Social Conversations Research Articles

Exploring the Effectiveness of Combining Social Skills Training and Two Parent Programs in Improving the Social Competence of Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Background/Objectives: The objective of the present study was to examine the extent of effectiveness of two parent programs to complement an intervention in social skills for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods: Fifteen children with ADHD participated in a program to develop social skills, while their parents were randomly assigned to two parent training programs that had different formats: a Parenting School (N = 8) or a Parent Workshop (N = 7). There were no significant differences between parents of both groups in knowledge about ADHD, obedience to commands, or strategies for addressing desirable and undesirable behaviors. The pre- and post-intervention social cognition and social interaction of ADHD children were assessed using a SSRS-C questionnaire (Social Skills Rating System—Child Form) and a controlled chat room, which allowed for observing how children interact in a virtual environment. Results: Children showed significant improvements in social competencies, such as identifying social cues, generating appropriate responses, and reducing hostile responses, with large effect sizes, following the social skills intervention. Comparing the two parent training programs, the Parent Workshop program demonstrated significant improvements in social cue detection and conversation memory, with more children achieving reliable changes in these variables than in the Parenting School program. Conclusions: Finally, the reliable change indices for children showed that the Parent Workshop demonstrated improvements in more than half of the subjects across all analyzed variables. Study limitations, implications for research and practice are discussed.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Enhancing Customer Repurchase Intention

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of consumer engagement on social media and conversion rate optimization in mediating the relationship between artificial intelligence technology and repurchase intention, where customer habit is as a moderator. This study also determines how artificial intelligence technology integrated social media sites affect consumers' intentions to repurchase as well as to improve the understanding of established variables. Moreover, this study is conducted on the international sportswear brands and to evaluate the hypothesized relationships, the data was collected using Google Forms from 496 respondents who buy from these brands. Furthermore, the study was cross sectional in nature. The data was analyzed using Smart PLS to test the hypotheses. Results of the study show that artificial intelligence technology positively and significantly affects repurchase intention through consumer engagement and conversion rate optimization. Furthermore, customer habit has been found to be a moderator between consumer engagement on social media and repurchase intention with the positive correlation. Results also showed that artificial intelligence technology significantly affects repurchase intention with positive correlation. The findings reveal that brands should focus on integrating artificial intelligence technology in their networking sites to understand the consumer needs and wants. Conclusion, limitations of the study, future research and managerial implications were also included in the study.

Insights from social media into public perspectives on investigative genetic genealogy.

Social media sites like X (formerly Twitter) increasingly serve as spaces for the public to discuss controversial topics. Social media can spark extreme viewpoints and spread biased or inaccurate information while simultaneously allowing for debate around policy-relevant topics. The arrest of Joseph J. DeAngelo in April 2018 ignited a barrage of social media conversations on how DNA and genetic genealogy led to the suspect. These conversations continued over the following years as policies changed and as the use of the approach expanded. We examined social media coverage of investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) to characterize the volume and temporal patterns in the topics and sentiments of these public conversations. First, using a data analytics tool Brandwatch Consumer Research, we built flexible search strings to collect tweets from the social media platform Twitter/X for IGG-relevant content published from 2018 to 2022, resulting in 24,209 tweets. Second, we applied informatics tools to the dataset to generate topic clusters and analyze trends in cluster volume and distribution over time to define the top 25 peaks in tweet volume, representing the 25 events that generated the highest volume of conversation over the 5-year period. Third, drawing on the contextual framework of key IGG events, we selected three of the top ten events to code for sentiment along with a randomly sampled subset of tweets across the timeframe. Qualitative coding for position on IGG revealed a majority of tweets were supportive of the use of IGG, but key concerns were also voiced about the ethics of IGG. Over a third of conversations on Twitter/X were on either cases solved or suggestions for use of IGG. We archived the social media data for future research. These data highlight key areas of public support and concern within IGG processes and across application contexts.

