Social Networking Service Users Research Articles

Social Media Continuance from the Perspective of Commitment

ABSTRACT Social network services (SNSs) have attracted more than 4.3 billion users worldwide. However, many feel SNSs have had an overall negative impact on society. This study utilizes the theory of reasoned action and rational choice theory to explore factors impacting SNS continuance. In addition, the study explores the moderating effect of commitment (i.e., whether an individual is considering leaving their SNS), on factors impacting continuance intention. Using 492 responses collected using MTurk, findings indicate that perceived benefits (i.e., enjoyment and learning) and the costs of non-usage (i.e., fear of missing out (FoMO)) positively impact an individual’s attitude toward SNS continuance while the cost of usage (i.e., privacy concerns) has a negative effect. Also, commitment was found to significantly affect the impact of FoMO on attitudes toward continuance. This study makes several significant contributions both to theory and practice related to individuals evolving perspectives on SNS usage.

SNS users' opinion expression: Focusing on suppression effect in spiral of silence

Based on the spiral of silence (SOS) and impression management (IM) theories, this study suggested perceived opinion support, fear of negative evaluation, and social network service (SNS) impression management as motivational factors of SNS users’ opinion expression. The empirical analysis results revealed that perceived opinion support had a negative effect on fear of negative evaluation and that fear of negative evaluation showed a negative influence on willingness to speak out. In contrast to the hypothesis presented in this study, fear of negative evaluation showed a positive influence on SNS impression management. Finally, SNS impression management had a positive influence on willingness to speak out. As a result, there was a competitive mediation, so further analysis revealed that SNS impression management acted as a suppression variable in the structural model. This study found a theoretical limitation that had been overlooked in SOS theory and suggested a new theoretical framework to reveal the process of opinion expression on social media using a theoretical combination with IM theory.

Data mining of IoT based sentiments to classify political opinions

ABSTRACT In recent years, an exponential increase in the usage of social network services has been observed. These community services are typically used through different applications including personal computers, multiple applications of modern smartphones and wearable technologies. Proper identification and separation of different languages text, topic-based classification of text and classification of active users based on their published comments and posts are major challenges. In this research, our primary focus is to deal with English text collected through different IoT applications to analyse posts/comments to categorise people’s opinion in politics. We have developed an IoT framework model for collecting data from social media especially Facebook, preprocessed and clean data to be used for analysis, and separation of data based on different languages. Sentiment analysis techniques are used to detect polarisation of the individual user. The proposed system clustered IoT individuals based on their comments and posts and successfully detected political polarisation. The proposed approach obtained encouraging results with a precision of 66.7%, a recall of 71.4%, and an F-measure of 69.0% in the case of annotated data of 50 users and a precision of 75.0%, a recall of 87.1%, and F-measure of 80.6% in the case of annotated data of 100 users.

The Role of Motivation Systems, Anxiety, and Low Self-Control in Smartphone Addiction among Smartphone-Based Social Networking Service (SNS) Users.

Given that Social Networking Service (SNS) has emerged as the most influential platform, which can lead users to addictive smartphone use, it is necessary to investigate which psychological variables lead smartphone-based SNS users to addictive smartphone use. Still, studies on the relationship between psychological variables and addictive smartphone use among smartphone-based SNS users remain to be explored. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the role of psychological factors on smartphone addiction proneness (SAP). A total of 433 smartphone-based SNS users were collected from 5003 adults in Korea. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, and path analysis using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 23.0. The results of a parallel-mediation path analysis demonstrated that Behavioral Inhibition (BIS), Behavioral activation (BAS) drive, anxiety, and low self-control directly influenced SAP, separately. BIS and BAS _drive also had significant indirect effects on SAP through the effect of anxiety. BIS and BAS_fun had significant indirect effects on SAP through the effect of low self-control. The study variables accounted for 38.4 of the total variances of SAP. Thus, when establishing interventions to reduce the users’ addictive smartphone use, these interactive relationships of the variables should be considered.

