Reexamining the relationship between social media and happiness: The effects of various social media platforms on reconceptualized happiness

The current study reexamined the relationship between social media use and happiness by broadening the scope of social media and rethinking the conceptualization of happiness. Specifically, this study included platforms other than Facebook and tested differential effects of each platform. Because happiness is not entirely relative, it was hypothesized that social comparison would influence only relative happiness, which is only one part of overall happiness. A two-wave longitudinal survey among Korean females revealed that the use of blogs, Instagram, and LinkedIn is positively associated with social comparison at Wave 1 (W1), whereas Twitter is negatively associated. LinkedIn use was most strongly associated with social comparison. In turn, social comparison at W1 negatively predicted relative happiness at W2 (“I am happier than my friends”) but did not predict overall happiness at W2. Social media may lead us to believe that other people’s lives are better through social comparison. However, such comparison influences only part of overall happiness or life satisfaction. Without social comparison, social media have the potential to make us happier.     

Social comparison as a double-edged sword on social media: The role of envy type and online social identity

Several studies have explored the psychological consequences of social comparison in SNS usage. This paper aims to explore the behavioral outcomes of social comparison through the underlying mechanisms of benign and malicious envy on Facebook. The paper also examines the role of online social identity in predicting benign and malicious envy. Based on multi-wave data collected from 469 Facebook users in Pakistan, we found that Facebook user's social comparison provoked benign and malicious envy; benign envy, in turn, triggered self-improvement intention, and malicious envy triggered negative gossiping. Moreover, user's online social identity moderated the social comparison-envy relationship such that the positive relationship of social comparison and benign envy was stronger, and the positive relationship of social comparison and malicious envy was weaker when the user's online social identity was high. The study contributes to social media literature by examining the behavioral outcomes of social comparison on social media and discusses empirical implications for policymakers, advertisers, SNS providers, SNS designers, educators, and users.     

How socially anxious people become compulsive social media users: The role of fear of negative evaluation and rejection

This study investigates the impact of social interaction anxiety on compulsive social media usage. To provide insights into the gaps in previous research, the authors identify the channels, and hypothesize that negative evaluation and rejection fears mediate the relationship between social interaction anxiety and compulsive social media usage. Further, the moderating role of frustration about unavailability and gender differences are considered in the framework for robustness purposes. Using a convenience sampling method and variance-based structural equation modeling, the authors analyzed a non-clinical sample of 402 Chinese university students. Survey results find that social interaction anxiety increases compulsive social media usage both directly and indirectly through fear of negative evaluation and fear of rejection with a stronger effect of the former. Moreover, the mediating effect of fear of negative evaluation transfers through fear of rejection, which establishes a serial link between social interaction anxiety and compulsive social media usage. Interestingly, frustration about unavailability strengthens the relationship only between fear of rejection and compulsive social media usage. Females exhibit more social interaction anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, which lead them to become more compulsive social media users, while males experience more fear of rejection. These findings can improve our understanding of the role and process by which social interaction anxiety influences compulsive social media usage, and thus may help psychologists to develop better counseling programs for compulsive male and female social media users, addressing their social interaction deficits and excessive reliance on social media applications.     

The effects of social media virality metrics,message framing,and perceived susceptibility on cancer screening intention: The mediating role of fear

Social media platforms are increasingly playing a vital role in the process of dissemination and sharing of health information. The present study investigated whether and how online health information and virality metrics associated with social media platforms jointly shape persuasive outcomes in the context of cancer screening promotion. One important area of research on cancer screening promotion concerns loss-versus-gain message framing, which has highlighted the persuasive advantage of loss framing relative to gain framing. Given this, we examined how social media virality metrics, loss-versus-gain message framing, and perceived susceptibility influence message-evoked fear and intention to perform colonoscopy in the context of colorectal cancer screening. Results from an online experiment showed that loss framing, relative to gain framing, led to greater message-evoked fear when the message was presented with high-virality metrics, and this pattern was particularly pronounced among those with low perceived susceptibility to colorectal cancer. Furthermore, a formal test of moderated mediation showed that the indirect effect of loss framing on colonoscopy intention through message-evoked fear was significantly moderated by perceived susceptibility to colorectal cancer when the message was presented with high-virality metrics. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Social participation of the elderly in China: The roles of conventional media,digital access and social media engagement

China is the most rapidly aging country and has the largest aging population in the world. However, social participation is an important intervention to boost the active and healthy aging. The present study investigated the effects of media usage, together with social-demographics and health variables, on Chinese older adults. Drawing upon a national research project with a representative sample (N = 1,399) of older adults (55+) from 58 cities in China, the research findings revealed that conventional media, digital access and social media usage had positive effects on older adults’ informal social participation, while age moderated the relationship between informal social participation and digital access, particularly regarding access to tablet PCs and smartphones. Moreover, conventional media, digital access and social media engagement largely explained seniors’ formal social participation regardless of their social-demographic backgrounds. Finally, the roles of conventional media and digital media in older adults’ social participation are discussed.     