Unmasking deception: a topic-oriented multimodal approach to uncover false information on social media

In the digital landscape, social media has emerged as a prevalent channel for global communication, connecting like-minded individuals worldwide. However, while facilitating information exchange, it is also susceptible to the dissemination of false information, posing a constant challenge to the reliability of online content. To address this issue, this paper introduces a novel methodology called TM-FID (Topic-oriented Multimodal False Information Detection), which combines false information detection and neural topic modeling within a semi-supervised multimodal approach. By jointly leveraging textual and visual information contained in online news, our approach provides insights into how false information influences specific discussion topics, thus enabling a comprehensive and fine-grained understanding of its spread and impact on social media conversation. Experimental evaluation carried out on a set of multimodal gossip-related news demonstrates the quality of the identified topics, assessed through a novel centroid-based metric, as well as the efficacy of the cross-attention mechanism used within TM-FID to accurately identify false information in multimodal news. Overall, the proposed methodology can enable effective strategies to counter the spread of false information, thereby fostering trust and confidence in the information shared on social media platforms.

Using Natural Language Processing and Social Media Data to Understand the Lived Experience of People with Fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia has many unmet needs relating to treatment, and the delivery of effective and evidence-based healthcare is lacking. We analyzed social media conversations to understand the patients' perspectives on the lived experience of fibromyalgia, factors reported to trigger flares of pain, and the treatments being discussed, identifying barriers and opportunities to improve healthcare delivery. A non-interventional retrospective analysis accessed detail-rich conversations about fibromyalgia patients' experiences with 714,000 documents, including a fibromyalgia language tag, which were curated between May 2019 and April 2021. Data were analyzed via qualitative and quantitative analyses. Fibromyalgia conversations were found the most on Twitter and Reddit, and conversation trends remained stable over time. There were numerous environmental and modifiable triggers, ranging from the most frequent trigger of stress and anxiety to various foods. Arthritis and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were the most frequently associated comorbidities. Patients with fibromyalgia reported a wide range of symptoms, with pain being a cardinal feature. The massage, meditation and acupuncture domains were the most reported treatment modalities. Opportunities to improve healthcare delivered by medical providers were identified with current frustration relating to a lack of acknowledgement of their disease, minimization of symptoms and inadequately meeting their care needs. We developed a comprehensive, large-scale study which emphasizes advanced natural language processing algorithm application in real-world research design. Through the extensive encapsulation of patient perspectives, we outlined the habitual symptoms, triggers and treatment modalities which provide a durable foundation for addressing gaps in healthcare provision.

Developing and Testing Training Resources to Improve Social Connectedness With Homebound Older Adults Who Receive Home-Delivered Meals.

Social isolation is disproportionately experienced by homebound older adults, including those who receive home-delivered meals. We used a three-phase, human-centered design approach to create and evaluate training resources focused on social isolation for meal-delivery drivers. We hypothesized that these training resources would increase meal-delivery drivers' behavioral intentions to have meaningful interactions with their clients. Working with subject matter experts and meal-delivery drivers, our team developed and produced a training video and website and evaluated the resources with a sample of meal-delivery drivers in Rhode Island, Texas, and Mississippi via an online survey. Respondents (n = 94) were 64% female, 65% age 55+, and 79% white. Respondents reported improved (p < .001) agreement with the main outcome, "I intend to regularly have meaningful social conversations with the clients I see." Through these scalable training resources, drivers may increase their intention to have meaningful conversations with older adults at risk for social isolation.

