Mobile Social Networking Applications Research Articles

Implementing communication technologies to enhance learning efficiency at a technical vocational education and training college in Cape Town

This paper explores the impact of extending instructional time at technical vocational education and training (TVET) colleges using WhatsApp's mobile social network (MSN) application. In South Africa, there is relatively little discussion on extending instructional time within the TVET sector, yet instructional time loss is consistently mentioned as one of the most significant challenges. During the study, the subject of Computer Programming was examined in light of poor learner performance. This study employed mixed-methods research following a pragmatic paradigm to formulate educational policies potentially dealing with TVET instructional time losses in South Africa. Data were collected from two TVET centres (FB1 and FB2) involving two lecturers and 48 students in Cape Town. Despite the study's mixed results, qualitative data reflected the need to extend instructional time and improve the efficiency of applications like WhatsApp. Quantitative data reflected an overall percentage pass rate of 56% and 100% for FB2 and FB1, respectively. The messaging application, however, has challenges, such as disrupting conversations. By participating in learner WhatsApp groups, the paper believes lecturers can reap positive benefits from these initiatives. This study adds voice to mixed-method practices. To maximise pedagogical efficiency, this study recommends that educators provide practical guidance on using MSN applications to increase instruction time.

Assessing the Impact of E-Learning Adoption on Learning Behavior in Sierra Leonean Higher Education

This study aims to analyze the adoption of e-learning in higher education institutions in Sierra Leone and its impact on learning Behavior using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The research employs a survey design, utilizing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), to analyze the responses of students and lecturers. The study was conducted in Sierra Leone, involving ten universities. The duration of the study is not specified. 728 students and 327 lecturers were surveyed to assess their attitudes towards e-learning. The TAM was used to predict behaviors based on the perceived usefulness and ease of use of e-learning tools, such as mobile devices and social networking applications. The findings indicate that e-learning is more likely to be adopted if the tools are perceived as useful and easy to use. Additionally, prior experience with computers enhances the positive perception of e-learning's attributes and attitudes toward its utilization. The study highlights the potential of e-learning in developing countries like Sierra Leone. It provides insights for stakeholders in the education sector to develop strategies that can promote the adoption of e-learning in regions with similar developmental profiles.

The Effects of Trust, Flow, and Critical Mass on Continuous Usage Intention of Mobile Social Networking Applications

Türkiye’de mobil sosyal ağ uygulamalarının sürekli kullanım niyetleri öncüllerinin incelenmesi hakkındaki araştırmalara çok az ilgi gösterilmiştir. Bu nedenle, bu çalışmanın temel amacı, güven, akış deneyimi ve kritik yoğunluğu değişkenlerinin sürekli kullanım niyeti üzerindeki etkisini inceleyerek bu boşluğu doldurmaktır. Çalışmada anket yöntemiyle 424 katılımcıdan toplanan veriler analiz edilmiştir. Sonuçlar hem yaygınlığın hem de güvenin, kullanıcıların sürekli kullanım niyetlerini belirleyen akış deneyimlerini etkilediğini göstermektedir. Ayrıca araştırma bulguları, güven ve kritik yoğunluğun sürekli kullanım niyeti üzerinde önemli etkileri olduğunu göstermiştir. Bu çalışmanın sonuçları mobil sosyal ağ uygulamalarının yöneticilerine ve pazarlamacılarına kullanıcıların sürekli kullanım niyetini anlamak için güven, akış deneyimi ve kritik yoğunluk hakkında güçlü bilgiler sağlayabilmektedir.

Examining the role of social media and mobile social networking applications in socio-political contestations in Nigeria

Social media platforms continue to flourish as practices encompassing them become deeply embedded in many cultures. As more people embrace social media platforms, their affordances and opportunities are leading to improved communication, and helping hold authorities to account. To further scrutinize the importance of these platforms, this study interrogates the role of digital media in socio-political contestations in Nigeria by examining the media used to mobilize, coordinate, and document the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. Analyses of survey data collected in 2020 during the protests in Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria (N = 391) show that demonstrators who were 30 years and older and used WhatsApp and Facebook to learn about the protests as well as coordinate their participation in the protests are more likely to report participating on the first day of the protests than protesters who are younger than 30 and used other media platforms. Findings further illustrate that digital enthusiasm facilitated by hedonic-experiential and epicurean communication on WhatsApp and Facebook eventuated a process of emotional contagion through connective repertoires that created propitious emotional conditions for mass collective protest actions. Finally, the article discusses how the use of WhatsApp and Facebook gave protesters strategic communicative power during the protests.

