Social Search Research Articles

Beyond Likes and Shares: Exploring the Influence of Social Media on Brand Choices among College of Business Students at a Private Higher Education Institution in the Philippine

Social media platforms are pivotal where consumers express opinions, seek information, and engage with brands. This study investigates the impact of social listening and social search on consumer behavior and brand engagement. Social listening involves tracking and analyzing online discussions across various platforms, while social search refers to utilizing social media platforms as search engines for information and product discovery. This research explores these practices to assess their influence on consumer perceptions, decision-making processes, purchasing behaviors, and brand loyalty. It employs a quantitative approach, utilizing regression, correlation analyses, and survey data from social media platforms. Key findings indicate that social listening and social search significantly affect consumer perceptions, aiding in product discovery and understanding brand attributes. Positive social media interactions strongly influence purchasing decisions, while active engagement with brands on social media is evident, especially when brands respond to interactions or run interactive campaigns. Moreover, social media emerges as a primary source of product information, with user-generated content deemed more authentic than traditional advertising. The study underscores the effectiveness of social listening tools in providing valuable insights for businesses, enhancing brand perception, and earning consumer loyalty. Gender is a significant factor influencing various aspects of consumer behavior on social media, while educational background has a comparatively more minor impact. Overall, this research illuminates the pivotal role of social listening, social search, and social media interactions on consumer behavior and fostering brand engagement. The findings offer actionable insights for businesses to tailor marketing strategies, prioritize engagement, and leverage user-generated content in the digital landscape.

Identifying who adolescents prefer as source of information within their social network

Adolescents are highly influenced by their peers within their social networks. This social influence can stem from both unsolicited peer pressure and the active search for guidance. While extensive research examined the mechanisms of peer pressure, little is known about who adolescents prefer as a source of information. To address this gap, we conducted two independent studies using a novel social search paradigm that allows participants to choose which social sources they wish to observe. In both studies, adolescents demonstrated a preference for their friends over non-friends, as well as for peers who were perceived as trustworthy. Across both studies, we found mixed evidence for the role of perceived popularity as a selection criterion. Notable, study 2 revealed the significance of “cool”, “admirable” and “acting mean” as additional characteristics of preferred peers, traits that are often associated with elevated peer status. It also revealed an interest for peers perceived as being smart. These findings highlight the active role adolescents have in choosing social sources and emphasize the importance of multiple peer characteristics. Future research should investigate whether adolescents’ interest in these types of peers is contingent upon specific social contexts, age groups, and peer cultures.

Social search: Retrieving information in Online Social platforms – A survey

Social Search research studies methodologies exploiting social information to better satisfy user information needs in Online Social Media while simplifying the search effort and consequently reducing the time spent and the computational resources utilized. Starting from previous studies, in this work, we analyze the current state of the art of the Social Search area, proposing a new taxonomy and highlighting current limitations and open research directions. We divide the Social Search area into three subcategories, where the social aspect plays a pivotal role: Social Question&Answering, Social Content Search, and Social Collaborative Search. For each subcategory, we present the key concepts and selected representative approaches in the literature in greater detail. We found that, up to now, a large body of studies model users’ preferences and their relations by simply combining social features made available by social platforms. It paves the way for significant research to exploit more structured information about users’ social profiles and behaviours (as they can be inferred from data available on social platforms) to optimize their information needs further.

Evaluating and Ranking the Energy Performance of E-Commerce Development Strategies Using TOPSIS Method

