Information In Virtual Communities Research Articles

Are financial stocks driven by substantive factors or virtual factors? Comparing Taiwan and China markets

This study employs information economics and the financial intermediary theory to explore the influences of private information in virtual communities and financial technology (fintech) derived from virtual currency on financial stocks. The paper conducts robust analyses on 67,166 data observations of the stock markets in China and Taiwan and finds that virtual currency development causes a structural change in the financial industry. The financial stocks in Taiwan are obviously driven by virtual factors, whereas those in China are subject to both pull from substantial factors and push from virtual factors. The research findings also suggest that the non-fundamental herding behavior driven by private information interferes with the value of financial stocks. However, financial innovations boost the competitiveness of the financial industry. It is advised to establish a policy to closely monitor the diffusion of private information and the exchange rate volatility between cryptocurrencies and home currencies to facilitate proactive financial risk management.

RESEARCH OF STRUCTURAL AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF MEAT AS AN OBJECT OF PROCESSING IN MEAT COMMINUTOR

Today, there is a rapid development of the field of information technologies, which consists of the production of information technologies and related information, which must be written in the form of documentation. Formation of documentation that will contain not only the opinion of the manufacturer, but also the consumer becomes an important task. Because in the first of all, the software is primarily user-oriented. Developers usually provide a description of the software on official sites or in data repositories. While consumers post information in virtual communities, which are rapidly gaining popularity among the population. As a result, the author developed the system architecture for the formation of software documentation based on user experience, the source of which will be virtual communities. The architecture is presented in the form of a multi-agent system, which consists of the set of interacting agents. Agents are autonomous and interactive software systems that solve certain separate tasks, activate themselves and can interact with other agents and the environment in which they function at different points in time. After studying the methods of data integration from virtual communities, the method of data consolidation was chosen. For the correct interaction of agents, each other, a consolidated data repository is used, which receives data from various virtual communities and transfers it to documentation. The system architecture includes the following agents: data collection (from various virtual communities and their transfer to the consolidated data repository); verification of information content of posts (which were obtained as a result of the work of the previous agent) for reliability and adequacy, presence of unwanted content, elimination of duplication of data; structuring community posts according to existing documentation parts; assessment of the quality of the generated documentation according to the characteristics of the ISO/IEC 25010 standard.

The Spread of Information in Virtual Communities

With the growth of online commerce, companies have created virtual communities (VCs) where users can create posts and reply to posts about the company’s products. VCs can be represented as networks, with users as nodes and relationships between users as edges. Information propagates through edges. In VC studies, it is important to know how the number of topics concerning the product grows over time and what network features make a user more influential than others in the information-spreading process. The existing literature has not provided a quantitative method with which to determine key points during the topic emergence process. Also, few researchers have considered the link between multilayer physical features and the nodes’ spreading influence. In this paper, we present two new ideas to enrich network theory as applied to VCs: a novel application of an adjusted coefficient of determination to topic growth and an adjustment to the Jaccard coefficient to measure the connection between two users. A two-layer network model was first used to study the spread of topics through a VC. A random forest method was then applied to rank various factors that might determine an individual user’s importance in topic spreading through a VC. Our research provides insightful ways for enterprises to mine information from VCs.

Comunidades sociales y la investigación por estudiantes universitarios

El Internet es una herramienta indispensable, las comunidades sociales favorecen publicar, compartir información y el autoaprendizaje.
 Propósito: Determinar el uso de las comunidades virtuales como herramienta de investigación por los estudiantes de postgrados.
 Material y métodos: Estudio descriptivo transversal, no experimental, por medio de una encuesta orientada al uso de comunidades sociales en investigación a estudiantes de postgrados hospitalarios de la Escuela de Estudios de Postgrado, Facultad de Ingeniería de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, inscritos en el 2019, seleccionados aleatoriamente.
 Resultados: Se estudiaron a 60 personas, 50% de sexo femenino, todos admitieron uso de alguna comunidad virtual, siete de cada 10 la utilizan como referente de investigación científica y tres de cada 10 la utilizan para información no científica. La comunidad virtual para consulta de información científica más utilizada es Google 86%, Google Académico 46%, Google Drive 40%, YouTube34%, WhatsApp 18%, Facebook 16%, otras redes sociales 12%, y revistas científicas 2%.
 Conclusión: Un tercio de estudiantes utiliza comunidades virtuales 3 veces o más por semana como herramienta en investigación científica por motores de búsqueda; otras fuentes de revisión científica son menos utilizadas. Se deben crear iniciativas que promuevan la comunicación, innovación, emprendimiento y accesibilidad a información científica en comunidades virtuales.

