Level Of User Engagement Research Articles

Analyze the usage of urban greenways through social media images and computer vision

Urban greenway is an emerging form of urban landscape offering multifaceted benefits to public health, economy, and ecology. However, the usage and user experiences of greenways are often challenging to measure because it is costly to survey such large areas. Based on the online postings from Instagram in 2017, this paper used Computer Vision (CV) technology to analyze and compare how the general public uses two typical greenway parks, The High Line in New York City and the Atlanta Beltline in Atlanta. Face and object detection analysis were conducted to infer user composition, activities, and key experiences. We presented the temporal patterns of Instagram postings as well as the group gatherings, smiling, and representative objects detected from photos. Our results have shown high user engagement levels for both parks while teens are significantly underrepresented. The High Line had more group activities and was more active during weekdays than the Atlanta Beltline. Stronger sense of escape and physical activities can be found in Atlanta Beltline. In summary, social media images like Instagram can provide strong empirical evidence for urban greenway usage when combined with artificial intelligence technologies, which can support the future practice of landscape architecture and urban design.

Post-Pandemic Heritage. Game Design Tools For An Engaging Experience

Digitisation of heritage and the creation of open digital archive contribute in a large scale dissemination of history and culture. Today, technology allows us not only to easily access information on heritage and view 3D models of buildings or artefacts, but also to experience virtually historic sites or historic object, by representing them accurately, either referring to the recreation of exiting objects or rebuilding models of objects as they may have appeared in the past (Roussou, 2002). Moreover, digital heritage platforms allow visitors to navigate through virtual spaces and access information data, but still provide a low level of interactivity and immersion (Champion, 2008). By providing simple navigation they offer passive interaction and less engagement, while affords to navigate and have inputs to which to respond offer a more active mental interaction. However, what is missing is dynamic involvement of users and an engaging narrative. Although, digital models today are becoming more and more realistic representations of the physical objects and in general of the environment, they still lack a narrative which describes the intangible elements of cultural heritage, human attitude in this environment and simulates the cultural context. In order to guarantee an effective engagement with learning experience and offer better entertainment to a larger audience, other than conservators, historians and archaeologists, this study will introduce an interactive and immersive approach in heritage 3D platforms based on game design tools. The paper will explore frst the state of the art on virtual heritage worldwide and in particular applications in the case of Albanian heritage, highlighting the level of interactivity and user engagement. Then, interactive tools from video games will be analysed and discussed in view of their incorporation in virtual heritage platforms or serious games to make the dissemination of virtual heritage more interactive and immersive. In this sense, this study will discuss how to develop interactive narrative for historical heritage based on interactivity and narration elements, how to develop an interactive story space and introduce player character as a view point in heritage exploration.

Effectiveness and acceptability of conversational agents for sexual health promotion: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Digital health interventions for sexual health promotion have evolved considerably alongside innovations in technology. Despite these efforts, studies have shown that they do not consistently result in the desired sexual health outcomes. This could be attributed to low levels of user engagement, which can hinder digital health intervention effectiveness, as users do not engage with the system enough to be exposed to the intervention components. It has been suggested that conversational agents (automated two-way communication systems e.g. Alexa) have the potential to overcome the limitations of prior systems and promote user engagement through the increased interactivity offered by bidirectional, natural language-based interactions. The present review, therefore, provides an overview of the effectiveness and user acceptability of conversational agents for sexual health promotion. A systematic search of seven databases provided 4534 records, and after screening, 31 articles were included in this review. A narrative synthesis of results was conducted for effectiveness and acceptability outcomes, with the former supplemented by a meta-analysis conducted on a subset of studies. Findings provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of conversational agents for promoting sexual health, particularly treatment adherence. These conversational agents were found to be easy to use and useful, and importantly, resulted in high levels of satisfaction, use and intentions to reuse, whereas user evaluations regarding the quality of information left room for improvement. The results can inform subsequent efforts to design and evaluate these interventions, and offer insight into additional user experience constructs identified outside of current technology acceptance models, which can be incorporated into future theoretical developments.

