Facebook Content Research Articles

Beyond Self-Reports: Using Eye Tracking to Measure Topic and Style Differences in Attention to Social Media Content

ABSTRACTResearch on social media content overwhelmingly relies on self-reports, which we suggest are meaningfully limited and likely biased. Instead, we apply an under-utilized method—corneal eye tracking—for gauging attention to content in social media. We expose subjects to different types of Facebook content and track their gaze as they browse through posts. Substantively, we find that news and social content garner equal attention, with politics trailing behind both. We also find that the style of the post matters for attention patterns, with richer content (e.g., pictures, links) enhancing attention especially for social and news posts. Methodologically, we conclude that participants are unable to accurately report the topics and types of content available on the Facebook feed, even immediately after exposure. We discuss the implications of these findings and also make recommendations for appropriate methods in this area.

How U.S. children's hospitals use social media: A mixed methods study

BackgroundSocial media provide new channels for hospitals to engage with communities, a goal of increasing importance as non-profit hospitals face stricter definitions of community benefit under the Affordable Care Act. We describe the variability in social media presence among US children's hospitals and the distribution of their Facebook content curation. MethodsSocial media data from freestanding children's hospitals were extracted from September–November 2013. Social media adoption was reviewed for each hospital-generated Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest platform. Facebook page (number of Likes) and Twitter account (number of followers) engagement were examined by hospital characteristics. Facebook posts from each hospital over a 6-week period were thematically characterized. ResultsWe reviewed 5 social media platforms attributed to 45 children's hospitals and 2004 associated Facebook posts. All hospitals maintained Facebook and Twitter accounts and most used YouTube (82%), Google+ (53%) and Pinterest (69%). Larger hospitals were more often high performers for Facebook (67% versus 10%, p<0.01) and Twitter (75% versus 17%, p<0.05) engagement than small hospitals. The most common Facebook post-themes were hospital promotion 35% (706), education and information 35% (694), community partnership or benefit 24% (474), fundraising 21% (426), and narratives 12% (241). Of health education posts, 73% (509) provided pediatric health supervision and anticipatory guidance. ConclusionsSocial media adoption by US children's hospitals was widespread. ImplicationsBeyond its traditional marketing role, social media can serve as a conduit for health education, engagement with communities, including community benefit.

When People Evaluate Others, the Level of Others’ Narcissism Matters Less to Evaluators Who Are Narcissistic

Prior studies have documented how people in general respond to others’ narcissism, but existing research offers few clues about whether and how evaluator narcissism influences judgments of traits associated with narcissism. Participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and then evaluated hypothetical target persons. Target narcissism was conveyed through a single trait description (Study 1), a list of traits (Study 2), or Facebook content (Study 3). Narcissistic qualities were reliably viewed unfavorably, but narcissistic participants were comparatively less bothered by target narcissism and less positive in their judgments of targets without narcissistic qualities. In each study, symptoms of the presence or absence of narcissism had less impact on the social judgments of participants who were narcissistic.

Brandscapes: contrasting corporate-generated versus consumer-generated media in the creation of brand meaning

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to add to the growing literature addressing whether, and to what extent, brand meaning is determined by corporate and consumer-generated processes. To do this, the authors compared the expression of brand meaning across three key sources i.e. first, brand strategy (i.e. traditional marketing mix); second, corporate-generated media (i.e. web site); and third, consumer-generated media (Facebook). Design/methodology/approach – To address the research question of this study, the authors conducted an in-depth investigation into consumer co-creation experiences in the context of Facebook brand communities. The authors then interpreted the findings in relation to the brand strategy (i.e. marketing mix) and brand meaning expressed via corporate-generated online media (i.e. corporate web site). The authors achieved this by applying a narrative discourse analysis to textual data. To effectively handle the high quantity of textual data spawned via consumer-generated media (i.e. Facebook), the authors used a computer-assisted content analysis application (i.e. Leximancer). Findings – In the analyses the authors found that brand expressions varied considerably across the chosen retail brands, but in all cases strong integration and alignment were present between the corporate and consumer-generated media. Specifically, the authors found that Facebook interactions echoed the brand meanings espoused on the corporate web sites. The findings indicate that online marketers can define the nature of brand co-creation, especially in the context of Facebook interactions. Practical implications – For marketers who are eager to take advantage of Web 2.0 to build their brand, the findings of this research are highly significant. The authors showed that the brands developed their own interaction profiles, which allowed them to align the Facebook content with their core brand values. The results indicate that sound brand governance is articulated through the effective management of social media touchpoints by providing interactive, content rich, and relevant Facebook sites that echo core brand values. Originality/value – Even though businesses have now started to penetrate the online social networks and offer direct links from corporate web sites to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, little is known regarding the relationship between social media and traditional media in brand building. This research addresses this gap by undertaking an exploratory study of Facebook brand communities with implications for brand co-creation and brand governance.

