Popular Social Networking Sites Research Articles

THE IMPACT OF INSTAGRAM MARKETING ADOPTION TOWARDS CONSUMER PURCHASE DECISION ON FASHION

Social networking sites have been emerged and transformed the world, bringing the world and its people closer. Social media which are part of social networking sites have become more effective in marketing tools; it helps in creating opportunities and awareness to consumers. Social media platform such as Instagram has recently become the most popular social networking sites among the young people. In addition, selling and market the products in the virtual store on Instagram represents a new shopping mode for most consumers, especially youngsters both men and women, and they represent an important role in influencing fashion consumer purchase decision through social networking sites. This study attempted to investigate impact of social networking sites towards consumer purchase decision on fashion industry. Therefore, questionnaires are spreaded out to 110 respondents who are social media users in Medan in order to gather the necessary information and data. The results of this research, it is concluded that social networking sites (the usability of Instagram) influences and give impact towards consumer purchase decision on fashion. Moreover, both of the variables have a strong relationship on each other and considered to be linear. The results also demonstrate that Instagram influences fashion consumer purchase decision through its usability such as good metrics, eye catching content, and recommendations from others. Furthermore, Instagram is also proved to have a positive impact towards consumer purchase decision by creating awareness, provide satisfaction feeling and creating virtual communities which may motivates consumer to do an online purchase.

How and Why Social Media Affect Subjective Well-Being: Multi-Site Use and Social Comparison as Predictors of Change Across Time

How and why does the widespread use of social media affect happiness? The present study examined whether the three components of subjective well-being—positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction—were impacted by use of three of the most popular social network sites in the U.S. (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), using the experience sampling method. Over 10 days, greater everyday use of social media resulted in lower subjective well-being—specifically, by increasing negative affective states rather than by decreasing positive states or life satisfaction—a pattern evident across all three social network sites. In evaluating why use of social media adversely impacted subjective well-being, social comparison was a strong predictor. Specifically, the more that participants reported comparing themselves to others while using social media, the less subjective well-being they subsequently experienced. In contrast, traditional, offline social interactions exerted the opposite (beneficial) effect on happiness: increasing positive affect and decreasing negative affect. The present study therefore demonstrates that ordinary, day-to-day use of social network sites adversely impacts subjective well-being over time, and further highlights the advantages of employing independent well-being measures and assessing the use of multiple sites.

Social media use and well-being: A prospective experience-sampling study

Facebook and Instagram are currently the most popular Social Network Sites (SNS) for young adults. A large amount of research examined the relationship between these SNS and well-being, and possible intermediate constructs such as social comparison, self-esteem, and repetitive negative thinking (RNT). However, most of these studies have cross-sectional designs and use self-report indicators of SNS use. Therefore, their conclusions should be interpreted cautiously. Consequently, the goal of the current experience sampling study was to examine the temporal dynamics between objective indicators of SNS use, and self-reports of social comparison, RNT, and daily fluctuations in negative affect. More specifically, we assessed 98 participants 6 times per day during 14 days to examine reciprocal relationships between SNS use, negative affect, emotion regulation, and key psychological constructs. Results indicate that (1) both Facebook and Instagram use predicted reduced well-being, and (2) self-esteem and RNT appear to be important intermediate constructs in these relationships. Future longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to further support and extend the current research findings.

‘Do digital technologies matter? How hyperlocal media is re-configuring the media landscape of a Russian province’

The increase of internet penetration across Russia has reduced entry barriers for individuals and companies who want to report locally. New digital technologies have given rise to many semi-professional local media projects, so-called ‘hyperlocal media’ (Metzgar et al., 2011; Tenor, 2018), created on various online platforms and social networking sites. Websites, blogs, and social media groups (the so-called ‘pabliki’ in Russian) on the popular social networking site VKontakte have opened up new access routes to local news, both for ordinary citizens and the authorities, but have also become a challenge for traditional local media. This article investigates how the media landscape changes in response to digital technologies in a provincial town of nearly 40,000 in the European part of Russia. More specifically, the article investigates how professional journalists from traditional media and practitioners from hyperlocal media sites understand the influence of digital technologies on the aims and work practices of media in a Russian province. The study is based on in-depth interviews with the editors of traditional local media (e.g. print newspapers) and owners of new hyperlocal media initiatives. The research explores different approaches to the ways in which two groups of media actors understand and make use of the internet and digital technologies. However, within peculiar Russian media model, these differences have led to collaborative rather than competitive relations between the two groups.