The predictive role of tourist-generated content on travel intentions: emotional mechanisms as mediators

ABSTRACT On the basic of Stimulus-Organism-Response model, this study aims to uncover emotional mechanisms behind the travel intention of social networking service users when they engage with tourist-generated content on the platform “WeChat Moments.” Data were collected from 465 respondents in mainland China via online questionnaire. All analysis was conducted by using PLS-SEM. The study results indicated that joviality positively mediates the relationship between perceived enjoyment and travel intention, and relative deprivation fully mediated the relationship between perceived conspicuousness and travel envy. This study clarifies the importance of emotional mechanisms on tourist-generated content regarding travel intention and distinguishing emotions in tourism marketing and social networking services.

The Impact of the Perceived Values of Social Network Services (SNSs) on Brand Attitude and Value-Co-Creation Behavior in the Coffee Industry

The coffee industry has grown into a highly competitive management environment, which has led to the contemplation of differentiated marketing strategies as tools for business success. Practitioners operate their own SNS brand pages to encourage customers to participate and engage in two-way interpersonal marketing practices that can generate value co-creation. This paper aims to explore the relationships among the types of value offered by SNSs, brand attitude, and customer value-co-creation behaviors in the hospitality context, by employing the Value–Attitude–Behavior model. Data were collected via an online survey research company and analyzed by PLS-SEM using SmartPLS 3.0 and Jamovi 1.0 software packages. A quantitative research method was carried out with a total of 406 adults in South Korea who had had both on-site and SNS coffee brand experiences within three months of the survey. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, information-seeking, entertainment, and expressive value all had a significant positive effect on brand attitude. Second, brand attitude had a significant positive effect on both customer participation behaviors and customer citizenship behaviors. The results of the current study suggest useful implications in that the usage of SNSs as marketing communication tools can influence not only online but also offline brand attitudes and customer value-co-creation behaviors.

Estimating the Best Time to View Cherry Blossoms Using Time-Series Forecasting Method

In recent years, tourist information collection using the internet has become common. Tourists are increasingly using internet resources to obtain tourist information. Social network service (SNS) users share tourist information of various kinds. Twitter, one SNS, has been used for many studies. We are pursuing research supporting a method using Twitter to help tourists obtain information: estimates of the best time to view cherry blossoms. Earlier studies have proposed a low-cost moving average method using geotagged tweets related to location information. Geotagged tweets are helpful as social sensors for real-time estimation and for the acquisition of local tourist information because the information can reflect real-world situations. Earlier studies have used weighted moving averages, indicating that a person can estimate the best time to view cherry blossoms in each prefecture. This study proposes a time-series prediction method using SNS data and machine learning as a new method for estimating the best times for viewing for a certain period. Combining the time-series forecasting method and the low-cost moving average method yields an estimate of the best time to view cherry blossoms. This report describes results confirming the usefulness of the proposed method by experimentation with estimation of the best time to view beautiful cherry blossoms in each prefecture and municipality.

A Study on the Causality Affecting of Instagram Usage Patterns on Immersion and Impulsive Purchase

Purpose Instagram is one of the most used social network services (SNS) in the world today. Instagram is widely used not only as a communication channel between people but also as a marketing channel for many companies. This study has explored the structure of what kind of causal relationship the Instagram usage pattern has in the structure that leads to immersion and impulsive purchase after examining what factors users’ Instagram usage patterns are linked to under this background, and specifically which Instagram usage patterns affect immersion. Design/Methodology/Approach Instagram usage patterns were structured from the three perspectives of information seeking, self-exposure, and exploration of others in this study through existing literature research and interview searches although SNS usage patterns were approached from various perspectives in previous related studies. Findings As a result of this study, it was found that the type of Instagram use affects the immersion, and it also showed a significant result in the causal relationship between the type of Instagram use, immersion, and impulse purchase. The results of this study provide useful academic and practical implications. Research Implications In particular, it provides practical implications for companies to consider when collecting Instagram-related marketing strategies by suggesting the causal relationship among SNS usage patterns, immersion, and impulse purchases.