Digital natives’ intention to interact with social media: Value systems and gender

Social media research focuses predominantly on the link between attitude, behaviour and intention, and rarely takes value systems into account. Values are expected, through intervening variables, to affect intention directly or indirectly. Starting from the Theory of Trying, the aim of this study is to investigate how value systems affect digital natives’ intention to interact with social media. By using Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), an empirical analysis involving data from 116 social media users is carried out to examine how global and domain-specific values, attitude towards trying and gender affect the intention to interact. The results of a configurational analysis show that gender appears to affect many of the configurations leading to the outcome of interest. There are two configurations in which, regardless of gender, global values, domain-specific values and attitude towards trying cause the outcome. The findings indicate that there is no single condition necessary to ensure the outcome, but there are several different configurations of the conditions lead to outcome of interest.     

The future of online social networks (OSN): A measurement analysis using social media tools and application

The explosion of online social networks (OSN) has created an interactive and communicative global phenomenon that has enabled billions of users to connect to other individuals on Facebook and Twitter but also with media sharing platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. This study examines the current use of social media platforms and explores the factors that help define the long term implications of social media. The study employed a nationwide survey collected from 2012 to 2013 and is available from the PEW Internet research center of more than 2000 American citizens’ behaviour towards OSNs. The results revealed strong predictors of OSN that form the connections among users; and the core significant predictors: age, gender and access to mobile Internet that foster the adoption and usage of OSN in the future. Furthermore, online activities such as posting video content on social networks also highlighted the online usage patterns and trends of using social media to actively engage with other users more willingly than text. This is due to the viral nature of online media sharing on social media and as part of the video viewing and creating experience. An outline of practical implications of the findings and areas for future research is also discussed.     

The role of online news and social media in preventive action in times of infodemic from a social capital perspective: The case of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea

Infodemic, the spread of false information during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been raised as one of the major concerns aggravating the confusion in the global society. In this regard, the role of media as an information channel in delivering the reliable information and motivating the active participation of citizens in complying with government’s preventive actions becomes much more important. In this study, the role of online news and social media on people’s preventive actions considering the role of trust in citizens and government from the perspective of social capital is investigated. For the empirical study, a structural equation modeling is employed by using survey material gathered from South Korea in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. South Korea was selected as its COVID-19 prevention strategy focused not only on the provision of medical support, but also on the enhancement of social trust through active engagement with people through media channels. Our results reveal that the perceived characteristics of online news and social media influence preventive actions through the trust in citizens or in government. In addition, while online news media enhances trust in both the citizens and the government, social media only influences trust in citizens. Based on our findings, the role of media in preventing the spread of COVID-19 is dicussed.     

Facebook as a second screen: An influence on sport consumer satisfaction and behavioral intention

Little research has examined the use of social media as people watch live sporting telecasts—an activity that has been referred to as the second screen phenomenon. The paper proposes and tests a second screen consumer engagement model that captures the actions of Facebook users (N = 299) while watching a live sport telecast. Findings highlight the direct and indirect effect of social camaraderie, subjective norm, fan emotion and purposive needs on sport consumers’ satisfaction and behavioral intention. The behavioral intention of consumers when using Facebook as a second screen was associated with the increased likelihood of using the platform to purchase team products, make recommendations and investigate sponsors. The proposed model contributes to the emerging literature highlighting the increasing importance of social media as an interactive support channel when people watch live telecasts. The findings have practical implications for managers by providing insights and understanding of consumers when watching telecast sport. Although tested with Thai English Premier League fans, the findings will have relevance across different sports and other business sectors.     

