Exploring sustained participation in firm-hosted communities in China: the effects of social capital and active degree

Firm-hosted online communities are user-centred, and their efficacy depends on the users’ sustained participation. This study investigated the impact of social capital on users’ continued usage intention. Specifically, since very little work has been done to explore the antecedents of social capital, we tested the role of operator-related and individual-related factors in cultivating social capital by proposing an integrated research model to fill this gap. Furthermore, to gain deeper insights into continuance intention, we postulate that active degree moderates the relationship between social capital and users’ continued usage intention. Our model is empirically examined using survey data collected from 373 members of a well-known firm-hosted online community in China. The results reveal that the firm’s reaction, offline activities, interaction support, seeking reputation and perceived enjoyment are the significant antecedents of social capital. Additionally, social tie and shared vision exert a stronger effect on continued usage intention for active users, whereas identification has a higher influence on continued usage intention for inactive users. Finally, this study discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and provides possible directions for future research.     

基于ESU图的活动社交网络用户参加活动推荐

活动社交网络(EBSNs)为用户提供了方便的组织、参加和分享社交活动的平台。该文面向EBSNs活动推荐问题,提出了包含活动(Event)、主办方(Sponsor)和用户(User)的ESU图模型,深入揭示了EBSNs的实体及其社交关系。因为用户参加活动受多个因素影响,我们提出了基于ESU图的活动推荐多因素决策模型,包括社交影响力、活动内容、活动地点及活动时间。根据ESU图特点,提出了基于双向重启随机游走算法BD-RWR的实体重要度计算方法。选取真实的EBSNs平台—豆瓣同城验证所提方法的有效性。实验结果表明,该文提出的ESU图模型及融合了多因素的活动推荐模型,与已有最新方法相比,有效地提升了用户参加活动的推荐效果。     

User incentive mechanism in blockchain-based online community: An empirical study of steemit

The rise of blockchain technology has brought innovations in various business domains and spawned a new form of organization—the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Steemit is recognized as one of the earliest blockchain-based online communities, and a typical example of DAO. By endowing community members with new roles, the decentralization of blockchain-based communities brings changes to the design of user incentive mechanisms. However, few studies have paid attention to the user incentive mechanism when users play the dual roles of social participant and community owner. On the basis of social capital theory and psychological ownership theory, this study explores Steemit's incentive mechanism by evaluating the impact of these dual roles on user active participation behavior. The study adopts a two-way fixed effect negative binomial regression to test the research model. The results show that users’ social capital, share capital, social feedback, and economic feedback positively affect their active participation behavior. At the same time, social feedback and economic feedback play moderating roles on the effects of the dual capitals. Overall, this research provides both theoretical insights and practical implications for understanding, designing, and governing blockchain-based online communities.     

A longitudinal study of leader influence in sustaining an online community

Previous research suggests that online leaders play an important role in sustaining community activities. Although the research has contributed to our understanding of how leaders develop effective ways to operate a community, most only provide a snapshot view of online leadership, thus paying little attention to changes in leaders in a communal context. In this study, we adopt the theory of networked influence to investigate the dynamics of online leadership using a longitudinal analysis. Data were collected from an online community in operation for 10 years. By conducting social network analysis using qualitative methods, we identified several types of emerging and coexisting online leadership, i.e., responsive expert leader, multiboard connectors, and social bond leader. The community’s sustainability did not rely on the same leaders throughout its temporal development but rather a “relay event” involving passing on the baton among different leaders with their specific leadership styles, which had a significant positive impact on the sustainability of user participation.     

Matching of social events and users: a two-way selection perspective

Recent years have witnessed a growing trend that offline social events are organized via online platforms. Along this line, large efforts have been devoted to recommending appropriate social events for users. However, most prior arts only pay attention to the selections of users, while the selections of events (organizers), which lead to the “two-way selection” process, are usually ignored. Intuitively, distinguishing the two-way selections in historical attendances can help us better understand the social event participation and decision making process in a holistic manner. To that end, in this paper, we propose a novel two-stage framework for social event participation analysis. To be specific, by adapting the classic Gale-Shapley algorithm for stable matching, we design utility functions for both users and event organizers, and then solve two layers of optimization tasks to estimate parameters, i.e., capturing user profiling for event selection, as well as event rules for attender selection. Experimental results on real-world data set validate that our method can effectively predict the event invitation and acceptance, compared with the combinations of one-way-selection baselines. This phenomenon clearly demonstrates the hypothesis that two-way selection process could better reflect the decision making of social event participation.

