Social Media Environment Research Articles

The Bright Side of Social Media: Social Media Platforms Adoption and Start-Up Sustainability.

This study aims to explicate the contribution of social media platforms adoption on start-up sustainability. Since most economies of the world start-up failure rate are relatively high, there is always a desire or a need to investigate the success recipe. As a result, the primary objective of this study is to understand the social media environment and how start-ups can best utilize social media platforms throughout their life cycle. Based on the qualitative case study approach, five in-depth interviews of social media marketers and individuals working in start-ups were conducted. The finding demonstrates that social media is a crucial virtual platform for striving resource start-ups. Therefore, if a platform gets utilized correctly, it can play an essential role in the sustainable progression of a start-up. Thus, there is a need for start-ups to articulate a comprehensive social media policy for each life cycle stage.

Adolescent Peer Influence on Eating Behaviors via Social Media: Scoping Review.

BackgroundThe influence of social media among adolescent peer groups can be a powerful change agent.ObjectiveOur scoping review aimed to elucidate the ways in which social media use among adolescent peers influences eating behaviors.MethodsA scoping review of the literature of articles published from journal inception to 2019 was performed by searching PubMed (ie, MEDLINE), Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and other databases. The review was conducted in three steps: (1) identification of the research question and clarification of criteria using the population, intervention, comparison, and outcome (PICO) framework; (2) selection of articles from the literature using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines; and (3) charting and summarizing information from selected articles. PubMed’s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and Embase’s Emtree subject headings were reviewed along with specific keywords to construct a comprehensive search strategy. Subject headings and keywords were based on adolescent age groups, social media platforms, and eating behaviors. After screening 1387 peer-reviewed articles, 37 articles were assessed for eligibility. Participant age, gender, study location, social media channels utilized, user volume, and content themes related to findings were extracted from the articles.ResultsSix articles met the final inclusion criteria. A final sample size of 1225 adolescents (aged 10 to 19 years) from the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Brazil, and Australia were included in controlled and qualitative studies. Instagram and Facebook were among the most popular social media platforms that influenced healthful eating behaviors (ie, fruit and vegetable intake) as well as unhealthful eating behaviors related to fast food advertising. Online forums served as accessible channels for eating disorder relapse prevention among youth. Social media influence converged around four central themes: (1) visual appeal, (2) content dissemination, (3) socialized digital connections, and (4) adolescent marketer influencers.ConclusionsAdolescent peer influence in social media environments spans the spectrum of healthy eating (ie, pathological) to eating disorders (ie, nonpathological). Strategic network-driven approaches should be considered for engaging adolescents in the promotion of positive dietary behaviors.

The Body Confident Mums challenge: a feasibility trial and qualitative evaluation of a body acceptance program delivered to mothers using Facebook

BackgroundMotherhood is a time of intense physical, psychological, and identity transformation, and body dissatisfaction may emerge through the process of pregnancy, birth, and adaptation to parenting. We present a feasibility trial of the Body Confident Mums Challenge, a program developed by adapting existing, effective interventions that focus on self-compassion and appreciation of body functionality to be specific to mothers.MethodsThe program was delivered using the social learning function in a closed Facebook group. Qualitative evaluation of evidence of change was conducted by gathering individual written reflections posted during the challenge (n = 120). Feasibility and acceptability was determined using a feedback survey (n = 22).ResultsParticipant’s reflective posts indicated that they were embracing self-compassion, and de-prioritising body image concerns during the challenge. Feedback indicated that the program was mostly feasible and acceptable for mothers, with recommendations from some participants relating to slowing the pace of content delivery and reducing the time commitment of the Challenge.ConclusionsThe social media environment may therefore be a useful setting in which to implement brief intervention programs to improve body image and wellbeing.

