Social Media Communication Tools Research Articles

Building a tribe on Instagram: User-generated and Firm-created Content can drive brand evangelism and fidelity

ABSTRACT The social media revolution has significantly transformed marketing plans and practices in the business world. Firm-Created Content (FCC) and User-Generated Content (UGC) serve as critical social media communication tools for brands to connect and build relationships with customers. This study investigates the influence of FCC and UGC on affective commitment, brand evangelism, and fidelity. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model, this study aims to explore the impact of FCC and UGC on affective commitment, which, in turn, mediates the relationships between these social media communication tools (FCC and UGC), brand evangelism and fidelity. The research, focusing on a coffee-shop chain’s FCC and UGC on Instagram, utilizing structural equation modeling to analyze data from a sample of 341 Instagram users in the USA who are Starbucks customers. The findings reveal that FCC and UGC are positively and significantly related to brand evangelism and fidelity. Furthermore, the results suggest that affective commitment mediates the relationship between FCC, UGC, brand evangelism and fidelity, supporting the hypotheses concerning the indirect relationships between social media communication tools, brand evangelism and fidelity.

Assessment of Cyberostracism and Personality Inventory In First Year University Students In Turkey

Abstract Background Being ignored, one of the most common problems among young people, can occur not only in face-to-face communication but also through social media communication tools over the internet and is called cyberostracism (CO). The effects of cyberostracism on people are at least as effective as in real social life and can cause a wide variety of affective disorders. It is thought that the family, environmental factors and the individual's own personality traits effectively control such negative emotions. This study aims to evaluate the CO level and personality types of students who have just started university in Turkey. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2021 spring semester and 3148 students in the first year of their university in Turkey constituted the study group. To evaluate the CO levels of the students, CO Scale (min-max score 14-70) and to evaluate the personality type, Ten Item-Personality Inventory (TIPI) was used. The questionnaire prepared in accordance with literature was filled out online by the students. Mann Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis analyses and Multiple Linear Regression was used. Results In the study, 1847 (62.5%) were female and the mean age was 19.9±1.8 years. The mean score obtained from the CO scale was 21.1±8.1; 41.8% of the participants had the Agreeableness personality type. Male gender, extended family, not good at face-to-face communication with friends, creating a membership by hiding their identity in social media and being ignored in social media were predictive for CO (F: 69.176, R2: 0.172, p < 0.001) was shown in multiple linear regression. Conclusions Distance education programs during the pandemic period have limited the face-to-face communication of young people, causing them to spend more time in cyberspace. Personality type has been an important factor affecting the level of cyberostracism by determining our behaviour when exposed to difficult life events. Key messages

A Study on Turkish Books in Wattpad Platform using Tags and Popularity Rankings

Wattpad platform has reached a significant number of users in Turkey as well as in the world. Therefore, books written in Turkish on Wattpad are essential reference sources for researchers to determine the transformation and development of Turkish and popular literature in the digital environment. The tags are keywords assigned by the author and contain valuable information about the general characteristics of a book. The browse categories when sorted by hot listing option, give a popularity ranking of a category at the current time. Tags enable the readers to discover the book more easily and provides the book to be ranked on top of the popularity rankings. In this study, from the tags that are obtained from the top 10 books of popularity rankings of a 13-year-old user profile, it is aimed to analyze the subjects of interest of adolescent readers, their choices and the quality of the Turkish books that appeal to them. The tags are classified and it was determined that the most used tags among the classified groups were related to the genre of the story, the subject of the story, and the K-pop culture, respectively. This shows the effect of K-pop culture in Turkish books on Wattpad. It is also seen that words related to kinship and affinity names, professions and occupational names, media and social media communication tools, mature themes, venues, supernatural, and mythological elements, Watty Awards, gender and age, religions, personal, physical and age characteristics of protagonists, and reign are used as tags.

Understanding the Concept of Social Media Marketing: The Role of Marketing Dimensions Influencing Consumer Brand Loyalty

Marketing through social media has become one of the largest platforms for human interaction in the past decade. The total number of social media users in Pakistan has crossed 35 million, which is 16% of the population. This research focuses on empirically testing a theoretical model having social networking, community engagement, and brand use as main antecedents impacting brand loyalty with brand trust as mediator. This research used a comprehensive model of brand loyalty for the development of social media strategy to influence consumer's brand perceptions along with brand trust. The population of the study consists of those 500 consumers belonging from public sector platforms who use social media channels to purchase the products. Moreover, a non-probability convenience sampling technique is applied to gather the data via the electronic survey method. Furthermore, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique, Reliability analysis, Confirmatory factor analysis techniques are applied to test the proposed hypothesis as proposed by Heir et al., (2013). The results show a significantly affirmative and direct effect of social networking on consumer brand loyalty. Community Engagement and Brand usage also substantially affects consumer loyalty with the mediating role of brand trust. The findings validate a significant role of community engagement and social networking in developing brand loyalty. Thus, the research findings are expected to be helpful for marketing firms in managing their social media communication tools.