     

Local Groups Online: Political Learning and Participation

Voluntary associations serve crucial roles in local communities and within our larger democratic society. They aggregate shared interests, collective will, and cultivate civic competencies that nurture democratic participation. People active in multiple local groups frequently act as opinion leaders and create “weak” social ties across groups. In Blacksburg and surrounding Montgomery County, Virginia, the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) community computer network has helped to foster nearly universal Internet penetration. Set in this dense Internet context, the present study investigated if and how personal affiliation with local groups enhanced political participation in this high information and communication technology environment. This paper presents findings from longitudinal survey data that indicate as individuals’ uses of information technology within local formal groups increases over time, so do their levels and types of involvement in the group. Furthermore, these increases most often appear among people who serve as opinion leaders and maintain weak social ties in their communities. Individuals’ changes in community participation, interests and activities, and Internet use suggest ways in which group members act upon political motivations and interests across various group types.      

How students emerge as learning leaders in small group online discussions

In this study, we examined the role of leadership styles and multi-dimensional learner engagement in how students emerge as learning leaders in asynchronous online discussions. Grounded in the conceptual framework of two dominant leadership styles of transformational and transactional leadership, this study applies the two leadership styles—transformational leadership and transactional leadership—to the Leader Identification Method (LIM) which defines three types of leader roles (i.e., full, transactional and attractive facilitator) in online learning. We collected data from 20 students enrolled in a graduate-level online course that required participation in 12-week discussion activities. Results of the longitudinal data analyses show that person-focused, transformational leadership and active participation in online discussions were significant factors that enabled students to emerge as learning leaders. Students are more likely to become leaders by exhibiting transformational leadership behaviour and productively interacting with one another in an online discussion community.     

联合建模异构社交和内容信息的活动推荐模型

随着基于活动的社交网络的迅速发展,活动推荐已成为一个重要的工具,帮助人们在线上发现有趣的活动,并在线下面对面地参与活动.但是,相对于传统的推荐系统,活动推荐面临着很多挑战.（1）用户只能参与很少的活动,这就导致一个非常稀疏的用户-活动矩阵;（2）用户对活动的响应是隐性反馈;（3）活动本身有生命周期,已经过期的活动不能再向用户推荐;（4）每天会有很多新的活动产生,需要及时向用户推荐.为了应对这些挑战,提出一个联合建模异构社交和内容信息的活动推荐模型.该模型可同时探索用户的线上和线下社交活动,并结合活动内容建模用户对活动的决策行为.在Meetup数据集上做实验以评估所提出模型的性能.实验结果表明,提出的模型优于其他方法.     

基于地域特征和异构社交关系的事件推荐算法研究

近几年,在基于事件的社交网络(EBSNs)服务中,为便于增强用户体验,事件推荐任务一直被广泛研究。本文基于对EBSN中用户行为数据的详细分析,提出了一种新型的融合多种数据特征的潜在因子模型。该模型综合考虑EBSN中两种新型的数据特征: 异构的社交关系特征(线上社交关系+线下社交关系)和用户参与行为的地域性特征。基于真实的Meetup数据集,实验结果表明我们的算法在解决事件推荐问题时比传统的算法有更好的性能。
     