The platformisation of public service broadcasting in Germany: The network ‘funk’ and the case of Druck/Skam Germany

This article investigates how platformisation changes the practices of content production and distribution through the case of the web series, Druck (tr. Pressure (2018–), for the public service content network ‘funk’ (ARD and ZDF). An analysis of the German adaptation of the Norwegian television and web series Skam (tr. Shame) (NRK3, 2015–2017) shows how public service broadcasting (PSB) in Germany is changing due to the influence of social media. To reach a younger audience, PSB has to meet them on third-party platforms. Consequently, PSB must provide content that fits the mobile media environment of social media.

Consumer Attitudes' Influence on Food Purchase Intentions and Social Networking Service Recommendations

Even after 10 years of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which occurred in March 2011, the radioactive contamination ensuing from the earthquake continues to cause food contamination anxiety in Japan. In this context, this study examined how Japanese food quality shapes foreign consumers’ attitudes, which, in turn, influence their purchase intentions in a social media environment.<BR> The study conducted a survey on Korean consumers’ awareness of the quality attributes of Japanese food. The study investigated the purchasing intention using the Fishbein’s attitude model in relation to the quality of Japanese food and sharing and recommendation through the social networking services (SNS). The analysis was performed using the covariance analysis.<BR> The results showed that the quality attributes of Japanese food strongly influence attitude, which, in turn, significantly influences purchase intentions and SNS sharing. The purchase intention significantly influences the SNS recommendations.<BR> These findings have value in demonstrating the moderating role of SNS sharing and recommendations in the causal relationship between attributes, attitudes, and purchase intentions. These findings have practical implications in that they demonstrate the significance of enhancing the import quality of Japanese food and using SNS to influence purchase intentions.

Learning without seeking?: Incidental exposure to science news on social media &amp; knowledge of gene editing

Little is known about how incidental exposure to news, interpersonal discussion, and the diversity of social networks interact in social media environments and for science-related issues. Using a U.S. nationally representative survey, we investigate how these features relate to factual knowledge of gene editing. Incidental exposure to science-related news interacts with interpersonal discussion and network heterogeneity and reveals that the relationship between incidental exposure to news and knowledge is strongest among those who discuss the least. Incidental exposure could alleviate knowledge gaps between the Facebook users who are the most and least involved in interpersonal discussions about science.

Regenerative crisis, social media publics and Internet trolling: A cultural discourse approach

Given that a regenerative crisis life cycle is no longer static, communication dynamics have extended beyond organization-receiver relationship to receiver-receiver relationship in the social media environment. This paper analyzes and explicates the socio-cultural meanings in the interaction processes of the crisis publics with a specific socio-political context by blending the concept of Internet trolling into predominant crisis communication theories (i.e. social-mediated crisis communication and regenerative crisis model).Using cultural discourse analysis (CuDA), we analyzed the top influential posts, comments and responses created by both influential social media users and general followers based on the five discourse hubs or radiants of identity, relation, action, dwelling, and emotion in the Lancôme case, which was regarded as the most heated crisis in Hong Kong after and influenced by the Umbrella Movement. The findings suggest that the motivations and behaviors found within each of the crisis publics––influencers and followers––are fundamentally different from each other by nature along the situated regenerative crisis. Two types of social media influencers (i.e. primary and secondary influencers) were identified. We propose a regenerative crisis model of publics to highlight their roles, purposes, behaviors, interaction processes, and emotions within a situated socio-political tension. This paper also discusses the theoretical implications for social-mediated crisis communication literature and the practical implications that take contextual factors into consideration.