The illegal wildlife digital market: an analysis of Chinese wildlife marketing and sale on Facebook

SummaryAt an estimated US$19 billion, the illicit wildlife trade is a serious threat to global conservation efforts. This criminal enterprise is now digital, expanding its footprint to consumers internationally by using the Internet and social media platforms. Recent studies have detected illegal wildlife selling posts on the popular social networking site Facebook in several different languages, including Chinese. In order to further explore this challenge to conservation, this study used big data approaches to identify and characterize wildlife trading activity in Chinese language on Facebook using an automated web scraper. We focused on keywords associated with elephants, rhinos and hawksbill turtles. We collected 10 303 unique Facebook posts over a 45-day period and were able to identify 639 posts from 268 unique users, which we suspect of directly marketing the sale of wildlife products. We also identified other species including Tibetan antelope, bears and African spurred tortoises. Facebook community pages appeared to have the highest percentage (48.2%) of wildlife selling posts. We also identified 14 different countries and regions with suspected wildlife-selling users, most located in Taiwan. Furthermore, we observed that the language used by some sellers changed from descriptive text to emojis and other code words. Collective action is needed from governments, law enforcement, civil society and technology companies leveraging big data approaches to better detect and interdict online Chinese-language wildlife trafficking.

Multi-input integrative learning using deep neural networks and transfer learning for cyberbullying detection in real-time code-mix data

Automatic detection of cyberbullying in social media content is a natural language understanding and generic text classification task. The cultural diversities, country-specific trending topics hash-tags on social media, the unconventional use of typographical resources such as capitals, punctuation, emojis and easy availability of native language keyboards add to the variety and volume of user-generated content compounding the linguistic challenges. This research focuses on cyberbullying detection in the code-mix data, specifically the Hinglish, which refers to the juxtaposition of words from the Hindi and English languages. We explore the problem of cyberbullying prediction and propose MIIL-DNN, a multi-input integrative learning model based on deep neural networks. MIIL-DNN combines information from three sub-networks to detect and classify bully content in real-time code-mix data. It takes three inputs, namely English language features, Hindi language features (transliterated Hindi converted to the Hindi language) and typographic features, which are learned separately using sub-networks (capsule network for English, bi-LSTM for Hindi and MLP for typographic). These are then combined into one unified representation to be used as the input for a final regression output with linear activation. The advantage of using this model-level multi-lingual fusion is that it operates with the unique distribution of each input type without increasing the dimensionality of the input space. The robustness of the technique is validated on two datasets created by scraping data from the popular social networking sites, namely Twitter and Facebook. Experimental evaluation reveals that MIIL-DNN achieves superlative performance in terms of AUC-ROC curve on both the datasets.

Fear of Missing Out and Personality as Predictors of Social Networking Sites Usage: The Instagram Case.

With the exponential increase in the number of social networking sites (SNS) users, there is also a significant shift in the popularity of these SNS. Moreover, fear of missing out (FOMO) is often blamed for the growth in SNS addictive tendencies. The current research examines the influence of FOMO and Big 5 personality traits on SNS attitudes, usage, and addictive tendencies in the context of an increasingly popular SNS - Instagram. Participants completed online questionnaires that assessed their personality traits and then be-friended one of the researchers on Instagram, which provided the actual Instagram activity data (e.g., total number of Instagram posts, total number of likes, etc.). Hierarchical regression results showed that personality factors explained significant amounts of variance in terms of attitude towards Instagram, number of likes, total number of Instagram posts since account inception, and social media addictive tendencies. Furthermore, FOMO had a significant positive effect on attitude toward Instagram, the total number of Instagram accounts that respondents followed, and social media addictive tendencies.