This abstract outline some of the crucial tactics that companies should take into account while creating an e-commerce platform. First and first, it's important to comprehend the target audience and their preferences. In order to better understand client demands, expectations, and purchasing patterns, firms can modify their platforms and marketing initiatives by doing market research and utilising data analytics. Second, it is crucial to design an interface that is simple and easy to use. To improve the customer experience, the e-commerce platform should offer easy navigation, simple search features, and simplified checkout procedures. Given the increased popularity of mobile shopping, investing in adaptable design and mobile optimisation is also essential. Thirdly, merchandising and product display are crucial in promoting sales. The many methods and processes used to create and expand prosperous online enterprises are referred to as ecommerce development strategies. These methods cover everything from creating an online store to generating traffic, improving conversion rates, and guaranteeing customer pleasure. Ecommerce companies can better understand their target market by conducting research on consumer preferences, behaviour, and trends. Businesses can use market research to determine the requirements and preferences of potential customers, which can inform decisions about what products to offer at what prices, and how to best sell their services. Businesses can study their rivals' plans, strengths, and weaknesses through research to learn more about them. Depending on how closely a set of options fit an ideal answer, they are assessed and ranked using a decision-making method known as TOPSIS, or Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal response. It is a method for MCDA (multi-criteria decision analysis), which aids individuals or groups in making decisions by taking a variety of preferences and considerations into account. The TOPSIS strategy aids decision-makers in methodically analysing and contrasting choices based on a variety of factors while taking their preferences and priorities into consideration. It increases transparency and comprehension of the decision-making process and offers a systematic strategy to enhance decision-making. Alternative Parameters: E-customization and personalization, Social E-commerce adoption model, Strong search engine optimization (SEO) Evaluate parameter: Feasibility of the strategy, Implementation speed, Compliance with the corporate strategy, Compliance of the strategy with the mission and vision of the company, General acceptance The evaluation criteria may also include the following additional factors: general acceptance, speed of implementation, compliance with corporate strategy, e-customization and personalization, social search engine optimisation, and compliance with the strategy's mission and vision The effective application of these tactics will enable firms to build a strong online presence, boost customer happiness, and enhance income in a cutthroat e-commerce industry. Businesses must adapt and hone their tactics to stay ahead of the curve as consumer preferences and technology change. Businesses may stay successful in the dynamic world of e-commerce by embracing innovation, knowing their customers, and keeping up with market trends.

Collaborative economy and the cognitive legacy

This article discuss how collaborative economy can contribute to the production and knowledge dissemination for the society, in which refers to practice rescue, values and aspects linked to the solidarity and collectivity, such as confrontation of problems connected to cyclical questions of marketplace economy and environmental crisis. For that, it will be addressed the concepts of sharing economy, social capital and the economy platforming as a business model. In this bulge, it will be described the project of a donation app that will be implemented in a locality, aiming to integrate people, strengthen ties and, then, agglutinate social capital. The work goal is to address the sharing economy as a way to conduct a transition dynamic of the present traditional economy, for a model that is not an inequality reproduction and less hostile to the natural resources. Our question is: does the sharing economy show attributes capable of promoting the formation of the social capital and environmental sustainability, and so help cognitively in the social transformation? Our theoretical basis, between the various references to this research, it will be in Pierre Bourdieu, for someone who the social capital can be treated as a sum of the values generated by the connections between the internal and external members in a social media. The work is a social search, with a qualitative approach, descriptive-interpretative of bibliographic procedure.

Adolescents seek social information under uncertainty.

Adolescence is a period of emerging independence, in which adolescents face difficult decisions, including those that involve risk for health and well-being. Previous research suggests that learning from others might be a prominent strategy of adolescents to inform these difficult decisions. However, there is a gap in the literature that addresses the active role adolescents may have in gaining information about others' behavior (i.e., social information search). Here, we investigated when and how much social information adolescents search before making decisions under risk and ambiguity, using a novel social search paradigm. In this paradigm, adolescents were able to reveal real information about their classmates' choices before deciding on their final choice. Our two experiments suggest that social information search can be broken down in two independent decisions: first the decision to initiate search, followed by the decision to continue search. Several factors motivated initiation of search, including: (a) the difficulty of the choice, (b) uncertainty about the outcome, and (c) the magnitude of the reward at stake. Search took generally longer when adolescents faced information not in line with their initial preference. Finally, we observed that adolescents used the sampled social information to inform their risky-choice behavior. Taken together, these results provide novel insights into the dynamics of peer influence in adolescence and stress the importance of treating adolescents not only as receivers, but as active agents searching for social information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Social Search and Resource Clustering as Emergent Stable States.