Personality traits and mental health of social networking service users: A cross-sectional exploratory study among Japanese undergraduates

In this study, we investigated personality and mental health variables for users of three popular social networking services (SNS): Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, among Japanese undergraduate students (N = 1030). Compared to non-users, Twitter users scored significantly lower in extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, and self-esteem, and higher in neuroticism, behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity, and social comparison orientation. Instagram users scored significantly higher in extraversion, behavioral approach system (BAS) -drive, BAS-reward responsiveness, BAS-fun seeking, narcissism, self-esteem, and subjective happiness, and lower in neuroticism, anxiety, and to a marginal extent, depression. Facebook users scored significantly higher in extraversion, openness, BAS-fun seeking, self-esteem, and to a marginal extent, narcissism. Within SNS users, extraversion, agreeableness, and self-esteem were negatively associated with negative mental health variables, and positively associated with positive mental health variables. Neuroticism was positively associated with negative mental health variables, and negatively associated with positive mental health variables. Further, some associations were found within specific SNS users. Differences in personality and mental health were discussed based on the characteristics of each SNS platform.

Classifying Tourists’ Photos and Exploring Tourism Destination Image Using a Deep Learning Model

ABSTRACT As social network service usage is rapidly surging in our daily life, social network service data plays a crucial role in identifying region of attractions and analyzing tourism destination image. In recent years, the computer vision technology is just beginning to be applied in the tourism field through the transfer learning of a deep learning model. However, the pre-trained models have limitations of properly classifying the photos with the unique landscape or specific elements of the tourism destination. With the purpose of going beyond these limitations, we generated a tourists’ photo classification reflecting regional characteristics and developed a deep learning model to classify photos according to this classification. Through the analysis of 168,216 Flickr photos, we analyzed the tourism destination image of Seoul. Key findings are that (1) tourists prefer to enjoy local food, to visit authentic traditional palaces, and to see inherent cityscape which can be uniquely enjoyed in Seoul, (2) tourist attractive factors differ by region of attractions, (3) tourist preferences differ by continent. This study has novelty in that it develops a tourist’s photo classification suitable for regional characteristics and analyzes tourism destination image by classifying photos using an artificial intelligence technology.

Do individuals disclose or withhold information following the same logic: a configurational perspective of information disclosure in social media

PurposeThis paper aimed to explain why individuals still tend to disclose their privacy information even when privacy risks are high and whether individuals disclose or withhold information following the same logic.Design/methodology/approachThis study develops a configurational decision tree model (CDTM) for precisely understanding individuals' decision-making process of privacy disclosure. A survey of location-based social network service (LBSNS) users was conducted to collect data, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was adopted to validate the hypotheses.FindingsThis paper identified two configurations for high and low disclosure, respectively, and found that the benefits and the risks did not function independently but interdependently, and the justice would play a crucial role when both the benefits and the risks were high. Furthermore, the authors found that there were asymmetric mechanisms for high disclosure and low disclosure, and males focused more on perceived usefulness, while females concerned more about perceived enjoyment, privacy risks and perceived justice.Originality/valueThis paper further extends privacy calculus model (PCM) and deepens the understanding of the privacy calculus process from a configurational perspective. In addition, this study also provides guidance for future research on how to adopt the configurational approach with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to revise and improve relevant theories for information systems (IS) behavioral research.

Impact of Students’ Trust on Social Networking Services

Web 2.0 technology is thewebsite and platform for sharing virtual information and communication worldwide. Social networking services (SNSs) technology perform the role of human interaction. The SNSs users can instantly transfer and receive information from other users. Nevertheless, users experience trust issues when delivering information to social networking platforms. Generally, the trust component is the fundamental issue in sharing any type of information on online platforms. Therefore, the study attempts to examine the impact of students' trust in using social networking platforms. Accordingly, the study collected 110 valid survey questionnaires using a social media platform. The study also used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 21.0 software for data analysis. The findings revealed that students’ trust in information disclosure and effort expectancy is essential for using SNSs. The study enhances knowledge of how to improve SNSs trust by extending the factors conceived of users' trust in social networking sites. The study provides knowledge on integrity and honesty to develop students’ trust in using SNSs