When Faced With Facebook: What Role Should Social Media Play in Selecting Residents?

Facebook, the most widely used application of online social media, reached its 10-year anniversary with over a billion current users.1 This astronomical number of users reflects the widespread appeal of digitally sharing our personal lives, and prospective employers and admissions officers are now capitalizing on the popularity of social media. Profiles on social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, where users share thoughts and experiences, photos, videos, and other media, and endorse other users' content, are visible to the public in varying degrees and can therefore offer searchers a glimpse of applicants' online behavior. It is estimated that 19% to 31% of collegiate admissions officers currently vet applicants through online searches,2,3 while nearly half of employers may do so.4 Data are more sparse regarding medical schools and residency programs but suggest that searches with SNS are already a considerable tool for evaluating candidates. A survey of program directors in surgical specialties found that 17% screened applicants by using SNS, and 33% of this group gave lower rankings to applicants based on SNS content.5 In contrast, a study of more general Google searches with program directors in emergency medicine demonstrated little consequence to applicants' standings.6

Lawsuits &amp; Rulings

Student Conduct: Deleting Facebook content is insufficient cause for lawsuit dismissal Personnel: Instructor suspended for threat to shoot the class Liability: Suing police chief in official capacity dooms case

Facebook: A new communication strategy for non-profit organisations In Colombia

This study examines the use of Facebook by Colombian NPOs as a communication strategy. In turn, it also analyses the factors that influence the Facebook content published by such entities. Findings indicate that the use of social media is scarce, particularly pertaining to content related to fostering stakeholder involvement. Moreover, the factors “network activity”, “internationalisation” and “experience in social media” are significant predictors of the use of this tool as a channel for communication and dialogue.

Reputation Monitoring over Rule-stringent Social Media based on Advanced Wrapper Technologies

The so-called real-time web (RTW) is a web of opinions, comments, and personal viewpoints, providing personalized commentary in real-time. Facebook is undoubtedly the king of the RTW. It boasts 1+ billion users that spend about 23 billion minutes per day, generating in the region of 60 million posts per day. This RTW data is far from structured (in contrast to data such as ratings, product features, etc.), but it is very useful to consider for reputation monitoring. For enterprises in particular, being present and aware of what is discussed on social media about their products and services has become a must. It allows them to establish a communication channel with their customers, market their products, build brand equity and boost clientele faithfulness. However, as social media are two-way channels, they require effort and care to manage this communication. Dissatisfied customers can protest out loud, easily influence many other customers and damage the brand's image. In order to avoid these risks, several social media monitoring tools have been implemented, enabling enterprises to have access to real customers’ opinions, complaints and questions at real time in a highly scalable manner. Characteristic examples include the SM2 tool of Alterian, Brandwatch, Converseon, Cymfony Maestro, My BuzzMetrics, Radian6, Sysomos and others. Even though very interesting and somehow effectively performing on open social media (twitter, blogs, microblogs etc), most aforementioned tools have very limited performance on rule-stringent media (where tough access policies are imposed). Furthermore usually extensive human guidance is needed and raw-tag manipulations are necessary. In order to bypass these problems, in this paper we propose an intelligent wrapper system that automatically segments closed social media web pages into structural tokens, extracts and associates opinions to each token. A key step towards retrieving the data of interest is to discover the sections contained in a web page and identify the ones holding the interesting information. To do that, our method is based on a clustering and statistics origin. The proposed system can operate without human intervention and training. Initial experiments are presented over Facebook content, which indicate the promising performance of the proposed scheme.

Ask and you shall receive: desire and receipt of feedback via Facebook predicts disordered eating concerns.