Personalisation and User Engagement

The development of web 2.0 of social media has caused many changes in the implementation and approach of a political campaign. Nowadays, political campaigns are more personal and can be carried out at any time. Politicians can share personal information directly through social media, even outside a particular electoral or media agenda. The public can also directly communicate with politicians through social features in likes, comments, and shares. Therefore, it becomes interesting to analyse these changes. This study applied a quantitative content analysis method to explore further the concept of personalisation in Facebook contents of one of the famous politicians in Indonesia, Anies Baswedan. The concept of personalisation used in this study is Van Santen and Van Zoonen's typology of self-personalisation. The results show Anies Baswedan Facebook contents commonly utilised the typology of self-personalisation, a correlation between text visual post type with the use of self-personalisation typology, and a strong and positive correlation between the use of self-personalisation typology with the level of user engagement obtained. 
 Keywords: campaign strategy, Facebook, political communication,self-personalisation, social media

On the Use of Large Interactive Displays to Support Collaborative Engagement and Visual Exploratory Tasks.

Large interactive displays can provide suitable workspaces for learners to conduct collaborative learning tasks with visual information in co-located settings. In this research, we explored the use of these displays to support collaborative engagement and exploratory tasks with visual representations. Our investigation looked at the effect of four factors (number of virtual workspaces within the display, number of displays, position arrangement of the collaborators, and collaborative modes of interaction) on learners’ knowledge acquisition, engagement level, and task performance. To this end, a user study was conducted with 72 participants divided into 6 groups using an interactive tool developed to support the collaborative exploration of 3D visual structures. The results of this study showed that learners with one shared workspace and one single display can achieve better user performance and engagement levels. In addition, the back-to-back position with learners sharing their view and control of the workspaces was the most favorable. It also led to improved learning outcomes and engagement levels during the collaboration process.

User Engagement and User Design on Online Shopping Apps

Most people nowadays use mobile phones, and they do a lot of things with this device, including online shopping through an app since it saves a lot of time, and they can choose a broad range of products even with just a small screen. User engagement is one of the factors that affect the design of an app. Referring to the quality of the user that emphasizes the interaction between the user and the app. Numerous studies internationally have studied user engagement and app design but not specifically with the user engagement towards shopping apps design. We conducted this study to assess the effectiveness of user engagement towards online shopping apps design. Also, the purpose of this study is to identify user engagement factors that will produce a successful good shopping app design. The results show a high level of user engagement and online shopping apps design. It has also been found that among the indicators of user engagement, attention and satisfaction are the two predictors of the design of online shopping apps

Cancer Communication and User Engagement on Chinese Social Media: Content Analysis and Topic Modeling Study.

BackgroundCancer ranks among the most serious public health challenges worldwide. In China—the world’s most populous country—about one-quarter of the population consists of people with cancer. Social media has become an important platform that the Chinese public uses to express opinions.ObjectiveWe investigated cancer-related discussions on the Chinese social media platform Weibo (Sina Corporation) to identify cancer topics that generate the highest levels of user engagement.MethodsWe conducted topic modeling and regression analyses to analyze and visualize cancer-related messages on Weibo and to examine the relationships between different cancer topics and user engagement (ie, the number of retweets, comments, and likes).ResultsOur results revealed that cancer communication on Weibo has generally focused on the following six topics: social support, cancer treatment, cancer prevention, women’s cancers, smoking and skin cancer, and other topics. Discussions about social support and cancer treatment attracted the highest number of users and received the greatest numbers of retweets, comments, and likes.ConclusionsOur investigation of cancer-related communication on Weibo provides valuable insights into public concerns about cancer and can help guide the development of health campaigns in social media.

Posts Characterization and User Engagement

Many health organizations use Facebook as a platform to engage with users. This has resulted in many research studies conducted on this platform. One popular type of research study is to characterize posts and measure user engagement levels . In this study, 100 post on the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand Facebook page was analyzed this purpose. A mixed method approach was used. Quantitative descriptive statistics was used to analyze levels of engagement whilst qualitative content analysis was used to characterize posts into themes. Preliminary results indicate most posts fit in the awareness theme followed by the campaign theme. High levels of user engagements was observed for posts related to the awareness and others theme. Results of this study makes the suggestion for the implementation of intervention type awareness posts. A recommendation is also to made that the awareness posts promote mental health education and communication. This research study adds new knowledge to the area of posts characterization and user engagement levels on a mental health Facebook page.