Do you manage self-image on WeChat moments? Causality orientations, basic psychological needs and self-presentation

Presenting selves on social networking sites (SNSs) is a common phenomenon. SNSs provide people with free and convenient platforms for self-presentation. Focusing on WeChat, a popular SNS in China, the current study investigated how causality orientations (autonomy, control and impersonal orientations) were linked to both frequencies and strategies of online self-presentation. We also explored the mediating roles of basic psychological needs satisfaction/frustration in the focal relationships. A total of 200 WeChat users participated in our survey. The results showed that people with control and impersonal orientations held high frequencies of self-presentation. Basic psychological needs frustration mediated the positive relationships between control and impersonal orientations and self-presentation frequencies. A content analysis of WeChat Moments collected from 101 participants further revealed that an autonomy orientation facilitated the satisfaction of psychological needs and decreased self-derogation strategies of self-presentation. However, impersonal orientation decreased self-enhancement strategies and increased self-derogation strategies through psychological needs frustration. The findings highlight the importance of SNS users’ psychological characteristics for understanding their online self-presentation behaviors.

EU diplomacy 2.0: The European Union’s exercise in soft power in the Philippines through Facebook

Digital diplomacy, also referred to as e-Diplomacy or Diplomacy 2.0, is a form of public diplomacy that entails the pursuance of foreign policy objectives using the Internet and social media. It is one of the ways that actors in contemporary global politics can exert soft power, thereby shaping a host country’s perceptions, agendas, and policies. The increasing use of digital diplomacy exemplifies a shift in diplomatic from purely government-to-government (G2G) relations, to one in which communication is directed towards publics (G2P), and can even encourage citizens to interact with one another (P2P). One actor that has become increasingly active in this area is the European Union (EU). However, unlike a country, the regional bloc is a coalition of twenty-eight member states. Consequently, the challenge for EU digital diplomacy specialists is to represent a group of countries to local audiences. There is minimal literature on this subject, and this paper hopes to contribute to it by presenting a case study of the EU’s digital diplomacy initiatives towards Philippines, which are communicated through the popular social networking website, Facebook. This paper argues that the EU exercises its soft power through its social media transmissions it creates. The individuals featured in its online content, the way that the European Union represents itself, and the issues it highlights in its posts are all geared towards shaping the perceptions of Philippine audiences.

Social networks formed by follower–followee relationships on academic social networking sites: an examination of corporation users

As academic social networking sites become important platforms for researchers to carry out research activities, more and more corporation researchers begin to use them. This paper explores the academic interactive behaviors of corporation users on academic social networking sites based on their social networks formed by follower–followee relationships. We take ResearchGate (RG), one of the largest popular academic social networking sites, as the research object, and obtain users’ follower–followee data from top 100 research corporations to reveal their interactive characteristics from perspectives of regional distribution, institutional type and research area using social network analysis. Results demonstrate that corporation users tend to connect with institutional users in regions with high research impact, and that they interact most significantly with universities among types of institutions. Very few interdisciplinary interactions are observed in academic social networks of corporation users, with technology being the only field where such interactions are likely to happen. We discuss users’ social networks on academic social networking sites from the perspective of corporations. Our findings target top research corporations for setting standards for others to utilize academic social networking sites, guide corporation users to conduct scientific communication across regions and research areas, and encourage corporations to carry out industry–university–research cooperations on academic social networking sites.

"It's easier than causing confrontation": Sanctioning Strategies to Maintain Social Norms and Privacy on Social Media

Sanctions play an essential role in enforcing and sustaining social norms. On social networking sites (SNS), sanctions allow individuals to shape community norms on appropriate privacy respecting behaviors. Existing theories of privacy assume the use of such sanctions but do not examine the extent and effectiveness of sanctioning behaviors. We conducted a qualitative interview study of young adults (N=23), and extend research on collective boundary regulation by studying sanctions in the context of popular SNS. Through a systematization of sanctioning strategies, we find that young adults prefer to use indirect and invisible sanctions to preserve strong-tie relationships. Such sanctions are not always effective in helping the violator understand the nature of their normative violation. We offer suggestions on supporting online sanctioning that make norms more visible and signal violations in ways that avoid direct confrontation to reduce the risk of harming on-going social relationships.