Social movement 2.0: integrating and assessing scholarship on social media and movement

With over five years of hindsight following historic protests around the world, we review scholarship published on “Social Movement 2.0” (SM2.0)—our shorthand for the convergence of Web 2.0 platforms and protest, movements, or other resistance activities. Initially, we review 97 articles as offering disparate assumptions concerning social movement, agency, and the relationship between humans and new communication technologies (NCTs). We suggest SM2.0 scholarship could benefit from following debates in social movement rhetoric and media ecology. Particularly, building upon rhetoricians’ critiques of traditional movement theory, we encourage scholars to amplify the constitutive meanings and identities created through NCTs in protest (rather than rely upon functional paradigms). Building upon media ecology scholarship, we critique SM2.0 analysis that leverages technological determinism or isolationism to address media’s power in social change. We feature instead scholarship that unpacks the relationship between media and the unique contexts in which protestors build networks of resistance. We call for greater complexity in scholarship at the intersections of movement and media.     

Elucidating the determinants of purchase intention toward social shopping sites: A comparative study of Taiwan and Japan

As the market potential of social shopping is increased by social networking sites (SNSs), the social shopping research can be interesting and valuable for social shopping firms to clearly understand the determinants affecting consumers’ purchase intention toward social shopping sites (SSSs). The objectives of this study are to examine consumers’ purchase intention toward a target SSS in different countries and to understand these differences from a cross-cultural perspective. In order to explore the cross-cultural differences in consumers’ purchase intention toward a target SSS, we propose an analytic framework that consists of website quality (i.e. system, information, and service quality) and relationship quality (i.e. satisfaction, commitment, and trust) that the SSS provides. To identify the determinants of purchase intention of SSS, large-scale online surveys were conducted in Taiwan and Japan simultaneously with the same questionnaire. Results show that perceptions of the two types of quality for a target SSS are significantly different between Taiwan and Japan, and effects of the quality types on the degree of purchase intention derived from the SSS also vary across the two countries. This paper ends with a discussion and limitations of the study results, as well as future research directions.     

Social media usage and organizational performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers

Social media usage among organizations is growing tremendously. Organizations are now building and maintaining social media public pages to improve their social network salience, enhance interest in their organizations, and build relationships with the online public. The majority of the studies on social media usage are based on the individual perspective while some are from the organizational perspective. However, not many studies have investigated the actual impact of social media usage on organizational performance. Therefore, using the qualitative approach, this study investigates the various purposes of social media usage and its impact on organizational performance. This study however, focuses only on the social media managers’ views. The senior managers of six organizations that are using social media are interviewed from which we find that social media is used for various purposes in organizations, such as advertising and promotion, branding, information search, building customer relations and many more. The results also show that social media has a greater impact on the performance of organizations in terms of enhancement in customer relations and customer service activities, improvement in information accessibility and cost reduction in terms of marketing and customer service.     

Reflections of entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized enterprises concerning the adoption of social media and its impact on performance outcomes: Evidence from the UAE

There have been numerous studies on the adoption of social media among individuals as well as organizations. Nevertheless, most of these studies were conducted in developed economies and focused on large organizations. This study, therefore, fills the gap by looking at the adoption of social media among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Middle East region; specifically, in the UAE. In addition, this study analyzes the adoption phenomena through word of mouth, viral marketing and social presence theory using in-depth semi-structured personal interviews with entrepreneurs of SMEs. Another significant contribution rendered by this study is its examination of social media adoption in terms of the business performance of firms.     

Saving lives using social media: Analysis of the role of twitter for personal blood donation requests and dissemination

Social media has an impact on many aspects of human life ranging from sharing personal information to revolutionizing political systems of entire countries. One not so well studied aspect of social media is analyzing its usage and efficacy in healthcare, particularly in developing countries which lack state-of-the-art healthcare systems and processes. In such countries, social media may be used to facilitate patient-centric healthcare by involving the patient for fulfilling personal healthcare needs. This article provides an in-depth analysis of one such need, that is, how people use social media to request for blood donations. We study the request and dissemination behavior of people using social media to fulfill blood donation requests. We focus on twitter, and blood donation accounts in India. Our study reveals that each of the seven twitter accounts we studied have a large followership of more than 35,000 users on an average and receive a substantial number (more than 900) of donation requests in a day on an average. We analyze the requests in various ways to present an outlook for healthcare providers to make their systems more patient-centric through a better understanding of the needs of people requesting for blood donations. Our study also identifies areas where future social media enabled automated healthcare systems can focus on the needs of individual patients. These systems can provide support for saving more lives by reducing the gap between blood donors and the people in need.     