Context-Enhanced Human-Robot Interaction: Exploring the Role of System Interactivity and Multimodal Stimuli on the Engagement of People with Dementia

Engaging people with dementia (PWD) in meaningful activities is the key to promote their quality of life. Design towards a higher level of user engagement has been extensively studied within the human-computer interaction community, however, few extend to PWD. It is generally considered that increased richness of experiences can lead to enhanced engagement. Therefore, this paper explores the effects of rich interaction in terms of the role of system interactivity and multimodal stimuli by engaging participants in context-enhanced human-robot interaction activities. The interaction with a social robot was considered context-enhanced due to the additional responsive sensory feedback from an augmented reality display. A field study was conducted in a Dutch nursing home with 16 residents. The study followed a two by two mixed factorial design with one within-subject variable - multimodal stimuli - and one between-subject variable - system interactivity. A mixed method of video coding analysis and observational rating scales was adopted to assess user engagement comprehensively. Results disclose that when additional auditory modality was included besides the visual-tactile stimuli, participants had significantly higher scores on attitude, more positive behavioral engagement during activity, and a higher percentage of communications displayed. The multimodal stimuli also promoted social interaction between participants and the facilitator. The findings provide sufficient evidence regarding the significant role of multimodal stimuli in promoting PWD’s engagement, which could be potentially used as a motivation strategy in future research to improve emotional aspects of activity-related engagement and social interaction with the human partner.

Posts Characterization and User Engagement A Preliminary Study on a Mental Health Facebook Page in New Zealand

Many health organizations use Facebook as a platform to engage with users. This has resulted in many research studies conducted on this platform. One popular type of research study is to characterize posts and measure user engagement levels . In this study, 100 post on the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand Facebook page was analyzed this purpose. A mixed method approach was used. Quantitative descriptive statistics was used to analyze levels of engagement whilst qualitative content analysis was used to characterize posts into themes. Preliminary results indicate most posts fit in the awareness theme followed by the campaign theme. High levels of user engagements was observed for posts related to the awareness and others theme. Results of this study makes the suggestion for the implementation of intervention type awareness posts. A recommendation is also to made that the awareness posts promote mental health education and communication. This research study adds new knowledge to the area of posts characterization and user engagement levels on a mental health Facebook page.

Using an Individual-Centered Approach to Gain Insights From Wearable Data in the Quantified Flu Platform: Netnography Study.

BackgroundWearables have been used widely for monitoring health in general, and recent research results show that they can be used to predict infections based on physiological symptoms. To date, evidence has been generated in large, population-based settings. In contrast, the Quantified Self and Personal Science communities are composed of people who are interested in learning about themselves individually by using their own data, which are often gathered via wearable devices.ObjectiveThis study aims to explore how a cocreation process involving a heterogeneous community of personal science practitioners can develop a collective self-tracking system for monitoring symptoms of infection alongside wearable sensor data.MethodsWe engaged in a cocreation and design process with an existing community of personal science practitioners to jointly develop a working prototype of a web-based tool for symptom tracking. In addition to the iterative creation of the prototype (started on March 16, 2020), we performed a netnographic analysis to investigate the process of how this prototype was created in a decentralized and iterative fashion. ResultsThe Quantified Flu prototype allowed users to perform daily symptom reporting and was capable of presenting symptom reports on a timeline together with resting heart rates, body temperature data, and respiratory rates measured by wearable devices. We observed a high level of engagement; over half of the users (52/92, 56%) who engaged in symptom tracking became regular users and reported over 3 months of data each. Furthermore, our netnographic analysis highlighted how the current Quantified Flu prototype was a result of an iterative and continuous cocreation process in which new prototype releases sparked further discussions of features and vice versa.ConclusionsAs shown by the high level of user engagement and iterative development process, an open cocreation process can be successfully used to develop a tool that is tailored to individual needs, thereby decreasing dropout rates.