Social search has stably evolved across various species and is often used by humans to search for resources (such as food, information, social partners). In turn, these resources frequently come distributed in patches or clusters. In the current work, we use an ecologically inspired agent-based model to investigate whether social search and clustering are stable outcomes of the dynamical mutual interactions between the two. While previous research has studied unidirectional influences of social search on resource clustering and vice versa, the current work investigates the consequential patterns emerging from their two-way interactions over time. In our model, consumers evolved search strategies (ranging from competitive to social) as adaptations to their environmental resource structures, and resources varied in distributions (ranging from random to clustered) that were shaped by agents' consumption patterns. Across four experiments, we systematically analyzed the patterns of influence that search strategies and environment structure have on each other to identify stable attractor states of both. In Experiment 1, we fixed resource clustering at various levels and observed its influence on social search, and in Experiment 2, we observed the influence of social search on resource distribution. In both these experiments we found that increasing levels of one variable produced increases in the other; however, at very high levels of the manipulated variable, the dependent variable tended to fall. Finally in Experiments 3 and 4, we studied the dynamics that arose when resource clustering and social search could both change and mutually influence each other, finding that low levels of social search and clustering were stable attractor states. Our simple 2D model yielded results that qualitatively resemble those across a wide range of search domains (from physical search for food to abstract search for information), highlighting some stable outcomes of mutually interacting consumer/resource systems.

The "Agent-Based Modeling for Human Behavior" Special Issue.

The "Agent-Based Modeling for Human Behavior" Special Issue.

Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Trust in Facebook as a Social Search Engine and Its Impact on the Purchase Intentions of Restaurants’ Customers

Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Trust in Facebook as a Social Search Engine and Its Impact on the Purchase Intentions of Restaurants’ Customers

Web page prediction using adaptive deer hunting with chicken swarm optimization based neural network model

The world wide web acts as the dominant tool for data transmission due to access such as data retrieving and data transactions. The retrieval of data from the web is a complex procedure due to the large volume of web domain. The basic uses of the websites are described through web usage mining, which mines the weblog records to identify the pattern of accessing the web pages through the user. The web page prediction assists the web users in finding the plot and obtains the information as to their requirements. Several effective algorithms have been developed to mine association rules that make the predictive model more appropriate for web prediction. They can be commonly revised to ensure the changing feature of web access patterns. The Apriori algorithm involves extracting the recurrent itemset and interrelation rule that learns the relational data is commonly utilized for web page prediction. The Apriori algorithm remains the standard model for deriving the patterns and rules from the datasets in co-operative rule extraction. The Apriori algorithm thus generates large mines associated rules for web page prediction. Hence, to select the best rule, the proposed deer hunting rooster-based chicken swarm optimization algorithm is used by integrating the cockerel search agents’ dominating social search creatures’ hunting habits and their traits of looking for food. Further, the neural network (NN) is employed in this research for the prediction of web pages with minimum error. The trained NN is a technique of unsupervised learning that analyzes a dataset of input to produce the desired result, in which the effectiveness of the NN is enhanced by optimal tuning of weight by the adaptive deer hunting rooster-based chicken swarm optimization algorithm. The experimental analysis illustrates that the proposed adaptive deer hunting rooster-based chicken swarm optimization frameworks inherit lower error measures such as mean deviation = 139.89 and symmetric mean absolute percentage error[Formula: see text]0.45579 for the FIFA dataset. The proposed web page prediction models’ L2 norm and infinity norm are 58.017 and 14, respectively, for the MSNBC_SPMF dataset.

“Narrating” Bodies. Physical “Reflexive” Activities between Gender Images and Socio-pedagogical Processes - Research on the Yoga’s Representations

