Social Media Infrastructure Research Articles

The production of knowledge through religious and social media infrastructure: world making practices among Brazilian Pentecostals

ABSTRACT Following Robertson’s discussions on epistemic capital, the article analyses worldmaking procedures being used by members of one of the biggest neo-Pentecostal churches in Brazil – Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus. According to the popular narrative, social media, especially WhatsApp groups, contributed in a crucial way to the spread of sets of conspiracy theories aimed to question “established narratives” and creating an image of Jair Bolsonaro, currently the president of Brazil, as the sole hero (“the messiah” and “the myth”) fighting against the “corrupted” Brazilian state and the “globalist/communist cabal.” The article discusses interactions between members of so-called families created by the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus. These families could have between a few or around one hundred members, and they are in regular communication (at least a few times per day) through WhatsApp. Most members of one family do not live in walking proximity; therefore, using WhatsApp is often the primary way they interact. The article puts families into a broader context of the media ecosystem owned or influenced by Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus and contextualizes the church as a religious “infrastructure of knowing.” The article discusses sources of legitimization of particular knowledge produced and mediated between families. The article argues that communication in families contributes to the creation of unique epistemic tools crucial in re-creating individual worldviews of members Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus.

Citizens’ social media adoption in Paraguay

Abstract This article aims to identify factors associated with the use of social media by Paraguayan citizens in their relationship with the government. We gathered data using a vignette survey, which recorded the responses to four public service problems and collected scores on perceived effectiveness, capability, social influence, trust in government, trust in social media infrastructure, and social media anxiety. Multivariate analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Perceived effectiveness, social influence, and trust in social media infrastructures were found to be significantly correlated with citizens’ use of such media to report public service issues. On the other hand, capability, trust in government, and social media anxiety were not found to be associated with citizens’ social media use. The results urge further theorization to disentangle how perceived effectiveness, social influence, and trust in social media infrastructures affect digital citizen engagement and participation and under what conditions proprietary social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter contribute to a vibrant democracy.

Going Viral: The 3 Rs of Social Media Messaging during Public Health Emergencies.

Going Viral: The 3 Rs of Social Media Messaging during Public Health Emergencies.

Social media infrastructure of the Russians civic participation: the analysis of audience intersection graphs for socio-political communities on Runet

The article presents the results of the analysis of the digital infrastructure of civil and political participation of Russians, it shows the connections between the audiences of online network communities, reflecting markers of the attitude of Russian social media users to the current government and indicators of the involvement of Russian citizens in the implementation of social initiatives. To construct graphs, we used a tool for unloading information and modeling the infrastructure of social connections of graphs, created on the basis of the programming language R. Additionally, the vkR packages were used to unload information from the VKontakte social network, as well as the igraph and ggraph packages for working with graphs and arcdiagram for visualisation. To interpret the empirical data, the principles of the network approach and the methodology of smart search for digital markers of socio-political processes were applied. As a result of the study, indicators of the density of communications between digital groups of political and civil participation were revealed, and the intersection of their audiences was established. Segments of the infrastructure of connections are shown both for all socio-media communities (research cases) and for each block of communities classified on two grounds: orientation (loyal or critically oriented towards the authorities) and type of group (political or civil). The intersection of audiences of loyalist and oppositional online communities was revealed and reflected in the graphs. The disunity and distance between loyalist, conventional audiences of groups carrying out political communication from civil groups, who are also constructively disposed towards the authorities, are shown. Revealed and graphically interpreted the techniques of capturing the user audience in the activities of opposition online leaders. Risks of a low density of connections between audiences of loyal social media communities have been substantiated. A relatively high density of connections has been established between opposition political online groups aimed at forming unconventional, deconsolidating attitudes of Russian social media users. Basic measures have been formulated to overcome the danger of consolidating supporters of opposition digital groups and the risks of increasing the influence of critical online leaders among the loyalist audience.

Public feedback on a proposed statewide virtual translational research community.