Remote social conversations between families and aged francophone seniors in retirement homes in New Brunswick and Manitoba during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background COVID-19 pandemic led to excessive mortality in long-term care facilities (LTCFs). LTCFs visitation bans resulted in the development of virtual social conversations (VSC) to address social isolation and loneliness. Numerous initiatives have been developed but, little literature exists on VSC with linguistic minorities in Canada. Objectives: To explore VSC by families to continue socializing with their seniors in LTCFs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Cross-sectional design conducted in Manitoba and New Brunswick (Canada). Results: Thirteen participants were included, all females. Facetime (47.4%) and Facebook (21%) were the top VSC applications used. Most (61%) participants started conversing around the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic. Their conversations were shared between seeking their seniors’ medical information (52.4%); general information (23.8%), or personal items requests (9.5%). Finally, seven participants tremendously improved their applications manipulation expertise (+1.15-point). Conclusions: Families valued being able to effectively continue socializing over restrictions. VSC in LTCFs is a pertinent socialization avenue.

The price of attention: an analysis of the intersection of media coverage and public sentiments about eggs and egg prices.

Retail prices for eggs surged during the period from early 2022 to mid-2023 in the U.S. We investigate the impact of egg price fluctuations on online and social media discourse, analyzing the relationship between egg prices and public sentiment. Utilizing online and social media listening data from September 2019 to August 2023, we explore how the total number of statements (i.e., mentions) and sentiment respond to changes in egg prices in the U.S. We find a significant association between increases in egg prices and both the volume of mentions and the sentiment of online discussions. Notably, mentions increased and sentiment became more negative as egg prices rose, highlighting a clear public response to price changes. However, the relationship between egg prices and online and social media attention is complex, which becomes apparent when studying the timing of increased concern with the timing of online news media coverage. Importantly, using regression discontinuity in time, we show that online and social media conversations about eggs and egg prices tend to increase after the rapid rise in online news coverage. Similarly, online and social media conversations about eggs and egg prices tend to decrease after the rapid rise in online news coverage.

Impact of remote social interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic on the cognitive and psychological status of older adults with and without cognitive impairment: A randomized controlled study.

Social isolation and loneliness have both been associated with psychological health and cognitive decline in older adults. This study investigated the impact of social interaction through remote communication technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic on the cognitive and psychological status of older adults with and without cognitive impairment. Participants were recruited from Boston (USA) and Chieti (Italy). The study used a randomized single-blinded controlled crossover design with an intervention (remote social conversations with research staff over 20-minute video or telephone calls three times per week) and a passive control condition, each one of 4-weeks duration. The primary outcome was a composite cognitive score change from baseline to week 4. Secondary outcomes included scales for mood, anxiety, and loneliness. Out of 196 participants recruited from April 2020 to April 2021, 17% dropped out. Based on the blind MoCA, 52% had cognitive impairment, and 25% were at risk of social isolation according to the Lubben social network scale. We observed that larger social networks were linked to better cognitive status and lower depression and anxiety levels, while loneliness was directly associated to depression severity. Older adults with cognitive impairment exhibited higher levels of depression and anxiety and were at greater risk for social isolation. In terms of the intervention, 91% preferred telephone over video calls. The intervention did not lead to improvements in cognitive or psychological scores. More work is needed to assess the utility of this intervention for the support of a heterogenous cross-cultural sample of older adults at-risk for social isolation, including individuals with cognitive impairment. Future research should explore longer intervention periods, categorize participants by call type, and target those meeting social isolation criteria. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04480112.

Seeing it in others versus doing it yourself: Social desirability judgements and conversation production data from autistic and non-autistic children.

During a conversation, on average, autistic individuals are often more likely than non-autistic people to provide an off-topic comment and/or to pause for longer before providing a response. One possible explanation for this is that autistic individuals prefer, or are more tolerant of, unconventional communication styles. To explore this possibility, we investigated whether autistic and non-autistic 9-13-year-olds find off-topic or delayed responding a deterrent to friendship or interaction. Participants listened to scripted conversations and then rated social desirability statements, such as 'I would enjoy chatting to the [target speaker]'. We also examined the prevalence of these behaviours in children's own conversational responses. We found that autistic children were just as likely as non-autistic children to dis-prefer unconventional conversational responding. Both groups indicated that they were less likely to want to be friends with the speaker, or to chat with them, when they provided off-topic or delayed responses. However, despite their judgements of others, the same autistic children were more likely to provide off-topic responses themselves than their non-autistic peers, as well as giving fewer on-topic responses which facilitate back-and-forth conversation. Overall, this is problematic for autistic children, as our findings suggest that the tendency to exhibit unconventional conversational behaviours will have negative social consequences, even when interacting with other autistic peers.