This article intends to offer a reflection on how reflexive physical activities can support a socio-pedagogical approach to educating about gender diversity through media communication. We use the term “reflexive” to refer to all those activities aimed at enhancing the person and his relationships, self-realization, selfknowledge, and self-improvement: in other terms, a circuit of bodily experiences that determine bodily knowledge as a social construction (as described by Connel, 2005). These activities focus mainly on ethical purposes, rather than on performative ones. An example of such disciplines can be considered the practice of yoga which is a currently growing phenomenon both in Europe and in the United States. Yoga is practiced today in the USA by 35.2 million adults, by over 2.5 million people in Italy, and is garnering scientific interest in its contributions to balanced, healthy growth of children and adults. The World Health Organization, in its global action plan on physical activity 2018-2030: More Active People for a Healthier World, calls it a means to improve health. The diffusion of these disciplines responds to a personal and social search for meaning that weighs especially heavily on highly secularized Western culture. This diffusion also portrays a media phenomenon, whose images and messages validate and reinforce capitalist ethics. From this point of view, the “mediated” representation of sports bodies appears to apply to the world of consumers. The images of women practicing yoga, oriented toward alternative values rather than beauty and sexuality, are above all confirmed by the purchase of goods and services that are not related to outward personal appearance. Using the results of an analysis carried out in 2021 of two main international yoga magazines, we are going to discuss the role of yoga as a “reflexive” physical activity and its pedagogical potential oriented to the body as a “primary place of experience”, not just a consumer item, but also a tool for education about gender diversity.

Religion and the Internet: Prophetic Medicine in the Age of Modern Technology

This paper discusses the distribution of the Prophet's medicine using mobile applications and social networks “Vkontakte” and “Telegram”. When you enter the words “medicine of the Prophet”, “sihr”, “evil eye”, “witchcraft”, “exorcism of genies”, etc., into the social network search bar, more than a hundred open groups come out, which can be divided into several categories: groups providing hij ama services; groups that sell medicines and oils allowed by Islam; groups in which various herbal remedies (black cumin, garlic, ginger, etc.) are recommended for improving health and prevention; groups dedicated to ruqya. Special attention was paid to the community “Treatment and expulsion of genies” in VKontakte. The community is interesting by fact that you can fi nd specialists in expelling genies, as well as you can off er the services relevant to the group by yourself. The search bar in the Play Market gives out an impressive amount of applications dedicated to the medicine of the Prophet. The author of the article focuses on the application “Anti Sihr: a cure for witchcraft”, where the users are invited to use three tests to independently determine whether a person is under the infl uence of the evil eye or witchcraft, or whether he is a subject to obsession.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the growth of youth drug addiction

The article examines the relationship between the coronavirus pandemic and drug use among adolescents and young people. The authors identify the reasons, factors of drug addiction development in the period of crisis, conduct analysis of numerical indicators. The method of statistical analysis of keyword queries in the study of social networks and search engines was used as the main one. To verify and supplement their own data, the authors use the results of studies obtained by other researchers and third-party organizations. The authors identified the main channels and sources of information about drugs and precursors in the course of the study. The study developed recommendations to level out the significant development of this phenomenon in a complex social environment caused by the pandemic.

Examining the Influence on Perceptions of Endometriosis via Analysis of Social Media Posts: Cross-sectional Study.