The current study examined whether certain types of Facebook content (i.e., status updates, comments) relate to eating concerns and attitudes. We examined the effects of seeking and receiving negative feedback via Facebook on disordered eating concerns in a sample of 185 undergraduate students followed for approximately 4 weeks. Results indicated that individuals with a negative feedback seeking style who received a high number of comments on Facebook were more likely to report disordered eating attitudes four weeks later. Additionally, individuals who received extremely negative comments in response to their personally revealing status updates were more likely to report disordered eating concerns four weeks later. Results of the current study provide preliminary evidence that seeking and receiving negative feedback via social networking sites can increase risk for disordered eating attitudes, and suggest that reducing maladaptive social networking usage may be an important target for prevention and intervention efforts aimed at reducing disordered eating attitudes.

Click "like" to change your behavior: a mixed methods study of college students' exposure to and engagement with Facebook content designed for weight loss.

BackgroundOverweight or obesity is prevalent among college students and many gain weight during this time. Traditional face-to-face weight loss interventions have not worked well in this population. Facebook is an attractive tool for delivering weight loss interventions for college students because of its popularity, potential to deliver strategies found in successful weight loss interventions, and ability to support ongoing adaptation of intervention content.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to describe participant exposure to a Facebook page designed to deliver content to overweight/obese college students in a weight loss randomized controlled trial (N=404) and examine participant engagement with behavior change campaigns for weight loss delivered via Facebook.MethodsThe basis of the intervention campaign model were 5 self-regulatory techniques: intention formation, action planning, feedback, goal review, and self-monitoring. Participants were encouraged to engage their existing social network to meet their weight loss goals. A health coach moderated the page and modified content based on usage patterns and user feedback. Quantitative analyses were conducted at the Facebook post- and participant-level of analysis. Participant engagement was quantified by Facebook post type (eg, status update) and interaction (eg, like) and stratified by weight loss campaign (sequenced vs nonsequenced). A subset of participants were interviewed to evaluate the presence of passive online engagement or “lurking.”ResultsThe health coach posted 1816 unique messages to the study’s Facebook page over 21 months, averaging 3.45 posts per day (SD 1.96, range 1-13). In all, 72.96% (1325/1816) of the posts were interacted with at least once (eg, liked). Of these, approximately 24.75% (328/1325) had 1-2 interactions, 23.39% (310/1325) had 3-5 interactions, 25.13% (333/1325) had 6-8 interactions, and 41 posts had 20 or more interactions (3.09%, 41/1325). There was significant variability among quantifiable (ie, visible) engagement. Of 199 participants in the final intervention sample, 32 (16.1%) were highly active users and 62 (31.2%) never visibly engaged with the intervention on Facebook. Polls were the most popular type of post followed by photos, with 97.5% (79/81) and 80.3% (386/481) interacted with at least once. Participants visibly engaged less with posts over time (partial r=–.33; P<.001). Approximately 40% of the participants interviewed (12/29, 41%) reported passively engaging with the Facebook posts by reading but not visibly interacting with them.ConclusionsFacebook can be used to remotely deliver weight loss intervention content to college students with the help of a health coach who can iteratively tailor content and interact with participants. However, visible engagement with the study’s Facebook page was highly variable and declined over time. Whether the level of observed engagement is meaningful in terms of influencing changes in weight behaviors and outcomes will be evaluated at the completion of the overall study.

Evaluating the use of Facebook to increase student engagement and understanding in lecture-based classes

Both lecture delivery and Facebook use are ubiquitous aspects of higher education from staff and student points-of-view, respectively. An attempt was made to integrate the two by setting up a Facebook group and delivering contemporary news stories in preparation for in-lecture discussion in a large-scale (1,200 students across 5 sections) Introduction to Psychology class. Each section experienced two-thirds of the class with Facebook intervention and one-third without, thereby each section served as its own control group. Overall, Facebook intervention did not yield higher self-report of course engagement or understanding for those portions of the course. Only those individuals who never viewed the Facebook postings reported lower engagement and understanding of the in-lecture discussion, in addition to a lower appreciation of the link between the Facebook content and the lecture material. Our data suggest that successful integration of social media into the classroom is a challenging one and the relative success or failure of these interventions may stand or fall on the basis of a complex interaction between a number of factors including the timing of content delivery, the integration of social media content with course assessment and the students’ own perspective on using social media for academic purposes.