Investigating information sharing behavior: the mediating roles of the desire to share information in virtual communities

Social networking sites are built and designed to provide online services and a platform for people to social interacts and exchange information. This study used the social capital theory as a foundation to explore the social interaction factors and individual factors such as shared value, community identification, and information privacy concerns, and examine the mediating role of the desire to give information between trust on websites/members and information sharing behaviour in the proposed model. This research sample consists of seven hundred and twenty-seven members who have used the Facebook fan page for at least 6 months. This study adopted structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses. The results of this study show that shared value, community identification, and information privacy concern directly influence trust on websites and members. Trust on websites and members directly influenced the desire to get/give information. Desire to give information directly influences information sharing behaviour. The desire to give information plays important mediating roles between trust on websites/members and information sharing behaviour. Finally, we provide conclusions and managerial implications of the findings.

Comunidades virtuais de música como subsídio para a construção da identidade afrodescendente

Investiga a possibilidade da construção da identidade afrodescendente através de comunidades virtuais de música. Principia, contextualizando a importância da informação musical nas comunidades virtuais, na sociedade da informação. Tem como objetivo geral compreender como as comunidades virtuais de música podem subsidiar a construção da identidade afrodescendente e operacionaliza, como objetivos específicos: entender o papel desempenhado pela informação musical nas comunidades virtuais, examinar o acesso às comunidades virtuais de música e discutir o processo de construção da identidade afrodescendente. Segue sua base teórica, refletindo sobre as questões da cibercultura e o processo de construção da identidade afrodescendente. O estudo é de caráter qualitativo exploratório, que apoia-se na pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, e analisa os dados coletados sob a ótica da análise documental associada a uma abordagem crítica, fundamentada no referencial teórico. Os dados foram coletados no Facebook, por tratar-se de uma rede de relacionamento virtual amplamente utilizada no Brasil. Verificou-se que as comunidades virtuais de música podem ser interpretadas como um dispositivo facilitador da construção da identidade afrodescendente, configurando-se como um mecanismo contra a discriminação e o racismo.

AN EPIDEMIOLOGICAL MODEL OF KNOWLEDGE DIFFUSION IN VIRTUAL LEARNING NETWORKS: AN APPLICATION TO LEARNING STATISTICS IN MEDICINE

ABSTRACT Some authors claim that the genetic metaphor can be used for describing intergenerational cultural transmission. In analogy with genes, memes can be conceived as cultural units that can be transmitted from one generation to another. A variant of this metaphor conceives cultural transmission as a sort of contagion within a social network of individuals.In this respect, distance learning networks provide a valuable tool for analyzing the spreading of information in virtual communities. In this article, the time evolution of the student's applications to an interactive distance learning platform was analysed. The platform DVLN was developed at the University of Naples and allows tracking all the students' interactions with the system. The diffusion of the innovation among the students of the Course of Medical Statistics was modelled by means of a system of differential Equations where the diffusion of the innovation adoption depends on the contact rate between two types of students: the innovators and the potential imitators. Furthermore, by means of k-means cluster analysis of the interactions of the students with the system, three learning styles, i.e. lurkers, socializers, utilitarists, were found. An attempt to explain the macroscopic spreading of innovation adoption on the basis of individual microscopic decisions to accept or refute the innovation was carried out. The authors claim that the representation of the learning process as a temporal dynamics of a network of cognitive agents opens new perspectives to the scientific analysis of the learning process in human groups.