Mobile Internet and Contentious Politics in Nigeria: Using the Organisational Tools of Mobile Social Networking Applications to Sustain Protest Movements

This study investigates the impact of mobile social networking applications in the organisation of protest movements by examining how protesters documented their participation during the 2020 #EndSARS protests as well as evaluating the themes that emerged from online activists’ tweets during the 2022 #EndSARSMemorial2 protests in Nigeria. Data for this study was obtained from a survey conducted in 2020 during the protests in Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria (N = 391), and a qualitative content analysis of tweets and replies (N = 67,691) from the 2022 #EndSARSMemorial2 protest in Nigeria. Results show that there is a substantial relationship between how protesters document their participation and their day of joining the protest. Findings also demonstrate that protesters used social media platforms accessed via mobile phones to display their anger and anguish, imprecate the authorities, and rouse solidarity contagion, which ignited a memorial march for fallen activists in Nigeria. Finally, data illustrate that activists in Nigeria use these successive memorial protests to sustain the #EndSARS protest movements and their demands.

Agency in Development through Mobile-Technology-Assisted Interaction: Agentic Learning Behaviours and Emerging Dimensions

Discussion on agency has been well documented in language research and recently gaining more ground in the ever-changing learning environment supported by mobile technologies. In such ubiquitous settings, online interaction, as a key catalyst to promote agency, has attracted an increasing attention of researchers and educators. However, a paucity of research has been focused on investigating the way learners exercise their agency in mobile-technology-assisted online interaction and factors that may affect their practice of agency. This research employs a case-study approach to examining how interaction helps enable learners’ development of agency in a mobile social network application (WeChat) assisted informal learning environment. Data were collected through a questionnaire and recorded interaction via discussion activities on WeChat. The questionnaire data indicated that participants had overall positive attitudes towards WeChat-assisted learning and helped gauge the feasibility of implementing subsequent WeChat-assisted discussion activities in this study. Suárez et al.’s (2018) six dimensions of learner agency (goals; content; actions; strategies; reflection; monitoring) were adopted as an analytical framework to guide data analysis and discussion. It was found that towards the completion of discussion sessions on WeChat, except agency in ‘monitoring’ discussion progress, all the other five dimensions were observed and strengthened in terms of initiating discussion ‘goals’, leveraging ‘content’, implementing ‘actions’, employing discussion ‘strategies’, and ‘reflecting’ on the content and interaction. It is argued that even with practice effect, teacher intervention still seemed to be indispensable to help ‘monitor’ the discussion progress in a mobile-technology-assisted autonomous learning environment. Keywords: Learner agency, Learner interaction, Mobile-technology-assisted learning, WeChat DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-5-06 Publication date: February 28 th 2023

Collective Influence Maximization in Mobile Social Networks

The omnipresence of information cascading process in mobile social networking applications makes the identification of a small set <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$S$</tex-math></inline-formula> of influential users, which is widely believed to trigger the information outbreak, always an crucial issue in various applications such as the mobile advertising and viral marketing. Formulated as Influence maximization (IM) in 2003, this NP-hard problem has received a multitude of studies with diverse angles. However, these works often unable to provide reliable solutions, due to the loss of an exact metric for evaluating users’ contributions on information cascading in the state-of-the-art sampling based IM schemes. In this paper, we evaluate users in IM based on the collective influence (CI), a metric on the structural features of the users in network graph that reflects the contributions of the users’ neighborhoods on shaping collective dynamics of the users over the whole network. For conducting the influencer identification under probabilistic diffusion model based on the CI, we specify a quantified structural feature of the most influential users from the scope of diffusion over the whole network, and reveal that the structural influence power (CI value) of each user is a weighted cumulation of the diffusion probabilities from neighbors within certain hops. Utilizing CI, we design a novel algorithm which identifies the influencers via iteratively choosing the users with top CI values. Moreover, we point out that directly computing CI values requires to traverse the network which is originally represented by a high-dimensional matrix, and leads to huge complexity of influencer identification. To improve scalability, we further trade precision for efficiency by incorporating network embedding, a dimensionality reduction technology for networks, into algorithm design, and propose a minor variant, where CI is jointly recapitulated by low-dimensional user representations and user degrees. The superiority of our algorithms is empirically validated over 8 datasets, with an increment in influence size up to 50 percent and a comparable or even less running time comparing with existing baselines.

