Online Social Behavior Research Articles

LA-CTR: A Limited Attention Collaborative Topic Regression for Social Media

Probabilistic models can learn users' preferences from the history of their item adoptions on a social media site, and in turn, recommend new items to users based on learned preferences. However, current models ignore psychological factors that play an important role in shaping online social behavior. One such factor is attention, the mechanism that integrates perceptual and cognitive features to select the items the user will consciously process and may eventually adopt. Recent research has shown that people have finite attention, which constrains their online interactions, and that they divide their limited attention non-uniformly over other people. We propose a collaborative topic regression model that incorporates limited, non-uniformly divided attention. We show that the proposed model is able to learn more accurate user preferences than state-of-art models, which do not take human cognitive factors into account. Specifically we analyze voting on news items on the social news aggregator and show that our model is better able to predict held out votes than alternate models. Our study demonstrates that psycho-socially motivated models are better able to describe and predict observed behavior than models which only consider latent social structure and content.

Online Social Behavior Reflects Discrepant Personality

Online social media marketing is of strategic importance to companies producing consumer-based technical products. Existing (offline) marketing theory must be adapted to a new consumer reality enabled by technologies such as Twitter. In this context, my research addresses an important unknown, namely, how do consumers represent themselves online. I argue that online social behavior reflects a user’s “discrepant personality” and that online social behavior is more conscientious, agreeable, and emotionally stable than offline behavior. A second speculation is that the variance of extraversion level will be lower in online behavior than in offline behavior - in particular, an introvert will behave more like an extrovert while online, and vice versa. To test these propositions, five-factor personality models are evaluated in offline modes and online social behaviors are projected into linguistic variables. My study should contribute to theory and practice in the area of consumer and politics predictive analytics.

Determinants of Online Social Business Network Usage Behavior—Applying the Technology Acceptance Model and Its Extensions

Usage of online social business networks like LinkedIn and XING have become commonplace in today’s workplace. This research addresses the question of what factors drive the intention to use online social business networks. Theoretical frame of the study is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and its extensions, most importantly the TAM2 model. Data has been collected via a Web Survey among users of LinkedIn and XING from January to April 2010. Of 541 initial responders 321 finished the questionnaire. Operationalization was tested using confirmatory factor analyses and causal hypotheses were evaluated by means of structural equation modeling. Core result is that the TAM2 model generally holds in the case of online social business network usage behavior, explaining 73% of the observed usage intention. This intention is most importantly driven by perceived usefulness, attitude towards usage and social norm, with the latter effecting both directly and indirectly over perceived usefulness. However, perceived ease of use has—contrary to hypothesis—no direct effect on the attitude towards usage of online social business networks. Social norm has a strong indirect influence via perceived usefulness on attitude and intention, creating a network effect for peer users. The results of this research provide implications for online social business network design and marketing. Customers seem to evaluate ease of use as an integral part of the usefulness of such a service which leads to a situation where it cannot be dealt with separately by a service provider. Furthermore, the strong direct impact of social norm implies application of viral and peer-to-peer marketing techniques while it’s also strong indirect effect implies the presence of a network effect which stabilizes the ecosystem of online social business service vendors.

Bistability through Triadic Closure

We propose and analyze a class of evolving network models suitable for describing a dynamic topological structure. Applications include telecommunication, online social behavior, and information processing in neuroscience. We model the evolving network as a discrete-time Markov chain and study a very general framework in which edges conditioned on the current state appear or disappear independently at the next time step. We show how to exploit symmetries in the microscopic, localized rules in order to obtain conjugate classes of random graphs that simplify analysis and calibration of a model. Further, we develop a mean field theory for describing network evolution. For a simple but realistic scenario incorporating the triadic closure effect that has been empirically observed by social scientists (friends of friends tend to become friends), the mean field theory predicts bistable dynamics, and computational results confirm this prediction. We also discuss the calibration issue for a set of real cellphone data, and find support for a block model in which individuals are assigned to one of two distinct groups having different within-group and across-group dynamics.

Examining social tagging behaviour and the construction of an online folksonomy from the perspectives of cultural capital and social capital

This study explores the relationships between cultural and social capital and online social tagging behaviour in Delicious.com , a social bookmarking web site that offers social tagging functionalities. Based on Bourdieu’s conception of cultural and social capital, an online questionnaire was developed to measure Delicious users’ capital possession and its influences on social tagging behavioural tendencies. The study findings showed that the offline/online cultural capital and offline social capital affected information organization-oriented tagging; offline/online social capital affected social oriented-tagging; offline/online cultural capital and offline/online social capital both affected strategic tagging; offline/online social capital affected tagging imitation. Based on the findings, we made inferences on the user roles and the power structure of a social tagging folksonomy community.