Democratic Disruption in the Age of Social Media: Between Marketized and Structural Conceptions of Human Rights Law

Abstract Once hailed as beacons of democracy, social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter now find themselves credited with its decay. Amidst a rising global techlash and growing calls for digital constitutionalism, this article develops a typology of the diverse forms of governance enabled by social media platforms and examines the contestability of human rights law in addressing the accountability deficits that characterize the platform economy. The article examines two interrelated forms of social media governance in particular: content moderation, encompassing the practices through which social media companies determine the permissibility and visibility of online content on their platforms; and data surveillance, encompassing the practices through which social media companies process personal data in accordance with their extractivist business models. Recognizing that human rights law is a vocabulary of governance with the potential to both restrain and legitimate particular relations of power within the platform economy, this article critically examines two rival conceptions of human rights law – marketized and structural – that may be relied upon to address the accountability shortfalls that pervade the contemporary social media ecosystem. The article ultimately argues in favour of a more structural conception of human rights law, one characterized by an openness to positive state intervention to safeguard public and collective values such as media pluralism and diversity as well as a systemic lens that strives to take into account imbalances of power in the social media ecosystem and the effects of state and platform practices on the social media environment as a whole.

Elevated Inter-Brain Coherence Between Subjects With Concordant Stances During Discussion of Social Issues.

Social media platforms offer convenient, instantaneous social sharing on a mass scale with tremendous impact on public perceptions, opinions, and behavior. There is a need to understand why information spreads including the human motivations, cognitive processes, and neural dynamics of large-scale sharing. This study introduces a novel approach for investigating the effect social media messaging and in-person discussion has on the inter-brain dynamics within small groups of participants. The psychophysiological impact of information campaigns and narrative messaging within a closed social media environment was assessed using 24-channel wireless EEG. Data were acquired from three- or four-person groups while subjects debated contemporary social issues framed by four scenarios of varying controversy: (a) investing in ethical vs. unethical corporations, (b) selecting travel destination based on social awareness, (c) determining verdict in a murder trial and the punishment of life in prison or death penalty, and (d) decision to vaccinate. Pre-/post-scenario questionnaires assess the effects of the social media information. Inter-brain coherence between subject pairs on each social issue discussed by subjects was analyzed by concordance, agreement vs. disagreement, and by group unanimity, unanimous vs. not unanimous. Subject pairs that agreed on the social issues raised in the scenarios had significantly greater inter-brain coherence in gamma frequency range than disagreeing pairs over cortical regions known to be involved in social interactions. These effects were magnified when comparing groups where subject pairs were unanimous in their stance on the social issues for some but not all scenarios. While there was considerable overlap between scenarios in what EEG channels were significant, there was enough variability to indicate the possibility of scenario-specific effects on inter-brain coherence.

Assessing Suicide Reporting in Top Newspaper Social Media Accounts in China: Content Analysis Study

BackgroundPrevious studies have shown that suicide reporting in mainstream media has a significant impact on suicidal behaviors (eg, irresponsible suicide reporting can trigger imitative suicide). Traditional mainstream media are increasingly using social media platforms to disseminate information on public-related topics, including health. However, there is little empirical research on how mainstream media portrays suicide on social media platforms and the quality of their coverage.ObjectiveThis study aims to explore the characteristics and quality of suicide reporting by mainstream publishers via social media in China.MethodsVia the application programming interface of the social media accounts of the top 10 Chinese mainstream publishers (eg, People’s Daily and Beijing News), we obtained 2366 social media posts reporting suicide. This study conducted content analysis to demonstrate the characteristics and quality of the suicide reporting. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, we assessed the quality of suicide reporting by indicators of harmful information and helpful information.ResultsChinese mainstream publishers most frequently reported on suicides stated to be associated with conflict on their social media (eg, 24.47% [446/1823] of family conflicts and 16.18% [295/1823] of emotional frustration). Compared with the suicides of youth (730/1446, 50.48%) and urban populations (1454/1588, 91.56%), social media underreported suicides in older adults (118/1446, 8.16%) and rural residents (134/1588, 8.44%). Harmful reporting practices were common (eg, 54.61% [1292/2366] of the reports contained suicide-related words in the headline and 49.54% [1172/2366] disclosed images of people who died by suicide). Helpful reporting practices were very limited (eg, 0.08% [2/2366] of reports provided direct information about support programs).ConclusionsThe suicide reporting of mainstream publishers on social media in China broadly had low adherence to the WHO guidelines. Considering the tremendous information dissemination power of social media platforms, we suggest developing national suicide reporting guidelines that apply to social media. By effectively playing their separate roles, we believe that social media practitioners, health institutions, social organizations, and the general public can endeavor to promote responsible suicide reporting in the Chinese social media environment.