“I Will Take a Shot for Every ‘Like’ I Get on This Status”: Posting Alcohol-Related Facebook Content Is Linked to Drinking Outcomes

This study investigated whether self-reports of alcohol-related postings on Facebook by oneself or one's Facebook friends were related to common motives for drinking and were uniquely predictive of self-reported alcohol outcomes (alcohol consumption, problems, and cravings). Pacific Northwest undergraduates completed a survey of alcohol outcomes, drinking motives, and alcohol-related Facebook postings. Participants completed the survey online as part of a larger study on alcohol use and cognitive associations. Participants were randomly selected through the university registrar's office and consisted of 1,106 undergraduates (449 men, 654 women, 2 transgender, 1 declined to answer) between the ages of 18 and 25 years (M = 20.40, SD = 1.60) at a large university in the Pacific Northwest. Seven participants were excluded from analyses because of missing or suspect data. Alcohol-related postings on Facebook were significantly correlated with social, enhancement, conformity, and coping motives for drinking (all ps < .001). After drinking motives were controlled for, self-alcohol-related postings independently and positively predicted the number of drinks per week, alcohol-related problems, risk of alcohol use disorders, and alcohol cravings (all ps < .001). In contrast, friends' alcohol-related postings only predicted the risk of alcohol use disorders (p < .05) and marginally predicted alcohol-related problems (p = .07). Posting alcohol-related content on social media platforms such as Facebook is associated with common motivations for drinking and is, in itself, a strong predictive indicator of drinking outcomes independent of drinking motives. Moreover, self-related posting activity appears to be more predictive than Facebook friends' activity. These findings suggest that social media platforms may be a useful target for future preventative and intervention efforts.

Leveraging social media content to support engagement in positive interventions

A key challenge for positive psychology interventions is promoting sustained engagement to improve long-term outcomes. One way to increase engagement is to introduce variety to reduce hedonic adaptation. Here, we propose supplementing intervention prompts with items from a person’s social media archive to add variety. Through a one-week pilot study of six positive psychology activities via a Facebook application, we explore whether Facebook content is useful to keep people engaged in activities and what attributes of content make it most useful. A total of 260 participants used our application, and analysis of usage showed that displaying content is engaging. By looking at which content was marked as useful by participants, we find that useful content is in itself meaningful and engaging (photos, longer texts, and content about close friends). We also find that certain intervention activities are more engaging and better suited for making use of Facebook content than others.

Table of Contents

Abstract The Advisory Board Speaks Be ready to lead your unit in times of change The bottom line … Tools of the Trade Automate curriculum review to save time, trouble Drop‐down menus make input easy News State legislators OK financial aid for undocumented students Submitting standardized test scores does not predict GPA, completion Temple University offers grants to cut down students' work hours Flagler College VP resigns after fudging enrollment data FERPA Consider when information may be disclosed under the health and safety emergency provision Ethics What would you do if your supervisor blamed you when things went wrong? Professional Development Add energy to your career strategy with conference plans Lawsuits &amp; Rulings DISMISSAL Deleting Facebook content doesn't lead to suit dismissal FERPA Disclosing directory information doesn't require student's consent Former university basketball player's suit dismissed Leaders &amp; Innovators Support colleagues to bring about positive change Support your colleagues to enhance student success

Son, you’re smoking on Facebook! College students’ disclosures on social networking sites as indicators of real-life risk behaviors

Health risk behavior in student populations is an issue of major concern, and students’ risk levels are difficult to determine. In this study, we explore the extent to which information disclosed publicly on Facebook provides reliable indications of five real-life health behaviors.Questionnaire data and Facebook contents (2928 items) on alcohol use, smoking, illicit drug use, (un)healthy nutrition, and participation in sports of 71 respondents were collected and analyzed.The study shows that one can analyze Facebook profiles to reliably associate profile owners’ smoking and sport behavior. It also shows that regarding alcohol use, some Facebook profile elements are indicative of real-life drinking.We discuss and suggest improved methods of coding disclosed public data, which may lead to reliable indications of peoples’ real-life behavior.