The offline roots of online hostility: Adult and childhood administrative records correlate with individual-level hostility on Twitter

Reducing hostility in social media interactions is a key public concern. Most extant research emphasizes how online contextual factors breed hostility. Here, we take a different perspective and focus on the offline roots of hostility, that is, offline experiences and stable individual-level dispositions. Using a unique dataset of Danish Twitter users (N [Formula: see text] 4,931), we merge data from administrative government registries with a behavioral measure of online hostility. We demonstrate that individuals with more aggressive dispositions (as proxied by having many more criminal verdicts) are more hostile in social media conversations. We also find evidence that features of childhood environments predict online hostility. Time spent in foster care is a strong correlate, while other indicators of childhood instability (e.g., the number of moves and divorced parents) are not. Furthermore, people from more resourceful childhood environments-those with better grades in primary school and higher parental socioeconomic status-are more hostile on average, as such people are more politically engaged. These results offer an important reminder that much online hostility is rooted in offline experiences and stable dispositions. They also provide anuanced view of the core group of online aggressors. While these individuals display general antisocial personality tendencies by having many more criminal verdicts, they also come from resourceful backgrounds more often than not.

Conversational topic maintenance and related cognitive abilities in autistic versus neurotypical children.

Children who struggle to maintain conversation with peers often have fewer friends and lower popularity ratings, which can affect wellbeing. Verbal social communication more broadly is linked to both behavioural difficulties and emotional problems. We carried out three studies to examine children's ability to provide responses which keep a back and forth conversation going. The first study found that while autistic children had on average greater difficulties than their neurotypical peers with certain aspects of conversation topic maintenance, for other aspects the autistic group showed considerable strengths. Both studies 2 (neurotypical children) and 3 (autistic children) found relationships between, on the one hand, conversational ability, and on the other, the ability to consider another's viewpoint and the ability to maintain and update information in short term memory. We suggest support for social conversation skills should be part of mainstream classroom curricula for autistic and neurotypical children alike.

Exploring the influence of EFL teachers’ informal digital learning on creative classroom instruction: a cross-sectional study

This study addresses the limited exploration in the literature regarding the influence of EFL teachers’ informal digital learning of English (IDLE) on their creativity in Indonesian EFL classroom instructions. Using a cross-sectional survey design, data were collected from 244 Indonesian EFL teachers, encompassing both pre-service and in-service teachers. Through multiple regression analysis and Rasch modelling analysis, the study evaluated the association between teachers’ IDLE participation, demographics, and their teaching creativity. Findings of the present study revealed that Indonesian EFL pre-service and in-service teachers actively participate in Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE), which impacts their teaching creativity. Nearly half (49.18%) engage strongly in activities like listening to English songs and watching YouTube videos, while 36.88% moderately engage in online educational content and social media conversations. A smaller group (13.93%) shows lower engagement in IDLE. The regression analysis revealed that while IDLE significantly predicted teaching creativity (p < 0.001), demographic factors did not indicate a substantial influence on creativity in teaching practices. Additionally, a Rasch-Wright map analysis unveiled that over half of the participants displayed strong creativity in teaching, with a notable inclination among younger teachers towards innovative and student-centered pedagogical strategies. The findings of the current study highlight the need for further exploration into the dynamics between informal digital learning, demographics, and creative teaching approaches, emphasizing the potential for fostering innovative pedagogical practices in language education.