Key motivations for leading Facebook communities: a uses and gratifications approach

PurposeFacebook community leaders, often nonprofessionals who make a personal decision to create and manage online spaces, are becoming key players on social media sites. Using the theoretical framework of the uses and gratifications theory, this paper reveals the motivations of these individuals who are responsible for the community's information flow, limits and members' well-being. While some studies have begun acknowledging community leaders' important role in the social media, very little is known about their motivations for creating and leading the communities, often voluntarily.Design/methodology/approachUsing both quantitative and qualitative analyses, data were collected through a survey of 94 Facebook community leaders about their motivations for creating and leading their communities.FindingsThe content analysis of the open-ended question reveals that leaders are motivated to create communities to satisfy informational needs, social needs and individual interests. A factor analysis shows five distinct motivations for leading: social, personal, influence, efficacy and community goals. Finally, a hierarchical regression indicates that extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, time spent per day and being the creator of the community can predict the level of motivation to lead the Facebook community.Originality/valueAs more and more organizations use online communities, the findings of this study may provide insights into leaders' motivations that can help organizations select their community leaders. This study expands on current research about a popular communication tool, Facebook communities, by examining it within the context of the unique role of online leadership in the social media environment.

Between, Behind, and Out of Sight

Between, Behind, and Out of Sight

The effects of ad social and personal relevance on consumer ad engagement on social media: The moderating role of platform trust

The growing number of firms leveraging social media for marketing purposes highlights the urgent need for firms to understand consumer perceptions and attitudes toward posted ads. This study builds on the elaboration likelihood model to characterize how different types of ad relevance, namely, personal and social relevance, determine the ad's perceived conversation value and consumer social motivation and further impact consumer ad engagement. Platform trustworthiness is becoming an important issue of concern for users. We further examine the role that platform trust plays in moderating the effects of personal and social relevance on perceived conversation value and social motivation. The results reveal that personally and socially related ads provide more conversation value for consumers and lead to higher social motivation among consumers, which can increase consumer engagement with ads. On social media platforms with relatively high user trust, the positive effects of personal ad relevance are magnified. This study deepens the current understanding of social media ads and extends the research on social media platform trustworthiness. Our findings may help firms to develop targeted and effective advertising schemes in social media environments.

Engaging citizens in sustainability research: comparing survey recruitment and responses between Facebook, Twitter and qualtrics

PurposeThe study aims to compare survey recruitment rates between Facebook, Twitter and Qualtrics and to assess the impact of recruitment method on estimates of energy content, food safety, carbon footprint and animal welfare across 29 foods.Design/methodology/approachTwo versions of an online survey were developed on the citizen science platform, Zooniverse. The surveys explored citizen estimations of energy density (kcal) or carbon footprint (Co2) and food safety or animal welfare of 29 commonly eaten foods. Survey recruitment was conducted via paid promotions on Twitter and Facebook and via paid respondent invites on Qualtrics. The study included approximately 500 participants (Facebook, N˜11 (ratings 358), Twitter, N˜85 (ratings 2,184), Qualtrics, N = 398 (ratings 11,910)). Kruskal–Wallis and Chi-square analyses compared citizen estimations with validated values and assessed the impact of the variables on estimations.FindingsCitizens were unable to accurately estimate carbon footprint and energy content, with most citizens overestimating values. Citizen estimates were most accurate for meat products. Qualtrics was the most successful recruitment method for the online survey. Citizen estimates between platforms were significantly different, suggesting that Facebook and Twitter may not be suitable recruitment methods for citizen online surveys.Practical implicationsQualtrics was the favourable platform for survey recruitment. However, estimates across all recruitment platforms were poor. As paid recruitment methods such as Qualtrics are costly, the authors recommend continued examination of the social media environment to develop appropriate, affordable and timely online recruitment strategies for citizen science.Originality/valueThe findings indicate that citizens are unable to accurately estimate the carbon footprint and energy content of foods suggesting a focus on consumer education is needed to enable consumers to move towards more sustainable and healthy diets. Essential if we are to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals of zero hunger, good health and wellbeing and responsible consumption and production. The study highlights the utility of Zooniverse for assessing citizen estimates of carbon footprint, energy content, animal welfare and safety of foods.