Developing an explanatory theoretical model for engagement with a web-based mental health platform: results of a mixed methods study

BackgroundWith the growing need for accessible, high-quality mental health services, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increasing development and uptake of web-based interventions in the form of self-directed mental health platforms. The Big White Wall (BWW) is a web-based platform for people experiencing mental illness and addiction that offers a range of evidence-based self-directed treatment strategies. Drawing on existing data from a large-scale evaluation of the implementation of BWW in Ontario, Canada (which involved a pragmatic randomized controlled trail with an embedded qualitative process evaluation), we sought to investigate the influences on the extent to which people engage with BWW.MethodsIn this paper we drew on BWW trial participants’ usage data (number of logins) and the qualitative data from the process evaluation that explored participants’ experiences, engagement with and reactions to BWW.ResultsOur results showed that there were highly complex relationships between the influences that contributed to the level of engagement with BWW intervention. We found that a) how people expected to benefit from using a platform like BWW was an important indicator of their future usage, b) moderate perceived symptoms were linked with higher engagement; whereas fewer actual depressive symptoms predicted use and anxiety had a positive linear relationship with usage, and that c) usage depended on positive early experiences with the platform.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the nature of engagement with platforms such as BWW is not easily predicted. We propose a theoretical framework for explaining the level of user engagement with BWW that might also be generalizable to other similar platforms.

Gender differences in politicians’ Facebook campaigns: Campaign practices, campaign issues and voter engagement

The study pursues a line of inquiry into male and female candidates’ political campaign strategies on Facebook, drawing a sample from the 2019 National elections in Greece. The findings suggest that both genders disseminate one-way campaign information and address a wider palette of political issues than the ones typically associated with their gender. Some stereotypical patterns regarding traits and issue expertise seem to persist; females are more expressive in terms of visual content and use of emoticons, choose personalization and dialogic communication more frequently and emphasize culture and women’s issues. Men are more often associated with negative campaigning, prioritize “masculine” issues such as employment and foreign affairs, and generate a greater level of user engagement. The results indicate that social media do not constitute an alternative communication channel that equalizes existing power structures. Instead, they seem to reflect the status quo and may hinder women candidates’ efforts to gain visibility and communicate with the public.

INTERACTIVE VIDEOS AS GEOSPATIAL INTERFACES: A CASE STUDY FOR REGIONAL PROMOTION

Abstract. In this paper we discuss the potential of interactive video as an interface to geospatial information, and demonstrate our findings in a case study driven by goals of promoting a region for tourism and for preventing brain drain. Use of video is controversial due to various technical and human-centric debates; on the one hand, they offer unique qualitative insights as they enable a certain level of immersion via walk-throughs and fly-throughs and they are considered attractive by viewers, on the other hand, they are complex because they contain unfiltered (possibly too much) information that may be irrelevant to the goals of the users, and require careful consideration from computational and bandwidth concerns. We examine these arguments from the literature briefly, and demonstrate our case study in which we have embedded and overlain statistical and other local information interactively over drone footage, and measured levels of usability and user engagement using standardized scales. Our implementation and design choices are detailed in the article. Our small user experiment (n = 6) suggests high levels of usability, desirability and engagement by our participants, leading to the hypothesis that video is an attractive medium and indeed has strong potential for regional promotion, given that the computational and cognitive issues are taken into account.

Measuring the Impact of Crowdsourcing Features on Mobile App User Engagement and Retention: A Randomized Field Experiment

The most commonly cited issues with mobile apps are low user engagement and retention levels. In this paper, we use a randomized control trial to test the efficacy of crowdsourcing on enhancing user engagement and retention in the context of mobile gaming apps. We examine two specific crowdsourcing features: the ability to submit content and the ability to access crowdsourced content. We find that the content submission significantly increases engagement and retention by reducing users’ hazard of ending a session by approximately 11% relative to the baseline and reducing the hazard of abandoning the game app by 14%. In contrast, giving users the ability to access crowdsourced content has no significant effect on engagement but has a positive effect on retention by reducing the hazard of abandoning the game app by 13%. Surprisingly, we find that the interaction effect of these two crowdsourced features is negative on user engagement. Individually, the submission feature manifests itself via empowering users to control their product use experience, whereas the access feature’s positive effect on retention is mediated by diversity and novelty of content. However, the two effects are not complementary. It turns out when these two features are given together, the empowerment enabled by one’s own submission is crowded out by others’ submissions, and this dominates the diversity benefit. Crowdsourcing features have heterogeneous impact on different user segments, with heavy users and users of longer tenure being more affected by the crowdsourcing features. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems.