Analyzing narrative contagion through digital storytelling in social media conversations: An AI-powered computational approach

Despite the growing popularity of digital narratives, research on digital storytelling and its spread through social media interactions remains limited. Inspired by the social contagion theory, we introduce the concept of narrative contagion—where a story shared by a person or organization prompts others to share their stories—and investigate its process and outcome in online cancer communities. Utilizing a large dataset of 849 Facebook posts, 47,291 comments, and 14,466 replies, our artificial intelligence (AI)-based computational analysis provides evidence for narrative contagion among individual users in organization-hosted cancer communities on Facebook. It also reveals different organizational message characteristics, such as emotional arousal, post topic, and request for storytelling, that affect user storytelling and emotional support in comments and replies. Our results contribute to a deeper understanding of digital storytelling and its collective dynamics in online communities.

‘Asking for a friend’: Mediation needs in Israeli social media conversations on benefits and rights

Benefits and rights are integral to modern citizenship in modern society, and information is essential to their utilisation (take-up) process. Such information is often unclear and difficult to find and understand, thus requiring mediation. Who requires mediation, and under what circumstances? Does the right type matter? This study addresses these questions by computerised and manual analysis of 69,696 Israeli social media conversation segments about 29 issues. According to the results, some people need mediation to get information about benefits and rights, regardless of the right type or circumstance they face. We also developed a computerised way to identify the need for mediation in a social media conversation. Future research is needed to deepen understanding of what plays a more significant role in mediation needs – the right type, life circumstances or other factors.

초등학생들의 뉴스 댓글 수용 양상과 뉴스 리터러시 교육의 시사점

This study is a qualitative study that presents the role and meaning of news comments and implications for elementary school news literacy education by deeply analyzing elementary school students’ acceptance of news comments. For elementary school students, news comments are a mechanism that stimulates interest and interest in news and social issues, and are an auxiliary device that helps them understand news. In addition, news comments frequently expose the context of free communication between people so that they can indirectly participate in social and political conversations and contact various disagreements. And for elementary school students, news comments are a role model for learning the competencies necessary as citizens, such as the attitude of being interested in and participating in social problems and how to express opinions on social problems. According to the results of the study, elementary school students are exposed to negative communication such as criticism and slander by encountering news in the online world, but even in them, they have screened jade stones and showed the possibility of accepting sound social discourse. Therefore, this study demanded serious reflection and reflection on the online news comments and comment spaces currently being produced, and suggested that it is necessary to find ways to use news comments educationally to foster healthy citizenship for future generations. In order to increase the effectiveness of news literacy education for elementary school students in the future, it is necessary to actively utilize news comments in the form of pros and cons and provide educational materials applying various news comment frames to supplement the cognitive abilities of elementary school students. And concrete educational measures should be prepared for practical use and critical acceptance of social approval clues.

Linguistic Chameleon: Syntactic Functions of “Kuan” (Cebuano language filler) in Social Media Conversations

The study explored the syntactic functions of “kuan” in social media conversations and in the logs, reels, and shorts of various Cebuano content creators. Taking into account related studies on fillers, the researchers discovered that there is still no known study of its syntactic functions. Hence, the researchers will analyze the syntactic functions of filler words, specifically the Cebuano filler “kuan” used by content creators. Understanding the syntactic functions of these words contributes to the body of language research by offering some insights into people’s communication patterns on social media. This contributes to our understanding of the versatility of “kuan” within the context of social media use. The researchers will be using content analysis to examine how Cebuano content creators used ”kuan” in their logs, shorts or reels and analyze their syntactic functions. The researchers have concluded that "kuan" has various syntactic functions: subject, verb, object, subject complement and object complement.

Assessing the Feasibility of Using Parents' Social Media Conversations to Inform Burn First Aid Interventions: Mixed Methods Study.