Knowledge Hiding and sharing with mobile social networking applications: an integrated model of antecedents and outcomes

Knowledge Hiding and sharing with mobile social networking applications: an integrated model of antecedents and outcomes

Knowledge hiding and sharing with mobile social networking applications: an integrated model of antecedents and outcomes

Knowledge hiding and sharing with mobile social networking applications: an integrated model of antecedents and outcomes

Gratification of Yarmouk University Mass Communication Students’ Use of Mobile Phones

The aim of the current research is to study the uses of the mobile phone by students of the Faculty of Mass Communication at Yarmouk University as a means of communication and the gratifications achieved from it. The study adopts the survey method and is based on the two theories of media richness and digital transformation and it employes a questionnaire adminstered to a sample of 300 students of the Faculty of Mass Communication, Yarmouk University. The findings of the study show that the media students at Yarmouk University use their mobile phones intensively, and they use the mobile phone as a means of communication to a high degree. Further, the findings show that the use of the mobile phone satisfies the media students in a high degree, and it provides them with a means of entertainment, communication, and provides them with useful information. They use mobile social network applications to a high degree, the highest for live video applications, and the lowest for editing.

The Effect of Using Whatsapp on EFL Students' Medical English Vocabulary Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic

The role of social networking mobile applications such as WhatsApp in enhancing second language vocabulary learning among English language learners continues to be a subject of interest for many scholars. The current study aimed at examining medical English vocabulary learning among undergraduate students using WhatsApp compared to learning vocabulary via Blackboard platform during the Covid-19 pandemic. To this end, 108 medical students (51 males, 57 females) enrolled in a first semester English for a specific English course participated in the study. A quasi-experimental design was adopted for two groups. Fifty-three students were assigned to the WhatsApp group and 55 students were assigned to the Blackboard group. Data were collected using pretest-posttest design. Results of t-test scores revealed no significant difference between the WhatsApp and Blackboard groups on a vocabulary test. Results of survey that gauged students' perception of the use of WhatsApp as a platform for learning new vocabulary showed positive perceptions since participants thought that WhatsApp enhanced their learning experience.

Teaching presence in students’ WhatsApp groups: Affordances for language learning

With the recent COVID-19 pandemic and disruption of campus-based education, the use of mobile social networking applications to supplement formal education has attracted a great deal of attention. Teachers do have opportunities to join students’ online groups to share, clarify, and exchange housekeeping information and course-related content with them. Teachers can, in particular, provide English as a foreign language (EFL) students with more sources of linguistic input, interaction, and feedback. Research investigating this potential, however, is still scarce in such contexts. The current study explores the likely affordances of teaching presence in students’ WhatsApp groups for designing, facilitating, and guiding cognitive and social processes conducive to their language learning. A mixed-method design was employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data and information from English-major undergraduates (N = 111) and faculty teachers (N = 8) who joined the same WhatsApp groups for one academic semester at a major university in Oman. Descriptive and thematic analyses of data from a survey with both closed-ended and open-ended questions and semi-structured interviews indicate that the shared WhatsApp groups functioned as small close-knit communities where students were able to constantly access teachers for their assistance, feedback, and clarification of content. Despite these merits, however, the participating faculty believed that the presence of teachers in WhatsApp groups might have consequences for students’ tolerance of ambiguity, scaffolding, and autonomous language learning. The paper concludes by discussing several pedagogical implications and directions for future research.

Using social and sexual networking mobile applications to promote HIV testing, medical care and prevention services among Latino men who have sex with men in Los Angeles County, California, USA.