Understanding Purchase Intention for Different Personality Traits in Social Networking Services

What prompts users to readably purchase online compared to others is a beneficial insight for successful marketing campaigns. Purchase intention forecasts actual purchase act thus is desirable to be scrutinised. Furthermore, in social networking services settings, ample factors surface to observe purchase intentions from the user’s standpoint. While there are many facets to an individual makeup, understanding personality traits could be an excellent interplay in explaining purchase intention. The Big Five Factor Model (BFM) is utilised to predict the effect of personality traits in the aspect of business, specifically in the angle of purchase intention in social networking services (SNS). Personality traits (N=133) from the Big Five Model were found to be significant for SNS users’ using multiple regression analysis. Descriptive analyses were included to interpret the data. The value of this study showed that as a group, personality traits were significant on purchase intention, and proved that different versions of a similar message could be churned in a campaign to maximise conversion. The findings can fine-tune marketers’ way of handling different types of messages conveyed in SNS, and this research empirically investigated different personality types drawing from Big Five Model to understand purchase intention in SNS.
 Keywords: Personality Traits, Social Networking Services, Big Five Model

Social Overload and Discontinuance Intention on Facebook: A Comparative Study

When users begin to feel uncomfortable about the influence of social network services (SNSs) on their lives, they react with various discontinuance behaviors. This comparative study intends to provide a comprehensive explanation of how the fatigue or regret phenomenon is related to users’ diverse reactions against SNSs. This study attempts to answer two questions: (1) How do specific types of relationships influence social overload from SNS interactions on Facebook? and (2) How does social overload threaten the free usage of services and lead to users’ dissatisfaction with SNSs, and how do these constructs influence users’ intent to discontinue usage of SNSs? To this end, we test a reactance model with Facebook users (n = 433) using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). This study found significant results of the reactance mechanism using samples from two countries, Korea and Japan, which support the generalizability of the reactance mechanism in SNS fatigue. The path of the psychological reactance mechanism in SNSs could differ by country. We also found that reactions toward persona non grata in SNSs differed by country. Our findings suggest that the specific cultural context should be considered when analyzing social overload in SNSs. In previous studies, insufficient attention has been paid to the social features or contexts of SNS. This study proposes a new categorization of relationships in the context of SNSs through the persona non grata concept. As SNSs are social platforms, emotions perceived from the social features of SNSs are an important construct that motivates people to continue using SNSs. Therefore, promoting free activities for users can be an important strategy for maintaining their motivation to use the service. It should be noted that the sample used in this study was slightly unbalanced by the inclusion of a greater proportion of young participants.

핑크의 놀이 존재론을 통한 인터넷 밈 연구 - SNS 상의 챌린지 콘텐츠 사례 분석을 중심으로

Internet meme contents have been drawn a considerable amount of attention through social media in recent days. Internet memes are conceptually derived from the word ‘meme’ coined by Richard Dawkins, but there is a difference between this and the meme concept as used in academic research. Internet memes not only exist in much more complex forms, such as images, videos, and music, but also spread at an unprecedented speed compared to the concepts in the past given the use of various forms of media, such as social networking services (SNS), websites, and text messaging. In particular, it is noteworthy that a type of play culture has arisen through digital media, where users enjoy creating and sharing internet memes on their own. Therefore, this study approaches the internet meme as a type of play culture in the digital age and examines its cultural meaning and value. The subjects in this study are set as specific examples of challenging content, which provoke the voluntary participation and diffusion of many SNS users today; they will be examined for their essential meanings and play characteristics based on Fink's play ontology and a framework of analysis consisting of five play structures. Ultimately, it is expected that the cultural meaning and value of the Internet meme will be re-examined and that theoretical foundations and research methods will be prepared in relation to this.