Burns are common childhood injuries, which can lead to serious physical and psychological outcomes. Appropriate first aid is essential in managing the pain and severity of these injuries; hence, parents who need timely access to such information often seek it from the web. In particular, social media allow them to reach other parents, hence these conversations may provide insight to aid the design and evaluation of burn first aid interventions for parents. This study aims to determine the feasibility of finding, accessing, and analyzing parent burn first aid conversations on social media to inform intervention research. The initial choice of the relevant social media was made based on the results of a parent focus group and survey. We considered Facebook (Meta Platforms, Inc), Mumsnet (Mumsnet Limited), Netmums (Aufeminin Group), Twitter (subsequently rebranded as "X"; X Corp), Reddit (Reddit, Inc), and YouTube (Google LLC). To locate the relevant data on these platforms, we collated a taxonomy of search terms and designed a search strategy. A combination of natural language processing and manual inspection was used to filter out irrelevant data. The remaining data were analyzed manually to determine the length of conversations, the number of participants, the purpose of the initial post (eg, asking for or offering advice), burn types, and distribution of relevant keywords. Facebook parenting groups were not accessed due to privacy, and public influencer pages yielded scant data. No relevant data were found on Reddit. Data were collected from Mumsnet, Netmums, YouTube, and Twitter. The amount of available data varied across these platforms and through time. Sunburn was identified as a topic across all 4 platforms. Conversations on the parenting forums Mumsnet and Netmums were started predominantly to seek advice (112/116, 96.6% and 25/25, 100%, respectively). Conversely, YouTube and Twitter were used mainly to provide advice (362/328, 94.8% and 126/197, 64%, respectively). Contact burns and sunburn were the most frequent burn types discussed on Mumsnet (30/94, 32% and 23/94, 25%, respectively) and Netmums (2/25, 8% and 14/26, 56%, respectively). This study provides a suite of bespoke search strategies, tailored to a range of social media platforms, for the extraction and analysis of burn first aid conversation data. Our methodology provides a template for other topics not readily accessible via a specific search term or hashtag. YouTube and Twitter show potential utility in measuring advice offered before and after interventions and extending the reach of messaging. Mumsnet and Netmums present the best opportunity for informing burn first aid intervention design via an in-depth qualitative investigation into parents' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.

Use of prompt-based learning for code-mixed and code-switched text classification

Code-mixing and code-switching (CMCS) are prevalent phenomena observed in social media conversations and various other modes of communication. When developing applications such as sentiment analysers and hate-speech detectors that operate on this social media data, CMCS text poses challenges. Recent studies have demonstrated that prompt-based learning of pre-trained language models outperforms full fine-tuning across various tasks. Despite the growing interest in classifying CMCS text, the effectiveness of prompt-based learning for the task remains unexplored. This paper presents an extensive exploration of prompt-based learning for CMCS text classification and the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of the script on classifying CMCS text. Our study reveals that the performance in classifying CMCS text is significantly influenced by the inclusion of multiple scripts and the intensity of code-mixing. In response, we introduce a novel method, Dynamic+AdapterPrompt, which employs distinct models for each script, integrated with adapters. While DynamicPrompt captures the script-specific representation of the text, AdapterPrompt emphasizes capturing the task-oriented functionality. Our experiments on Sinhala-English, Kannada-English, and Hindi-English datasets for sentiment classification, hate-speech detection, and humour detection tasks show that our method outperforms strong fine-tuning baselines and basic prompting strategies.

“The Real Requires the Fantastic”: Teaching Comics, Race, and Disability in the Era of Black Lives Matter

The dual pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism bring into sharp relief the urgent need to integrate anti-racism into the study and praxis of graphic medicine. The article’s approach to “cripping graphic medicine” brings together Black feminist disability studies and comics studies, foregrounding Black comics theorists and creators. The focus is on Damian Duffy and John Jennings’s graphic adaptations of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and Victor LaValle’s Destroyer , examining how they employ non-realist conventions of speculative fiction and horror to represent racial injustice and the body in effective ways for social justice-oriented conversations in health humanities’ classrooms and beyond. The article also shares experiences facilitating student-centered discussion of these texts in undergraduate courses and highlights student interpretations as evidence of the comics medium’s ability to foster reflective dialogue and collaborative learning around topics of racism, medicine, disability, and creative storytelling.