COVID-19 news reporting and engaging in the age of social media: Comparing Xinhua News Agency and The Paper

“To follow and to be followed” has become the new normal in news communication in the age of social media. News audience follow news via social media while they are being followed by news anytime anywhere. This new normal has created a pressing need to investigate whether social media have brought any changes to both party-controlled and market-oriented news media in China in reporting crises. Comparing Xinhua News Agency (party-controlled) and The Paper (market-oriented), this study investigated how they reported COVID-19 and how their news consumers engaged with their COVID-19 news stories on Jinri Toutiao, a popular and yet special form of social media. This study found that Xinhua News Agency continued to stay overwhelmingly positive, while The Paper was more neutral in reporting the health crisis. Xinhua News Agency was surprisingly more episodic than The Paper in framing the pandemic. The Paper, however, had a higher level of user engagement than Xinhua News Agency. To cater to the changing news-seeking behaviors and patterns, both party-controlled and market-oriented news media have changed their operations, but not their fundamental orientations.

Do organizational differences matter for the use of social media by public organizations? A computational analysis of the way the German police use Twitter for external communication

AbstractUsing a neo‐institutional framework, this study investigates how German police use Twitter for their communication. This is relevant, because the police increasingly use social media to bypass the media's gatekeeping function and attain increased agency in communication activities. However, little is known about their different communication strategies and their impact on user engagement. The analysis is based on an automated content analysis of all tweets (N = 137,771) sent out by the German police in 2019. It identifies different patterns regarding the usage of Twitter between police entities on different levels of governance and in differing types of environments and examines how these patterns translate into different levels of user engagement. We find that German police entities differ in their use of Twitter and that environmental and organizational aspects can explain these differences. Moreover, different patterns of social media usage also lead to differing levels of user engagement.

Climate Change in the 2019 Canadian Federal Election

In the weeks before the 2019 federal election, climate change strikes occurred in Canada and across the globe, which may have increased the salience of this policy issue. We use two data sources to examine the role of climate change in the 2019 federal election: a representative survey of 1500 Canadians and 2109 Facebook posts from the five major party leaders. After accounting for political ideology and region, we find that concern about climate change was a strong positive predictor of liberal support. We triangulate these findings by analyzing Facebook posts. We find that left-wing politicians were more likely to post about climate change and that posts about climate change received more likes, comments, and shares than other posts. This higher level of user engagement did not differ depending on which political party posted the climate change message. The combination of sources offers news insights into citizen-elite interactions and electoral outcomes. Climate change was important in the election, whether this importance was measured through survey data or user engagement with leaders’ climate change posts.

Engagement with candidate posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook during the 2019 election

Social media are critical tools offering connections between political actors, voters, and journalists. However, existing scholarship rarely assesses how user engagement differs by platform, content, and function of the post. We examine Facebook ( n = 938), Instagram ( n = 258), and Twitter ( n = 1771) posts by the leaders of three major political parties in Canada during the 2019 Federal Election. Across all three platforms, Liberal Leader Trudeau’s posts receive the most engagement. On Twitter, attack posts receive slightly more engagement and interaction posts receive less engagement, compared with other platforms. While policy posts produce lower levels of engagement across platforms, Facebook is distinctive in yielding the lowest levels of user engagement on policy posts. In sum, our findings suggest that political leaders should tailor the content of their social media posts to different platforms.

Mobilizing extremism online: comparing Australian and Canadian right-wing extremist groups on Facebook

ABSTRACT Right-wing extremist groups harness popular social media platforms to accrue and mobilize followers. In recent years, researchers have examined the various themes and narratives espoused by extremist groups in the United States and Europe, and how these themes and narratives are employed to mobilize their followings on social media. Little, however, is comparatively known about how such efforts unfold within and between right-wing extremist groups in Australia and Canada. In this study, we conducted a cross-national comparative analysis of over eight years of online content found on 59 Australian and Canadian right-wing group pages on Facebook. Here we assessed the level of active and passive user engagement with posts and identified certain themes and narratives that generated the most user engagement. Overall, a number of ideological and behavioral commonalities and differences emerged in regard to patterns of active and passive user engagement, and the character of three prevailing themes: methods of violence, and references to national and racial identities. The results highlight the influence of both the national and transnational context in negotiating which themes and narratives resonate with Australian and Canadian right-wing online communities, and the multi-dimensional nature of right-wing user engagement and social mobilization on social media.