Exploring and mitigating social loafing in online communities

The motivation to share members’ knowledge is critical to an online community’s survival and success. Previous research has established that knowledge sharing intentions are based on group cohesion. Several studies also suggested that social loafing behavior will seriously corrode group cohesion. Therefore, social loafing is a key obstacle to fostering online community development. Although substantial studies have been performed on the critical factors that affect social loafing in the learning group, those on online communities are still lacking. By integrating two perspectives, social capital and perceived risk, a richer understanding of social loafing behavior can be gained. In the research model, social ties and perceived risk have been driven by anonymity, offline activities, knowledge quality, and media richness. Social ties and perceived risk are hypothesized to affect social loafing in the online community, which, in turn, is hypothesized as negatively affecting group cohesion. Data collected from 323 online users in online communities provide support for the proposed model. The study shows that social loafing is a significant negative predictor of the users’ group cohesion. The study also shows that social ties and perceived risk are important components of social loafing. Anonymity, offline activities, knowledge quality, and media richness all have strong effects on social ties and perceived risk in the online community. Implications for theory and practice and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Social Roles in an Online Support Community for Older People

In this article, an online support community for older people is studied, with the aim of developing a taxonomy of social roles based on content analysis and social network analysis. Four hundred messages (posted between August 9, 2007, and February 5, 2008) in an online support community for older people (http://www.seniornet.org) were investigated. The data were analyzed to identify and shed light on patterns of the online functional behavior as well as the social structure of active members. Drawing on the findings, a set of six social roles were identified, defined, and described in depth. The findings showed that the structural positions of online community members were associated with the kind of content these members tended to post. For example, it was found that central members were very likely to give support, whereas members not very well connected were more inclined to post self-disclosing messages.     

基于异构社交网络信息和内容信息的事件推荐

基于事件的社交网络使得事件推荐受到越来越多的关注.不同于其他推荐问题(如电影推荐等),事件推荐具有3类不同信息:用户构成的异构社交网络关系信息(在线社交网络和离线社交网络)、用户/事件的内容信息、用户对事件的隐式反馈信息.如何有效融合这些信息进行事件推荐是该领域学者普遍关注的问题.提出一种新的混合事件推荐方法CHS-BPR,该方法以贝叶斯潜在因子模型为基本框架来处理用户对事件的隐式反馈信息,同时考虑用户/事件的内容信息和用户之间的异构社交网络信息,首次实现了同时使用3种信息来做事件推荐,并以真实数据集验证了所提方法的有效性.     

Administrator-users contribute more to online communities

Lack of user participation and contribution has been a long-standing problem for online communities. We proposed and examined new strategies for cultivating opinion leadership and enabling users to post articles outside of the community theme. We used social role theory to propose that online communities should encourage highly committed users to take administrator roles, which will increase their opinion leadership and contributions to both public spaces and their own user-controlled spaces. We collected multiple-wave and multiple-source data from 1,115 users of a large online community. The results indicate that encouraging users to take administrator roles increases their community contributions.     

Is exposure to online content depicting risky behavior related to viewers' own risky behavior offline?

There are public and governmental concerns that social media may encourage risky behavior in the offline environment. Using international survey data from 412 young adults aged between 18 and 25 years of age (M = 21.20 years, SD = 2.31 years), this study demonstrates that there is a relationship between exposure to online content depicting risky behavior and users’ own offline risky behavior. This relationship was found for six behaviors: drug use, excessive alcohol use, disordered eating, self-harm, violence to others, and dangerous pranks. A borderline effect was found for two further behaviors: unprotected sex and sex with a stranger. The relationship between content depicting disordered eating and offline behavior was only significant for females; suggesting that female users may be more vulnerable to effects of viewing content depicting disordered eating habits, and/or use social media content to find material related to their existing behavior. No other gender moderation effects were found. The findings provide preliminary evidence that social media use may influence offline risky behavior in young adults.     

Social media and relationship development: The effect of valence and intimacy of posts

Social media is becoming an increasingly common part of everyday life. Many social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) support new interpersonal interaction methods, some of which are neither directed nor reciprocated. For example, social media users can read online 'posts' (self-disclosures) of their friends without interacting with those friends. This is vastly different to traditional face-to-face communication. Our study investigated how reading online 'posts' affects relationship development. Using a longitudinal design sampling 243 participants, we focused on the effect of the posts' valence and intimacy. We found that high intimacy posts or negative posts decreased the social attractiveness of the self-discloser. The perception of the posts and the receiver's feelings of homophily to the self-discloser mediated this relationship. Studies of offline interpersonal interaction have found similar results. In offline communication, self-disclosure perception and homophily also mediate relationship outcomes. This suggests that reading posts on social media and interacting in real life trigger similar or identical relationship formation pathways. These results support the argument that passive consumption is a new method of interaction that does not fundamentally change human psychology. While novel, passive consumption is still based on the same principles as offline communication.     