HIV disproportionately affects Latinos versus Whites, with Latinos having higher rates of HIV. Additionally, many HIV-positive Latinos are unaware of their infection. Proyecto Protégete, an HIV prevention intervention developed for Latino men who have sex with men (MSM), used social and sexual networking mobile applications (apps) to recruit individuals for HIV testing and linkage to medical care and prevention services. This study occurred in Los Angeles County, California, USA from December 18, 2015 to April 22, 2017. The study’s primary aim was to assess Proyecto Protégete‘s ability to successfully recruit Latino MSM involved in high-risk sexual activities. A secondary aim was to evaluate its capacity to promote HIV testing and linkage to HIV medical care and prevention services among this population by comparing it to two programs with similar samples. Comparisons using Fisher’s Exact Test were conducted between Proyecto Protégete and the HIV testing program of the agency in which Proyecto Protégete was located and the County-funded HIV testing programs to compare the samples’ rates of HIV-positive Latino MSM identified through HIV testing and linked to HIV medical care and prevention services. Participants were recruited through seven apps. In Proyecto Protégete, 9,573 individuals completed the screener, 4,657 were eligible, and 359 (7.7% of those eligible) enrolled. Among those enrolled, 79% reported anal sex without a condom in the previous twelve months; 51% reported anal sex under the influence of alcohol. The HIV positivity rates were as follows: Proyecto Protégete, 1.71%; the agency, 1.25% (p = .293, compared to Proyecto Protégete); and the County, 1.09% (p = .172, compared to Proyecto Protégete). The rates of those confirmed as new HIV-positives and linked to medical care within 30 days were as follows: Proyecto Protégete, 71.4%; the agency, 81.5% (p = .450, compared to Proyecto Protégete); and the County, 77.3% (p = .503, compared to Proyecto Protégete). Proyecto Protégete had a higher rate of linked referrals to prevention services than the agency’s testing program (19.5% versus 8.3%, p < .001). Proyecto Protégete experienced successes in some areas but not in others. Future research should build on Proyecto Protégete’s experiences to promote HIV-related services among Latino MSM.

A gender perspective on the use of mobile social network applications to enhance the social well-being of people with physical disabilities: the mediating role of sense of belonging

ABSTRACT The rapid development of information and communication technologies has demonstrated their potential to enable people with physical disabilities (PPD) to improve their livelihoods and reduce social exclusion in China. Only a few studies have been conducted to investigate how online social support boosts PPD’s sense of belonging and to determine which type of social support they need. We followed the sense of belonging theory and social support theory to review the related literature and understand the mechanisms by which PPD may use mobile applications to receive support in the online environment. Both personal interviews and questionnaire surveys were conducted. We collected data from 337 PPD from the China Disabled Person’s Federation. Results of the statistical analysis revealed that both emotional and informational support are significantly related to sense of belonging. Furthermore, sense of belonging affects social connection and social well-being. The results of the moderation analysis showed female and male PPD received different kinds of support. The findings offer insights for disability service institutions interested in better enablement of PPD.

Investigating the Experience of Social Engineering Victims: Exploratory and User Testing Study

The advent of mobile technologies and social network applications has led to an increase in malicious scams and social engineering (SE) attacks which are causing loss of money and breaches of personal information. Understanding how SE attacks spread can provide useful information in curbing them. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has demonstrated efficacy in detecting SE attacks, but the acceptability of such a detection approach is yet to be investigated across users with different levels of SE awareness. This paper conducted two studies: (1) exploratory study where qualitative data were collected from 20 victims of SE attacks to inform the development of an AI-based tool for detecting fraudulent messages; and (2) a user testing study with 48 participants with different occupations to determine the detection tool acceptability. Overall, six major themes emerged from the victims’ actions “experiences: reasons for falling for attacks; attack methods; advice on preventing attacks; detection methods; attack context and victims”. The user testing study showed that the AI-based tool was accepted by all users irrespective of their occupation. The categories of users’ occupations can be attributed to the level of SE awareness. Information security awareness should not be limited to organizational levels but extend to social media platforms as public information.

An authorized equality test on identity‐based cryptosystem for mobile social networking applications

AbstractThe widespread adoption of social network applications and smart mobile devices has yielded a massive amount of data transmitted through the networks. Fortunately, social network service providers offer a wide range of storage capacity and data management functionality. Accordingly, the data can be uploaded to the social servers for processing and then accessible elsewhere. Nevertheless, considering the untrusted nature of the social servers, it becomes crucial to protect the data before uploading it to the server. Unfortunately, encryption incurs another severe problem in providing search functionality on encrypted data stored on the server. In addition, most of the existing solutions are inefficient to deploy on mobile devices due to the limited resources and computing capabilities. To address this issue, we propose an authorized equality test on identity‐based cryptosystem (AET‐IBC) scheme in this article. The scheme allows the server to test if two different ciphertexts encapsulate the same message. Besides, it supports different authorization methods to enhance the privacy. Furthermore, based on the random oracle model, we prove the security of the proposed scheme to be equivalent to the modified bilinear Diffie‐Hellman intractable assumption. Finally, the efficiency analysis shows that the AET‐IBC scheme is practicable and convenient for mobile social networking applications.