BackgroundSocial media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, are increasingly being used to share health-related information by “influencers,” regular users, and institutions alike. While patients may benefit in various ways from these interactions, little is known about the types of endometriosis-related information published on social media. As digital opinion leaders influence the perceptions of their followers, physicians need to be aware about ideas and beliefs that are available online, in order to address possible misconceptions and provide optimal patient care.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to identify and analyze frequent endometriosis-related discussion topics on social media in order to offer caregivers insight into commonly discussed subject matter and aspects.MethodsWe performed a systematic search using predefined parameters. Using the term “endometriosis” in Facebook’s search function and a social media search engine, a list of Facebook pages was generated. A list of Instagram accounts was generated using the terms “endometriosis” and “endo” in Instagram’s search function. Pages and accounts in English with 5000 or more followers or likes were included. Nonpublic, unrelated, or inactive pages and accounts were excluded. For each account, the most recent 10 posts were identified and categorized by two independent examiners using qualitative content analysis. User engagement was calculated using the numbers of interactions (ie, shares, likes, and comments) for each post, stratified by the number of followers.ResultsA total of 39 Facebook pages and 43 Instagram accounts with approximately 1.4 million followers were identified. Hospitals and medical centers made up 15% (6/39) of the Facebook pages and 5% (2/43) of the Instagram accounts. Top accounts had up to 111,600 (Facebook) and 41,400 (Instagram) followers. A total of 820 posts were analyzed. On Facebook, most posts were categorized as “awareness” (101/390, 25.9% of posts), “education and research” (71/390, 18.2%), and “promotion” (64/390, 16.4%). On Instagram, the top categories were “inspiration and support” (120/430, 27.9% of posts), “awareness” (72/430, 16.7%), and “personal story” (72/430, 16.7%). The frequency of most categories differed significantly between platforms. User engagement was higher on Instagram than on Facebook (3.20% vs 0.97% of followers per post). On Instagram, the highest percentage of users engaged with posts categorized as “humor” (mean 4.19%, SD 4.53%), “personal story” (mean 3.02%, SD 4.95%), and “inspiration and support” (mean 2.83%, SD 3.08%). On Facebook, posts in the categories “awareness” (mean 2.05%, SD 15.56%), “humor” (mean 0.91%, SD 1.07%), and “inspiration and support” (mean 0.56%, SD 1.37%) induced the most user engagement. Posts made by hospitals and medical centers generated higher user engagement than posts by regular accounts on Facebook (mean 1.44%, SD 1.11% vs mean 0.88%, SD 2.71% of followers per post) and Instagram (mean 3.33%, SD 1.21% vs mean 3.19%, SD 2.52% of followers per post).ConclusionsFacebook and Instagram are widely used to share endometriosis-related information among a large number of users. Most posts offer inspiration or support, spread awareness about the disease, or cover personal issues. Followers mostly engage with posts with a humoristic, supportive, and awareness-generating nature. Health care providers should be aware about the topics discussed online, as this may lead to an increased understanding of the needs and demands of digitally proficient patients with endometriosis.

PeGraph: A System for Privacy-Preserving and Efficient Search Over Encrypted Social Graphs

With the widespread adoption of cloud computing, it is increasingly popular for online social network (OSN) service providers to leverage the public cloud as a back-end to manage their services for the cloud’s well-understood benefits. However, the cloud is also notoriously subject to a wide attack surface, making it an imperative need to embed security in the cloud-backed OSN service from the very beginning. In light of this, in this paper, we design, implement, and evaluate PeGraph, the first system simultaneously allowing private, efficient, and rich queries over encrypted social graphs. PeGraph is aimed at safeguarding the confidentiality of the social graph at the cloud, while preserving the functionality of social search, a key enabler for quality OSN services like friend discovery and user targeting. PeGraph is built from a delicate synergy of insights from social graph modelling and lightweight cryptography such as searchable encryption and additive secret sharing, supporting rich social search queries like exact queries, fuzzy queries, and mixed queries. PeGraph also allows the cloud to obliviously render the encrypted social search results in a ranked order according to their importance, as per users’ preferences. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PeGraph can securely process a wide range of practical social search queries within 1 second, over a real-world social graph consisting of millions of entities.

Značaj primjene informaciono-komunikacionih tehnologija u promovisanje turističkih potencijala i kulturne baštine Bosne i Hercegovine

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have already entered many pores of modern society and without it, is difficult to imagine the life of modern man. In this paper, we will point out only on one segment of the application of ICT, and that is in the tourism sector and in the promotion of cultural heritage. Tourism can be a significant generator of income for a country, and it also has the potential to employ a large number of people. The application of ICT and especially the Internet, has greatly changed the way in which information is presented to users and the way in which users access information and how travel is organized. The application of ICT leads to the development of new marketing tools based on the digital platform, such as websites and portals whose content is adapted to computers and mobile phones, as well as increasingly represented advertising through social networks and search engines.

КРИЗОВІ ПЕРІОДИ РИНКУ ДРУКОВАНИХ МЕДІА УКРАЇНИ (2000-2022 рр.)