A Bibliometric Overview of Twitter-Related Studies Indexed in Web of Science

Twitter has been one of the most popular social network sites for academic research; the main objective of this study was to update the current knowledge boundary surrounding Twitter-related investigations and, further, identify the major research topics and analyze their evolution across time. A bibliometric analysis has been applied in this article: we retrieved 19,205 Twitter-related academic articles from Web of Science after several steps of data cleaning and preparation. The R package “Bibliometrix” was mainly used in analyzing this content. Our study has two sections, and performance analysis contains 5 categories (Annual Scientific Production, Most Relevant Sources, Most Productive Authors, Most Cited Publications, Most Relevant Keywords.). The science mapping included country collaboration analysis and thematic analysis. We highlight our thematic analysis by splitting the whole bibliographic dataset into three temporal periods, thus a thematic evolution across time has been presented. This study is one of the most comprehensive bibliometric overview in analyzing Twitter-related studies by far. We proceed to explain how the results will benefit the understanding of current academic research interests on the social media giant.

The effect of social networking site use on college students’ academic performance: the mediating role of student engagement

The widespread adoption of social networking sites among college students has motivated an increasing number of researchers to discern the relationship between social networking site use and academic performance. However, these studies mainly address the direct effect of social networking site use on academic performance, thus failing to identify and incorporate relevant explanatory mechanisms. The present study addresses this gap by examining the mediating role of student engagement in the relationship between social networking site use and academic performance. The study gathered pertinent data from a sample of college students (N = 180) by using a questionnaire, which measured social networking site use based on the number of hours students spent daily on six popular social networking sites, student engagement using a ten-item scale adapted from the literature, and academic performance using semester grade-point average. An empirical test of the mediation model using the PROCESS macro demonstrates that student engagement mediates the negative association between social networking site use and college students’ academic performance. This study contributes to the literature by documenting pioneering evidence of the mediating role of student engagement.

Emotional resilience and social network site addiction: The mediating role of emotional expressivity and the moderating role of type D personality

With the popularity of social network sites (SNSs) among the younger generation, adolescent SNS addiction has become a serious and highly-concerned problem in modern society. Based on the perspective of positive psychology, the current study focused on the protective role of emotional resilience on SNS addiction among adolescents. Specifically, this study tested the mediating effect of emotional expressivity in the association between emotional resilience and SNS addiction, and whether the mediating processes were moderated by Type D personality. The research model was examined with 699 Chinese high school students (mean age = 13.31 years, SD = 0.79; 51.93% were boys). Our mediation analysis revealed that the ability to generate positive emotions (a mechanism of emotional resilience) positively predicted SNS addiction via increasing positive expressivity; the ability to recover quickly from negative emotions (another mechanism of emotional resilience) negatively predicted SNS addiction directly and via decreasing positive and negative expressivity. Moreover, the moderated mediation analysis indicated that Type D personality moderated the association between positive expressivity and SNS addiction, as well as the relationship between negative expressivity and SNS addiction. These findings highlight the importance of uncovering the mechanisms underlying the links between emotional resilience and SNS addiction, which helps to reduce the risk of SNS addiction among adolescents.

Online self-disclosure among students of higher institutions of learning in Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria

The popularity of social network sites has influenced communication behaviour in a variety of contexts. Thus, this study examined the online behaviour of social media users as regards self-disclosure, motivations and gratifications. The study adopted Social Penetration Theory by Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor and data were gathered through questionnaire from randomly selected 330 respondents and from purposively selected 16 respondents in two sessions of Focus GroupDiscussion (FGD) among the students of University of Ibadan and the Polytechnic Ibadan. Although some respondents agreed that relationship management (56.1%) and need for self-expression (60.3%) motivated them to self-disclose on Facebook and Instagram, most disagreed that reciprocity (65.0%), mutual self-disclosure (78.2%), social validation (66.3%) and show off (78.6%) motivated them. Also, most respondents agreed that they sought gratifications from intimate relationship (56.1%), killing boredom (55.4%), seeking people’s opinions (67.3%) and maintaining online conversation (58.0%). However, qualitative data revealed that most respondents were motivated by and also sought gratifications from many of the factors aforementioned for online self-disclosure. Therefore, this study recommended that social media users should be orientated on the proper use of social media as it is obvious that many of them lack the requisite online literacy knowledge; with this, social media users will make use of the platform without risking their privacy.
 Keywords: Online self-disclosure, Facebook, Instagram, SPT, Social media users

Predicting individuals\u2019 vulnerability to social engineering in social networks