Conspiracy Theories During Coronavirus Times – the Saplings of a New Gnosticism Inside the Church

"Abstract Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, we have been bombarded with a constant stream of conspiracy theories and fake news regarding the coronavirus, vaccines, 5G radiation, microchips. Some of these theories have circulated only inside fringe communities on the internet, but most have been transmitted very intensely amongst the faithful, and some have made it up to the highest levels of the Church hierarchy. The question we would like to address in this article is why do Christians succumb and are so likely to transmit to others such statements, whose falsity is blatantly obvious to anybody with a very basic high-school physics education. It is our opinion that this pro-conspiracy attitude is the syndrome of a very incomplete catechization and of a resurgence of gnostic heretical thinking, encouraged by the new social media communication tools. We will begin with a brief review of Gnosticism, of what made it so popular at the beginning of the Christian era, and of what brought about its demise. We will then show that the same mechanism that was at work in the Gnostic thinking responsible for the propagation and acceptance of conspiracy theories. Keywords: Gnosticism, Conspiracy Theories"

Social media attitudes among vocational school students

<span>The rapid developments in communication technologies in recent years, especially the introduction of the internet into our daily lives, have brought many changes in social, economic and cultural life.One of these changes; social media communication tools that enter our lives rapidly.Social media has become an indispensable part of our lives with the increasing number of users.Researches show that young people especially university students frequently use social media communication tools. In this study, social media attitudes of Vocational High School students were investigated and in this context, 502 students studying at Sakarya University and Kafkas University Vocational High Schools were studied.Social Media Attitude Scale developed by Otrar and Argınwas used to determine the social media attitudes of Vocational School students.The scale consists of 23 items. Relational screening method was used in the research. Necessary analyzes were performed with SPSS 24 program and mean and standard deviation values of the scale items were calculated.Two groups t test, one-way Anova test and Post-Hoc Scheffe test were used to correlate social media attitudes with demographic data.In conclusion, there was no significant difference between students' social media attitudes and gender, department, class, internet usage time demographic data; however, there was a positive and significant relationship between social media attitudes and internet connection year and social media usage hours.</span>

The effect of firm created content and user generated content evaluation on customer-based brand equity

The purpose of this paper is to investigate social media communication and its impact on customer-based brand equity. Compare two social media communication tools that are firm created content and user generated content. A total of 114 data sets developed through a standard online survey to investigate the impact of firm created content and user-generated content evaluation in social media on brand awareness / association, perceived quality and brand loyalty to the cosmetics industry in Indonesia. A mini survey was conducted to find out the types of cosmetic brands that do not perform ad campaigns in traditional media such as television to see clearly the influence of brand communication in social media against brand awareness and association. The author applies Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) techniques to investigate the effect of communication on social media on customer-based brand equity. The findings of this study indicate that evaluation of firm created content has a positive and significant impact on brand association / awareness, perceived quality and brand loyalty. Meanwhile, evaluation of user-generated content has significant effect only on brand awareness / association and perceived quality. In the dimensions of customer-based brand equity, only perceived quality is significantly influenced by brand awareness / association. This research is relevant for marketers for the development of corporate strategy, especially in the cosmetics industry that uses social media as a medium of communication to customers. 
 Keywords : Marketing, Firm created content, User generated content, Customer based brand equity, SEM

COMMUNICATION OF RADIATION BENEFITS AND RISKS IN DECISION MAKING: SOME LESSONS LEARNED

This paper is focused on summarizing the "lessons learned" from discussions at the 2010 NCRP Annual Meeting on effective communications on the subject of radiation benefits and risks in public exposures. Five main lessons learned are discussed in regard to effective methods of public communication: the use of new social media communication tools such as Facebook and Twitter, emergency situations that require rapid societal and personal messaging, medical radiological procedures where benefits must be described in comparison to long-term health risks of radiation exposures, and information that should be provided to stakeholders in situations such as environmental radionuclide contamination to which members of the public may be exposed. It is concluded that effective communications in which radiation benefits are contrasted with health risks of exposure are an important aspect of making and implementing decisions on employing radiation health protection procedures.