance, Experience, Entertain

Conversation is key and as the communication landscape shifts rapidly, harnessing ‘e’ is pivotal in extending ‘story’ as digital evolves, catapulting publishing from analogue to digital. Harnessing ‘e’ is an exciting and effective way to add value, but for ‘e’ to be implemented successfully and seamlessly requires more than a standard ‘roll out’ of strategy. Staying Single [1] was my MA dissertation project in the form of a fictional blog that bridged a fictitious digital world with a real physical one as I supplemented Sophie’s story with souvenirs, additional digital content, UGC, and social media elements, all channelled through Sophie’s fictional storyworld. This study was an investigation into the effects that interactivity and community might bring to contemporary fiction, traditionally published in print form, by women, for women. The presentation of Staying Single as a cross-media, digital story challenged conventional boundaries for story enjoyment and involvement and attempted to vastly expand the story universe, recording how the option for interactivity impacted the story. Readers were offered choices to receive Staying Single through blog feeds, by email or downloaded podcasts, with additional options for involvement through multiple platforms—‘Pulling Power’ ‘relationship’ documentaries, SMS alerts and ‘meeting’ Sophie in Second Life. My current transmedia romantic comedy fiction, Loving NY will push these resources and opportunities further, enhancing and driving the story whilst engaging and interacting with readers. Transmedia storyworld development is extremely fast-moving and with magazines offering web-cam enabled augmented realities and iPhone apps allowing readers to GPS tag co-readers, these are extremely exciting times! To harness ‘e’ is to offer options—levels of immersion and engagement, multi-platform choices, perhaps even linear or non-linear narratives with the intention of organically reaching a wider readership far beyond the restrictions of print based novels.

Social media, societal culture and Israeli public relations practice

The aim of this study is to explore Israel's societal culture as an environment with which public relations practice has to align. It asks whether Israeli public relations practitioners use social media elements, how do they perceive these elements and what do they think about their future? A web-based survey revealed that Israeli practitioners generally are willing to use and gain experience with social media elements although this usage is still in its initial stage.

Time Since Last Cervical Cancer Screening, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (Brfss), United States, 2000 And 2006

The use of parent-focused internet-based programs for the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity has shown promise but there is an acknowledged gap in parent-focused interventions which target the early childhood stage.The aim of this study is to determine the efficacy of Time2bHealthy - an online healthy lifestyle program for parents of preschool-aged children. The program will be evaluated using a two-arm, parallel, randomised controlled design. The 11-week program is underpinned by Social Cognitive Theory and consists of interactive modules on healthy eating, physical activity, screen-time and sleep. The intervention also involves elements of social media, where participants share discuss ideas and experiences and they can interact and obtain information with experts. Time2bHealthy is being compared to a comparison condition. Outcomes include change in BMI (primary outcome), dietary intake, physical activity, sleep, child feeding, parental role-modelling and parent self-efficacy. Process evaluation data, such as adherence and engagement with the online forums, will also be collected.Time2bHealthy is the first randomised controlled trial to our knowledge to assess the efficacy of an online parent-focussed healthy lifestyle program for preschool-aged children in changing body mass index. Early childhood is a crucial time for establishing healthy lifestyle behaviours and parents play an important role. This study therefore fills an important gap in the literature. If found to be efficacious, Time2bHealthy has potential for broad-reach access and translation into primary health care services.The study is registered with the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (12616000119493).