Researchers have explored using the internet and social media to recruit participants to specific research projects. Less systematic work has been done to inform the engagement of large populations in virtual communities to advance clinical and translational science. We report on our first step to use social media to engage Minnesota residents by studying the willingness of participants to engage in a virtual (Facebook) community about the concepts of health and health-related research. Data were collected at the 2018 Minnesota State Fair using a cross-sectional, 46-item survey with assessment including sociodemographics and willingness to engage in a Facebook group for health-related research. Quantitative analysis included univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses. Content analysis was used to generate themes from open-ended survey responses. Five hundred people completed the survey; after data cleaning, 418 participant responses informed this report. A majority were younger than age 50 (73%), female (66%), and married/partnered (54%). Overall, 46% of participants agreed/strongly agreed they are willing to join the Facebook group. Multivariate logistic regression identified social media use over the past 6 months as the sole variable independently associated with willingness to join the Facebook group (once a day vs. never or rarely OR = 1.82 (0.86, 3.88), several hours a day vs. never or rarely OR = 2.17 (1.17, 4.02, overall p-value 0.048). Facebook holds potential for reaching a broader community, democratizing access to and engagement with clinical and translational research. Social media infrastructure and content could be disseminated to other institutions with Clinical and Translational Science Awards.

IMPROVING MARKETING FUNCTIONS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE AMONG CONSTRUCTION SMEs

With over 3.5 billion people connected to the internet, small and medium-scale (SME) construction businesses have the opportunity to enhance their customer base. The study assessed ways by which marketing functions of SME construction businesses can be improved through social media presence of the firms. The study used a quota-purposive sampling of construction businesses in Nigeria's mega city, Lagos State. The small and medium scale construction businesses comprised of consulting and contracting firms. Using a questionnaire instrument, the social media arm of the marketing unit of SME construction businesses was measured. Presentation of the data was carried out using pie charts and principal component analysis. The study identified two main critical success factors (CSFs)-Firm/Social Media characteristics and Security/Investment factor enabling the Social Media infrastructure for SME construction businesses. A focus on these entities would ensure the successful integration of social media marketing strategies in the traditional marketing functions of construction SMEs. The survival of SME construction business is hinged on the availability of customers which social media exposure helps attract and interact with potential customers. SME Construction businesses of the 21st century must align with the 'global village' trend of incorporating social media applications in their traditional marketing functions.

A graph-based comprehensive reputation model: Exploiting the social context of opinions to enhance trust in social commerce

Social commerce is a promising new paradigm of e-commerce. Given the open and dynamic nature of social media infrastructure, the governance structures of social commerce are usually realized through reputation mechanisms. However, the existing approaches to the prediction of trust in future interactions are based on personal observations and/or publicly shared information in social commerce application. As a result, the indications are unreliable and biased because of limited first-hand information and stakeholder manipulation for personal strategic interests. Methods that extract trust values from social links among users can improve the performance of reputation mechanisms. Nonetheless, these links may not always be available and are typically sparse in social commerce, especially for new users. Thus, this study proposes a new graph-based comprehensive reputation model to build trust by fully exploiting the social context of opinions based on the activities and relationship networks of opinion contributors. The proposed model incorporates the behavioral activities and social relationship reputations of users to combat the scarcity of first-hand information and identifies a set of critical trust factors to mitigate the subjectivity of opinions and the dynamics of behaviors. Furthermore, we enhance the model by developing a novel deception filtering approach to discard “bad-mouthing” opinions and by exploiting a personalized direct distrust (risk) metric to identify malicious providers. Experimental results show that the proposed reputation model can outperform other trust and reputation models in most cases.

Provenance Data in Social Media

Social media shatters the barrier to communicate anytime anywhere for people of all walks of life. The publicly available, virtually free information in social media poses a new challenge to consumers who have to discern whether a piece of information published in social media is reliable. For example, it can be difficult to understand the motivations behind a statement passed from one user to another, without knowing the person who originated the message. Additionally, false information can be propagated through social media, resulting in embarrassment or irreversible damages. Provenance data associated with a social media statement can help dispel rumors, clarify opinions, and confirm facts. However, provenance data about social media statements is not readily available to users today. Currently, providing this data to users requires changing the social media infrastructure or offering subscription services. Taking advantage of social media features, research in this nascent field spearheads the search for a way to provide provenance data to social media users, thus leveraging social media itself by mining it for the provenance data. Searching for provenance data reveals an interesting problem space requiring the development and application of new metrics in order to provide meaningful provenance data to social media users. This lecture reviews the current research on information provenance, explores exciting research opportunities to address pressing needs, and shows how data mining can enable a social media user to make informed judgements about statements published in social media.

The future of social media for online communities — Interview with Rudy Thurston, Chief Operating Officer at Omnifuse, Inc.

Rudy Thurston has been developing social media infrastructure for Omnifuse for the past decade. We spoke to him recently about some of his successes in the field and his view of the future of social media for online communities.