To Disclose or Not to Disclose: An Evaluation of the Effects of Information Control and Social Network Transparency

Self-disclosure on Social Network Service (SNS) platforms has attracted attention in Information Systems (IS) research. While studies have investigated the effects of individual factors such as privacy concern, and trust, on SNS users’ self-disclosure intention, less research has examined how characteristics of the SNS platform shape such intention. In this study, we focus on one critical characteristic of SNS platform, SNS transparency, and investigate its impact (direct and indirect via Information Control) on individuals’ self-disclosure intention and the moderating role of privacy disposition. Specifically, we identify three SNS transparency features—Network Transparency, Social Presence, and Monitoring. Drawing from Communication Privacy Management Theory and Social Penetration Theory, we empirically test how these SNS transparency features directly and indirectly via Information Control influence users’ self-disclosure intention. The results of our experiment show that network transparency has negative effects while social presence, as well as monitoring, have positive effects on information control. Network transparency, social presence, and information control have positive effects on self-disclosure intention. This study extends the literature by enhancing our understanding of how the SNS platform features and individual privacy disposition shape SNS users’ self-disclosure intention.

Autonomous Motivation and Self-Disclosure Intention

Studies that specifically discuss the formation of autonomous motivations of users of social networking services (SNSs) and how such motivation influences SNS user intention to disclose personal location-related information (PLRI) are absent from the literature. Consequently, this study, based on the self-determination theory and the information system success (ISS) model, investigates the relationships among key system-related quality factors, SNS users’ autonomous motivations and user satisfaction regarding an SNS, and their intentions to disclose PLRI. Survey data collected from 514 students at six universities were analyzed to validate our research model. Research results show that three system-related quality factors have different influences on user satisfaction and autonomous motivation, while both autonomous motivation and user satisfaction are significant antecedents of user intention to disclose PLRI. The research results have extended the application and advanced the understanding of ISS model and self-determination theory in the context of SNS.

Understanding how retweets influence the behaviors of social networking service users via agent-based simulation

The retweet is a characteristic mechanism of several social network services/social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Weibo. By retweeting tweet, users can share an article with their friends and followers. However, it is not clear how retweets affect the dominant behaviors of users. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of retweets on the behavior of social media users from the perspective of networked game theory, and how the existence of the retweet mechanism in social media promotes or reduces the willingness of users to post and comment on articles. To address these issues, we propose the retweet reward game model and quote tweet reward game model by adding the retweet and quote tweet mechanisms to a relatively simple social networking service model known as the reward game. Subsequently, we conduct simulation-based experiments to understand the influence of retweets on the user behavior on various networks. It is demonstrated that users will be more willing to post new articles with a retweet mechanism, and quote retweets are more beneficial to users, as users can expect to spread their information and their own comments on already posted articles.

Effect of Maternal Factors on Problematic Smartphone Use among Elementary School Children

Mothers play a key role in ensuring their children’s healthy life. This study aimed to identify the maternal factors affecting problematic smartphone use in children. We adopted a cross-sectional descriptive design using structured questionnaires. Participants were fourth to sixth grade elementary school students in Korea (n = 184). The following maternal factors were evaluated: maternal mediation, children’s perception of mothers’ smartphone use, mother–child communication, and parenting style. Data regarding maternal factors’ effect on problematic smartphone use were analyzed by computing descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis using SPSS Win 27.0. The results show that the maternal factors that influenced problematic smartphone use in children were maternal control over smartphone usage (odds ratio (OR) = 5.10, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.33–19.60), smartphone usage time for social network service (OR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.10–2.01), and problematic mother–child communication (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.00–1.14). Therefore, to promote appropriate smartphone use among school children, it is necessary to develop an intervention comprising maternal supervision of their children’s smartphones, guidance provision for social network service usage, and strategies for the reinforcement of positive mother–child communication.

A Study on the Perceived Value of Social Network Service Users Based on Web Text Analysis: Taking renren.com as an Example

A Study on the Perceived Value of Social Network Service Users Based on Web Text Analysis: Taking renren.com as an Example