Scientific research has analyzed the state of the print media market in Ukraine over the past twenty years. Crisis periods of media development are singled out, in particular, special attention is paid to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to catalyzing drastic changes in the print media market in Ukraine, factors have been identified that significantly affect the development of the general media market: digitalization, destruction of logistics, periodicals, outflow of advertisers from traditional media, rising raw material prices, lack of subscription culture. alternative. In the consumer information market today, there is a change in the sources of information retrieval, resulting in the primacy of social networks and search services. This indicates that traditional media are exhausting themselves as the main source of information consumption among the population.Peculiarities of the development of the print media market in Ukraine in the period 2000-2021 are associated with many objective and interdependent factors that have certain and specific characteristics. This thesis is confirmed by the dynamics of the issue of newspapers and supplements during 2013-2020, when the actual output of print media decreased by 31%. We managed to identify three key periods: 2008 - economic crisis (publications reduced their budgets, and some did not stay on the market); 2013–2014 - the second economic crisis (reduction of editorial budgets and closure of publications); 2019 and until 2021. - COVID-19 pandemic. The set of three crisis periods, as a result of which the factors identified in the study, are the main characteristics of the development of the modern print media market in Ukraine. Also, given the Russian aggression, another period needs to be singled out now - the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022, which completely destroyed the logistics of printing and distribution of print media and the advertising market, and the information market in general has undergone significant changes. The print media market has experienced and still suffers from a shortage of money, which generates the following consequences: 1) falling revenues from both subscriptions and advertising; 2) reduction of staff in the media; 3) reduction of financial remuneration of journalists.

Российское общество 2020-х гг.: попытка идейного самоопределения

Addressing the works of V.V. Petukhov, dedicated to the study of public opinion dynamics, including on issues of political self-determination, the author examines the impact of changes in the socio-economic and political situation on the preferences of Russians. In current sociological data, the author finds confirmation of the ideas of V.V. Petukhov about consistent attempts at ideological self-determination of Russians, despite the constant impact on society of crisis events of various origins, social turbulence and limited opportunities for political representation. Although the request of Russian society in the 1990s for democratic reforms was replaced in the 2000s by skepticism about the applicability of Western models of development, key democratic principles remained socially significant: the lifting of the ban on public criticism of senior officials, the expansion of publicity and freedom of speech, the elimination of censorship, the democratisation of elections, etc. The focus of many Russians on private problems by the time of election campaigns in 2019-2021 was replaced by a growing interest in political participation and ideological self-determination, and in 2021 about a third of citizens could clearly define their own ideological and political views. If the limited possibilities of party-political representation in the 2000–2010s stimulated public demand for ideological self-determination, then the categories of identity circulating in the official discourse gave many people a reason to think about their meanings, and even change their own ideas. This happened with the category “Russian”, the content of which has become clearer over the past few years, and the subtle components of identity have lost popularity. The idea that Russians are all those who honestly work for the benefit of Russia has ceased to be popular. The proportion of those who agree with the most popular logic of interpreting Russian identity, that suggests that a Russian is one who grew up and was brought up in the traditions of Russian culture, has slightly decreased, while the popularity of defining Russian identity through the native Russian language, Russian origin and self-determination after 2014 increased. It is possible that the search for meaningful attributes of Russian identity, coinciding in the view of many with Russian civil identity, along with support for the ideas of national diversity, is an attempt by Russian society to “assemble” a new social consensus and search for the foundations of a new national mythology.

Hermit Crab Optimizer (HCO): A Novel Meta-heuristic Algorithm

This paper proposes a novel meta-heuristic algorithm (MA), called hermit crab optimizer (HCO), which simulates the swarm intelligence of hermit crabs in nature in finding shells protecting and letting them grow in their lifetime. HCO guides search agents separately and in parallel using new solitary and social search operators. It acts similar to a reinforcement learning process, in which the successful agents and failed ones are treated differently, inspired by the group behavior of hermit crabs and environmental characteristics. Computational experiments with well-known test problems confirm HCO's validity, accuracy, robustness, ability to escape local optima, and balance exploration-exploitation.

Embedded librarians: An innovative experience in health and wellness communication

The article discusses the experiences of Italian librarians taking part in an institutional project to produce a new general-public-oriented health web portal. The web portal was set up to provide verified and easily understandable health information, and to debunk health-related fake news circulating on the internet. The different roles, knowledge and skills acquired in during the project this are discussed and show how the librarian's knowledge and skills were of fundamental importance for the success of the Web Portal. By collaborating with other professions new skills such as social media management, video creation and Search Engine Optimization were gained, which enhanced the information literacy role of the service.