Facebooking It to the Polls: A Study in Online Social Networking and Political Behavior

ABSTRACT As Internet use continues to become integrated into the daily lives of average Americans, it becomes necessary to understand the implications of each aspect of that use. As the majority of adults now take advantage of social network sites, understanding how they make use of those sites and what that means for American politics is increasingly important. This study considers one such social network site, Facebook, and how engaging in specific behaviors that provide personalized information, create community engagement, and generate social capital within that realm impacted users' decision to participate politically in the presidential primary of 2008. It concludes that certain Facebook behaviors can be translated into participatory political behaviors, both online and offline. Moreover, it is not whether or how often one uses Facebook, but rather the specific set of activities one engages in during such time that drives the relationship between Facebook use and various types of political participation.

Make new friends or keep the old: Gender and personality differences in social networking use

The present study examined the influence of gender and personality on individuals’ use of online social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. Participants were 238 undergraduate students who reported being members of Facebook, MySpace, or both. Based on prior research examining online behavior, we expected that gender and scores on the Big Five personality scale would moderate online social networking behavior. The results supported our predictions. Specifically, men reported using social networking sites for forming new relationships while women reported using them more for relationship maintenance. Furthermore, women low in agreeableness reported using instant messaging features of social networking sites more often than women high in agreeableness, whereas men low in openness reported playing more games on social networking sites compared to men high in openness. Overall, these results indicate the importance of examining individual differences in online behavior.

Changes in adolescent online social networking behaviors from 2006 to 2009

As online social networking has become an immersive and pervasive phenomenon, traditional considerations and expectations of personal privacy have been drastically altered. This paradigmatic change has led to adolescents possibly making themselves vulnerable to embarrassment, censure, damage to one’s name or reputation, or even victimization by others because of unwise postings or revelations online. The current study sought to determine the extent to which adolescent information disclosure on MySpace.com has changed between 2006 and 2009. We found significant changes in the nature of personal content made publicly available across the two time points and a trend in which teens are being increasingly more selective and discrete when it comes to what they share and with whom they share it.

Social media policies at US medical schools

Background/Purpose: Today's medical students are learning in a social media era in which patient confidentiality is at risk yet schools’ social media policies have not been elucidated. The purpose of this study is to describe the presence of medical schools on top social media sites and to identify whether student policies for these schools explicitly address social media use.Method: Websites of all 132 accredited US medical schools were independently assessed by two investigators for their presence (as of March 31, 2010) on the most common social networking and microblogging sites (Facebook and Twitter) and their publicly available policies addressing online social networking. Key features from these policies are described.Results: 100% (n=132) of US medical schools had websites and 95.45% (126/132) had any Facebook presence. 25.76% (34/132) had official medical school pages, 71.21% (94/132) had student groups, and 54.55% (72/132) had alumni groups on Facebook. 10.6% of medical schools (14/132) had Twitter accounts. 128 of 132 medical schools (96.97%) had student guidelines or policies publicly available online. 13 of these 128 schools (10.16%) had guidelines/policies explicitly mentioning social media. 38.46% (5/13) of these guidelines included statements that defined what is forbidden, inappropriate, or impermissible under any circumstances, or mentioned strongly discouraged online behaviors. 53.85% (7/13) encouraged thoughtful and responsible social media use.Conclusions: Medical schools and their students are using social media. Almost all US medical schools have a Facebook presence, yet most do not have policies addressing student online social networking behavior. While social media use rises, policy informing appropriate conduct in medical schools lags behind. Established policies at some medical schools can provide a blueprint for others to adopt and adapt.

Antecedents and Consequences of Online Social Networking Behavior: The Case of Facebook

ABSTRACT Despite the recent popularity of online social networks, there are few available studies that explain the differences between real life and internet social networks. Authoritative information about the outcomes of using social networking websites is even more sparse. In an attempt to close this literature gap, this exploratory study found that online social networks and real life social networks are significantly different in terms of social network size. The results also show that gender and extroversion are the major predictors of both online social network size and time spent online for social networking. Perhaps the most interesting finding is the negative impact of self-esteem on inclusion of strangers in online social networks. Additionally, directions for future research are provided.

Online Social Networks and Insights into Marketing Communications

ABSTRACT Even though online social network services have become enormously popular among general public, there is a laxity of empirical investigations on the individual's level in this domain. This paper examines the impact of personality factors such as extraversion, self-esteem, opinion seeking and opinion leadership on brand communication and online social behaviors. Our results show that gender and extroversion predict online social network size and time spent online; that opinion seekers spend more time online and have larger networks relative to opinion leaders; and that opinion leaders are more likely to communicate their brand use online. We also find the mediating role of opinion leadership and opinion seeking in explaining the impact of general personality traits on online brand communication and social networking. Directions for future research are provided and some practical implications are discussed.

How anonymous are you online? Examining online social behaviors from a cross-cultural perspective

Communication on the Internet is often described as “anonymous”, yet the usage of the term is often confusing, even in academia. Three levels of anonymity, visual anonymity, dissociation of real an...