Academic, Public and Special Libraries on Facebook: A Content Analysis

This paper compares Facebook contents of Indian academic, public and special libraries with the purpose of understanding pattern of Facebook use in libraries. Contents were categorised into history, images, services, collection, events, photos, notes; groups and Likes. The points earned by all the individual contents at the 10-point scale were added together to find total points earned by each individual Library Facebook. Again the total points earned by individual libraries were taken together to find out the average points earned by three categories of libraries. The most significant findings are that average points earned for Facebook content are more by the public library, in comparison to special and academic libraries.

Designing a Facebook Interface for Senior Users

The adoption of social networks by older adults has increased in recent years. However, many still cannot make use of social networks as these are simply not adapted to them. Through a series of direct observations, interviews, and focus groups, we identified recommendations for the design of social networks targeting seniors. Based on these, we developed a prototype for tablet devices, supporting sharing and viewing Facebook content. We then conducted a user study comparing our prototype with Facebook's native mobile application. We have found that Facebook's native application does not meet senior users concerns, like privacy and family focus, while our prototype, designed in accordance with the collected recommendations, supported relevant use cases in a usable and accessible manner.

Personal documentation on a social network site: Facebook, a collection of moments from your life?

Social networking on the Web has become very popular in recent years. Used by more than 950 million people worldwide, Facebook is one of the most popular of these services. One interesting aspect of Facebook is that users can converse through various formats, including wall posts, photographs, Web links, music, and video clips of stories and interests surrounding their daily lives. This phenomenon raises an important question for archivists in regard to personal history on the Web: What are the new ways that contemporary people document their life stories? This study looks at Facebook activities from the perspectives of personal documentation. Using an online survey, this study investigates how Facebook content presents users themselves and their everyday stories, whether they perceive their activities of using Facebook as personal documentation, and what factors influence such activities. The findings of this study show the current status of Facebook usage. Facebook content indeed indicates information of self-presentation and personal documentation of everyday lives of users. Attitudes about and activeness on Facebook are the major factors that influence self-presentation and personal documentation activities on Facebook. Generic external factors, such as personal archiving in general, do not show strong associations with personal documentation activities as factors. Based on this understanding, we discuss the roles of information professionals and cultural heritage institutions in dealing with a new type of personal record on the Web.

Professors' Facebook Content Affects Students' Perceptions and Expectations

Abstract Facebook users must make choices about level of self-disclosure, and this self-disclosure can influence perceptions of the profile's author. We examined whether the specific type of self-disclosure on a professor's profile would affect students' perceptions of the professor and expectations of his classroom. We created six Facebook profiles for a fictitious male professor, each with a specific emphasis: politically conservative, politically liberal, religious, family oriented, socially oriented, or professional. Undergraduate students randomly viewed one profile and responded to questions that assessed their perceptions and expectations. The social professor was perceived as less skilled but more popular, while his profile was perceived as inappropriate and entertaining. Students reacted more strongly and negatively to the politically focused profiles in comparison to the religious, family, and professional profiles. Students reported being most interested in professional information on a professor's Facebook profile, yet they reported being least influenced by the professional profile. In general, students expressed neutrality about their interest in finding and friending professors on Facebook. These findings suggest that students have the potential to form perceptions about the classroom environment and about their professors based on the specific details disclosed in professors' Facebook profiles.

Facebook single and cross domain data for recommendation systems

The emergence of social networks and the vast amount of data that they contain about their users make them a valuable source for personal information about users for recommender systems. In this paper we investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of utilizing existing available data from social networks for the recommendation process, specifically from Facebook. The data may replace or enrich explicit user ratings. We extract from Facebook content published by users on their personal pages about their favorite items and preferences in the domain of recommendation, and data about preferences related to other domains to allow cross-domain recommendation. We study several methods for integrating Facebook data with the recommendation process and compare the performance of these methods with that of traditional collaborative filtering that utilizes user ratings. In a field study that we conducted, recommendations obtained using Facebook data were tested and compared for 95 subjects and their crawled Facebook friends. Encouraging results show that when data is sparse or not available for a new user, recommendation results relying solely on Facebook data are at least equally as accurate as results obtained from user ratings. The experimental study also indicates that enriching sparse rating data by adding Facebook data can significantly improve results. Moreover, our findings highlight the benefits of utilizing cross domain Facebook data to achieve improvement in recommendation performance.