Social media use,community participation and psychological well-being among individuals with serious mental illnesses

BackgroundLittle research exists on social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) use among individuals with serious mental illnesses (SMI). One particular question of interest is the extent to which online social media use is associated with these individuals' community participation, civic engagement and psychosocial outcomes.MethodsTwo-hundred and thirty-two individuals with SMI receiving services at 18 mental health organizations throughout the continental U.S. completed questionnaires on their community participation, civic engagement, quality of life, loneliness, and psychiatric symptoms. They were also asked which social media sites they used; the duration, frequency and importance of, and reasons for, social media use; and the number of contacts they had on social media.ResultsApproximately a third of the sample reported having at least one social media account. Greater frequency, intensity and longevity of social media were associated with higher levels of community participation, and greater intensity of social media use was positively associated with civic engagement. For instance, those who used social media at least 30 min a day had 16.4 more days of participation and voting rates that were higher by 17.4%. Social media use was not found to be significantly associated with loneliness, psychiatric symptoms or quality of life.Discussion and implicationsGreater social media use appears to be associated with greater community engagement without negative repercussions on loneliness, symptoms, or quality of life. Interventions that support social media use among individuals with SMI could have important community integration benefits.     

The application of netnography to the online dating service experiences of female users

ABSTRACT

The primary purpose of online dating sites, a specialised form of social media, is to aid their users in finding love and making friends. However, while such sites are very popular, only limited research has been conducted to investigate the experiences of female dating site users. Moreover, the factors underlying the popularity of online dating sites have also yet to be fully clarified. Therefore, the current study utilised netnography and online interviews to explore the experiences of female dating site users, while also observing the physical travel paths of such users within the field. More specifically, the particular situational context of online dating was investigated through an approach that included the following three stages: the observation and collection of online data, participation in an active manner, and emergent design. The study’s key theoretical contribution is its establishment of a netnography model along with eight associated propositions. Overall, the study’s findings substantially illuminate the online dating site experiences of female site users.     

Exploring the relationships between self-presentation and self-esteem of mothers in social media in Russia

Majority of parents use social media platforms, with young mothers being the most active users. Academic research has only recently started addressing the impact of social media on mothers, although they are one of the most engaged online audiences. Instagram and Facebook perceived as positive types of social media, where users post positive content to increase encouraging response from their subscribers and thus enhance their self-esteem. This also relates to mothers portraying positive self-presentation online, therefore enhancing their parental self-esteem. This study provides in-depth analysis of 23 popular online profiles of mothers with more than thirty thousand followers on Instagram and 12 interviews with socially active mothers. This work focuses on mothers in Russia. Research findings show mothers with children of pre-school age are the most regular users of social media. This is due to time availability, as majority of these mothers are on maternity leave and due to little knowledge in child related aspects, which leads to lower self-esteem. They often look for assurance in online community. Mothers that are more confident have positive attitude towards social media communication. Mothers with initially lower self-esteem feel under pressure to maintain positive image to be in line with other mothers' presentation on social media. Mothers find Facebook more informative and supportive vehicle of communication than Instagram.     

Communication Communities or “CyberGhettos?”: A Path Analysis Model Examining Factors that Explain Selective Exposure to Blogs1

This study used an online panel of Internet users to examine the degree to which blog users practice selective exposure when seeking political information. The research employed a path analysis model to explore the extent to which exposure to offline and online discussion of political issues, and offline and online media use, as well as political variables and demographic factors, predict an individual's likelihood to engage in selective exposure to blogs. The findings indicate that respondents did practice selective exposure to blogs, predominantly those who are heavy blog users, politically active both online and offline, partisan, and highly educated.