Effects of using the WhatsApp application on language learners motivation: a controlled investigation using structural equation modelling

The study of language learners’ motivation has long been considered a key, determining factor of success in second/foreign language acquisition. Based on self-determination theory (SDT), the more autonomously motivated learners are, the better they engage in an activity. To sustain autonomous motivation, the learners’ basic psychological needs (BPN) of autonomy, competence, and relatedness should be satisfied. Nevertheless, the role of these three components and their relation to autonomous motivation in the mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) context has not yet been addressed in the literature. Therefore, a social networking mobile application (WhatsApp) has been used to explore how teachers’ informal use of such an application relates to an increase in students’ motivation. A quasi-experimental design was adopted for two groups of Saudi university students enrolled in the English language department at two major universities (N = 447). The structural model revealed a significant improvement in the effects of Time 1 autonomy on Time 2 autonomous motivation as well as in the effects of Time 1 autonomous motivation on Time 2 autonomous motivation exclusively in the experimental group. The two-time repeated measure of ANOVA substantiated the increase in autonomous motivation exclusively among students in the experimental group. This study contributed to greater recognition of the advantages and challenges of applying WhatsApp as a tool of MALL in the educational system.

An Ad-hoc Social Network Generation Approach

The use of social networks is still confined to infrastructure-based networks such as the Internet. However, many situations (conferences, fairs, etc.) may require the implementation and rapid deployment of an ad-hoc application for disseminating information: we call this type of application, Ad-hoc Social Network. These applications are necessarily distributed, deployable on mobile units, etc. They therefore inevitably share the same characteristics as those inherent in ad-hoc mobile networks and make them good candidates for their deployment. In this paper, by using techniques from the field of generative programming, we propose an approach to produce environments for generating such applications from their specifications in a domain-specific language. By applying this approach, we have developed SMGenerator, an environment for generating mobile ad-hoc social network applications for Android devices. Moreover by using SMGenerator, we easily generated the ConfInfo application: an ad-hoc social network application for disseminating information to participants in a scientific manifestation.

Shaping news waves and constructing events: Iranian journalists’ use of online platforms as sources of journalistic capital

This article investigates the influence of online communications platforms on Iranian journalists’ struggle for countering the restrictions, and achieving their journalistic ends. Based on 26 interviews with journalists working in the established media in Iran, it shows that social networking websites and mobile messaging applications are arenas of mobilization and leverage for journalists in this semi-authoritarian context. Online platforms function as sources of social and symbolic assets for journalists enabling them to make others see and think about an issue, and act on it, thus employ journalistic symbolic power. This article applies Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa, social capital, symbolic capital and symbolic power to explain, why and under what circumstances certain journalistic online strategies become operative. The findings offer insights into how new media affect power relations between journalists and the forces that restrict their practices and offer potentials for relatively more journalistic autonomy in a controlled media environment.

Improving Social Inclusion for People with Physical Disabilities: The Roles of Mobile Social Networking Applications (MSNA) by Disability Support Organizations in China.

Having friendships and interpersonal social connections is a normal and expected necessity of life that enhances an individual’s well-being. Digital platforms, such as mobile social network applications (MSNA), present a means for people with disabilities to integrate in society. This study combines intrinsic benefits (such as enjoyment experience and information) and extrinsic benefits (such as social networking) to explore the impact of these benefits on online friendships, and the influence of these online friendships on the perceived social connectedness and well-being of people with physical disabilities. The partial least squares methodology was used to conduct statistical analysis on survey data; the outputs were obtained through convergent analysis, discriminant analysis, and bootstrapping. The results showed that enjoyment experience and social network benefits significantly influence online friendships, which influence perceived social connectedness and well-being. In addition, the perceived social exclusion has a significant moderation effect. Our findings are expected to help local disability service organizations develop effective digital disability inclusion strategies to combat widespread social exclusion among people with disabilities.