The popularity of social networking sites has attracted billions of users to engage and share their information on these networks. The vast amount of circulating data and information expose these networks to several security risks. Social engineering is one of the most common types of threat that may face social network users. Training and increasing users’ awareness of such threats is essential for maintaining continuous and safe use of social networking services. Identifying the most vulnerable users in order to target them for these training programs is desirable for increasing the effectiveness of such programs. Few studies have investigated the effect of individuals’ characteristics on predicting their vulnerability to social engineering in the context of social networks. To address this gap, the present study developed a novel model to predict user vulnerability based on several perspectives of user characteristics. The proposed model includes interactions between different social network-oriented factors such as level of involvement in the network, motivation to use the network, and competence in dealing with threats on the network. The results of this research indicate that most of the considered user characteristics are factors that influence user vulnerability either directly or indirectly. Furthermore, the present study provides evidence that individuals’ characteristics can identify vulnerable users so that these risks can be considered when designing training and awareness programs.

Active and Passive Social Networking Sites Usage and Negative Emotions: A Reciprocal Relationship?

Introduction: The increasing popularity of social networking sites (SNS) has stimulated research on the relationship between SNS usage and users' mental health. The current study aims to shed light on the possible reciprocal relationship between type of SNS usage and subsequent mental health among Chinese college students. Method: A latent variable cross-lagged panel analysis (two waves) was conducted (N = 266). Results showed that negative emotions (loneliness, depression) at Time 1 (T1) was positively related to both active SNS usage and passive SNS usage at Time 2 (T2). However, neither active nor passive SNS usage at T1 was found to be associated with negative emotions at T2. Discussion: In this current research, the key finding is that type of usage did not impact on users' mental health. Future research might investigate the role of individual and social factors (e.g., self-esteem and life satisfaction) in moderating the relationship between SNS use and mental health.

The Use of Social Media by Technology Transfer Offices in Marketing Communications

Abstract The article presents the issue of marketing communication conducted through social media by CTT, affiliated to The Polish Association of Centers for Technology Transfer (PACTT). The objective of this publication is to assess CTT’s use of currently popular social networking sites in the context of communication with Generation Y, i.e. the generation of successors and managers in Polish enterprises. The study was conducted in August 2019 using data collected through critical analysis of secondary sources in the form of websites and social media profiles of all 64 CTTs included in PACTT. The research confirmed that the entities established to find a common ground on communication between science and business, use the opportunities created by social media online communication to a very limited scope.

Rising Tendency of Journalism Practised on Social Media Sites

Objectives: The motive of this research study is to evaluate the influence and attractiveness of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in the amidst the full time working journalists and the part time media practitioners, located in Hyderabad and Karachi practicing on SNSs in their professional field of work. This study examines individual approach, comfort ability, usefulness, and inclination towards the most popular SNSs. Method: The statistics of this research work were congregated through Web-based Questionnaire Survey. That was dispended among the journalists of Hyderabad and Karachi region in Sindh Province, Pakistan. The data were collected through an online Google Docs form out of 386,309; valid questioners were selected for this research and evaluated in SPSS Software. This research work has focused on acceptance of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) proposed by Davis (1986) for diversified description of information system and communication technologies. This research examines individual inclination towards Social Media in a Media Profession. Findings: The pronouncement has been shown in Tables and then illustrated and interpreted to perceive the SNSs e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. and their acceptance and adoption by full time journalists and part time media practitioners. In this approach, it was recognized that the journalists have a great inclination towards SNSs which enables them to exchange information promptly with ease and confidently practice in the field of journalism. Novelty: In the era of technology, SNSs like; facebook, Instagram, Bebo, Twitter, and Whatsapp are widely used by professional journalists as well as active citizens for journalistic purposes which highlight the untold stories. Keywords: Social Network Sites, TAM, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Journalists.

Born to be beautiful: Season of birth influences adult females’ physical attractiveness

Birth month in humans is associated with certain biological variables such as reproduc-tive success, health and mortality rate. At the same time, physical attractiveness is regarded as one of the reliable markers of human health and genetic quality, which suggests that female attractiveness may vary according to their season of birth. To test this hypothe-sis, ratings of females’ photographs from a popular Polish social networking website were analyzed. The sample included 5294 females aged 21-23 years. Results demonstrated that females born in spring (May) were rated as being significantly more attractive than those born in autumn (September and November).