Economic Activity as a Determinant for Customer Adoption of Social Media Marketing

The issue of an effective use of social media as a tool of responsible and sustainable corporate communication policy has been the subject of intensive research for more than a decade. The presented study examines the issue of customer acceptance of communication activities of organizations in the social media environment. The aim of the study is to identify, through an empirical analysis performed on a sample of 1584 Central Europeans, whether the form of economic activity of the customer has an impact on the degree of acceptance of corporate marketing communication on social media. Based on a thorough statistical analysis, it can be stated that the perception of the use of e-marketing on social media is statistically significantly related to the economic activity of the customer. Social media marketing is perceived as rather positive by customers belonging to the category of students and entrepreneurs, while this form of promotion is evaluated neutrally by customers from the category of the unemployed and retirees. Negative acceptance is recorded only insignificantly across all involved groups. Based on the similarity of the behavior of customer groups, it is possible to more precisely target the online activity of organizations, thereby increasing the efficiency of spending business resources and eliminating market risks in terms of reputational issues.

Early Days of the Novel Coronavirus: Public Response in Social Media during the First Month of the Outbreak

The aim of the article is to give an overview of the first month of the novel coronavirus outbreak and of the public reactions to the news in media comments and social media environments in both local Estonian and global contexts. The pandemic was still ongoing at the time the article was published and, with some modifications and new emphases, vernacular reactions in the media (incl. social media) continued flourishing. During the first month (January 2020), the growing flow of information and rapid escalation of the situation made the topic more noticeable in both the media and social media, and thus provided a fertile basis for jokes and internet memes, legends, fake news, misinformation, conspiracy theories, etc., as was the case with the former bigger epidemics and pandemics. As it has also been observed previously, the consequences of some fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories may often be more harmful for society than the disease itself. Several motifs and storylines are universal and surge as similar situations arise both in Estonia and all over the world. The article also presents a selection of more prominent topics and examples of the outbreak from social media environments during the initial phase of international awareness of the novel coronavirus.

Realistic influence maximization based on followers score and engagement grade on instagram

In recent years, the emergence of social media influencers attracts the study of a realistic influence maximization (IM) technique. The theoretical performance of IM has become matured. However, it is not enough since IM has to be implemented in a social media environment. Realistic IM algorithms and diffusion models have been proposed, such as the addition of user factors or a learning agent. However, most studies still relied on the influence spread benchmark, which makes the usefulness questionable. This research is among the first IM study using Instagram data. In this study, two diffusion models are proposed, which are based on the original IC and LT models, with the addition of the engagement grade (EG) factor. An algorithm called IMFS (IM with followers score) is proposed to accommodate the new models as well as IC and LT. In addition, realistic benchmark methods are proposed, namely the average engagement of the activated users, and the overlapping between post likers and activated users. The result shows that the proposed models are 2-3x more realistic if compared to IC and LT.

A study on firms’ communication based on artificial intelligence and its influence on customers’ complaint behavior in Social media environment

The purpose of the study is to understand actual behavior of customers and firms by analyzing the real time interaction between firm and customers on social media platform. The study also pursues to assess the way firms respond to the customer’s complaint on different social media platforms through autobots based on artificial intelligence. The study identifies official Facebook and Twitter pages of top online shopping portals. The number of complaints and responses posted on these pages are documented and analyzed. Netnography method is used for data collection. Connotation key words are used for selection of comments and tweets. The study concludes that organizations respond to the most of the complaints publically but they further ask for the personal interaction with the complainer to resolve the complaint through pre-defined statements. The study has also revealed that pre-defined statements stated by autobots based on artificial intelligence seem insufficient to resolve customer complaints. The limitation of the study is associated with the netnography technique, which has restricted the exploration to only those consumers who have posted comments on Twitter or Facebook. Hence, other physical factors i.e. customer responses through numerous offline modes were absconded. The study is limited to Facebook and Twitter only. This study is limited to four major online shopping portals; it leaves a lot of scope to analyze other industries such as banking and insurance, hospitality, aviation etc. The output of the study suggests that the firms need to be conscious enough to provide customized and adaptive solutions to the customers’ complaints instead of pre-defined responses through artificial intelligence as it lacks emotions to empathize with customers’ issues. As per the literature of review, methods chosen in previous researches by researchers were having a methodological gap, as netnography in social media environment remained unused earlier, which has reinforced to analyze original behavior of customers and responsiveness of organization.

Cyber Bullying Detection based on Semantic-Enhanced Marginalized De noising Auto-Encoder

As a side effect of increasingly popular social media, cyber bullying has emerged as a serious problem afflicting children, adolescents and young adults. Machine learning techniques make automatic detection of bullying messages in social media possible, and this could help to construct a healthy and safe social media environment. One critical issue is robust and discriminative numerical representation learning of text messages. In this, we propose a new representation learning method to tackle this problem. Our method named Semantic-Enhanced Marginalized Denoising Auto-Encoder (smSDA) is developed via semantic extension of the popular deep learning model stacked denoising autoencoder. The semantic extension consists of semantic dropout noise and sparsity constraints, where the semantic dropout noise is designed based on domain knowledge and the word embedding technique. Our proposed method is able to exploit the hidden feature structure of bullying information and learn a robust and discriminative representation of text.

A DESINFORMAÇÃO NO PROCESSO ELETRÔNICO DE VOTAÇÃO: UMA ANÁLISE SOB O ASPECTO DA COMPETÊNCIA INFORMACIONAL DO INDIVÍDUO

A democracia pressupõe a participação das pessoas em processos decisórios que, em alguma medida, afetam individual e/ou coletivamente suas vidas. Um dos pilares da democracia representativa é a liberdade de expressão, concebida como direito fundamental que, no contexto constitucional brasileiro, garante aos cidadãos a “livre manifestação do pensamento.” Outro sustentáculo, não menos importante, é o direito à informação, igualmente protegido pela Constituição Federal, que garante às pessoas o acesso a conteúdos informacionais de interesse individual e coletivo. Mas o que acontece quando a liberdade de expressão é usada para disseminar informações falsas? E quando esse processo corrompido se utiliza das facilidades tecnológicas e da falta de competência informacional dos usuários para propagar a desinformação no país? É nesse contexto que o sistema de votação eletrônica vem sofrendo ataques constantes, sobretudo no ambiente das redes sociais. O presente artigo tem por objetivo geral mapear os artigos acadêmicos que se debruçam sobre as temáticas competência informacional, desinformação e fake news, além dos objetivos específicos: contextualizar a temática competência informacional e desinformação, identificar ações já desenvolvidas de combate à desinformação no sistema de votação eletrônica brasileiro, e, propor iniciativas educacionais para o seu fortalecimento. A coleta foi realizada no portal Google Acadêmico, utilizando-se os termos “competência em informação”, “desinformação”, “fake news, além de “democracia”, “votação eletrônica” e “urna eletrônica”, nos idiomas português, inglês e espanhol. Por fim, apresentou uma proposta para estimular a iniciativa educacional no âmbito dos Tribunais Regionais Eleitorais.