Online identities and social influence in social media gambling exposure: A four-country study on young people

Social media tends to gather users around social cliques consisting of similar-minded individuals and shared identities. These online group processes can have significant influence on user behavior, which is alarming when considering risky behaviors such as gambling. This study examined how online clique involvement predicts young people’s interest in gambling content and following observed group norms on social media. Survey respondents were 15–25-year-olds from Finland (n = 1200), the United States (n = 1212), South Korea (n = 1192) and Spain (n = 1212). A self-reported measure of online clique involvement and a gambling-related social media vignette experiment were utilized. The results show that online clique involvement was related to higher interest in gambling content. Content liked by a majority gathered more interest, indicating conformity to a group norm. This finding was especially true among participants with past involvement in online cliques, and the association was strongest in South Korea. The tendency to participate in online clique behavior creates a potentially risky setting when encountering online gambling content, because it may accentuate the effect of observed group norms. Interacting with gambling content increases the visibility of such content due to algorithmic filtering technologies, which can fuel gambling-related intentions and behaviors, and normalize gambling.     

Characteristics and social impact of the use of social media by Chinese Dama

Against the backdrop of broader social changes, social media has developed rapidly in China, which has pushed the transition of the media environment from a traditional authority-dominated one to a modern media society. In particular, the use of social media by Chinese Dama can be perceived as an exemplar of media-driven social change. ‘Chinese Dama’ is a buzzword coined in tandem with the development of social media since 2013. This term represents a particular group of middle-aged Chinese women who reflect a distinctive social phenomenon in China. It is noteworthy that a growing number of Chinese Dama are learning to use social media and have established thousands of social media communities, exerting significant influence on the wider media and social environment. This study focuses on the major changes undergone by Dama, transitioning from being passively covered by media to becoming active users of social media, and this research analyzes the motivations and hallmarks of their social media activity. Although the use of social media by Chinese Dama, the traditional nucleus of Chinese society, has contributed to narrowing the digital divide and resulted in the Dama’s gaining more discourse power and ushered in new diverse lifestyles, we argue that the Dama also exert a far-reaching positive and negative influence on society, pushing for the modernization transformation of the Chinese society.     

Bubbles bursting: Investigating and measuring the personalisation of social media searches

Social media platforms implement personalisation algorithms to provide users with a tailored selection of posts under the assumption of a better experience. However, prior studies examining social media timelines revealed that, due to personalisation algorithms, social media users are more likely to encounter attitude-consistent content that reinforces their existing beliefs than information that contradicts them, creating filter bubbles and ultimately hampering their ability to make good decisions. To burst the bubbles, this paper proposes a framework for investigating and measuring the factors that affect personalisation in social media search mechanisms by controlling external noises that can mask the results and be misinterpreted as personalisation. Upon conducting a comprehensive set of experiments with Twitter as our study social media platform, we observed that users’ followees, cookies, and carry-over effect play a role in shaping personalised search results. While the extent of their influence is relatively limited, they can still lead to the introduction of biases, consequently affecting users’ opinions and judgements. In addition, the experiments also shed light on the fact that searches on polarised issues can lead to unwarranted one-sided inclinations in the results. Lastly, we argue in favour of alleviating the multifaceted societal and ethical consequences of algorithmic personalisation through encouraging users to develop healthy social media use habits and by urging social media platforms as well as policymakers to actively work towards fostering a more diverse and reliable online information ecosystem.     

Causal effects of affordance change on communication behavior: Empirical evidence from organizational and leadership social media use

This article provides empirical evidence for two hypotheses in the affordance literature. First, by leveraging a small affordance change — Twitter increasing its character limit from 140 to 280 on November 7, 2017, employing an instrumental variable approach, and examining 143,771 original tweets published by organizational and leadership accounts half a year before and after the intervention, we showed the direct causal relationship between affordances and communication behavior on digital media platforms. Second, by exploring what factors could explain the heterogeneity of causal effects, we showed that previous endogenous perceptions of communication constraint predicted later behavioral changes, despite the same exogenous intervention. These findings highlight the role of human agencies in the face of technological changes and provide empirical support for the affordance approach to information communication technologies (ICTs) as a reconciliation between technological determinism and social constructivism.     

Value systems and intentions to interact in social media: The digital natives

Current research on social media focus on perceptions, behavioural intention, usage, and seldom take value systems into account. Values are expected to impact behaviour directly or indirectly via intervening constructs, for example, attitude. This paper explores, starting from the Theory of Trying, how value systems impact the digital natives’ interactive behaviour with social media. An empirical research is executed to test a model based on global and domain-specific values, and attitudes towards trying in explaining usage. Based on 116 valid responses from a sample of digital natives, several alternative models were tested. The proposed model based on the theory of trying shows that domain-specific values positively influence behaviour and usage of social media. Attitude towards trying positively mediates the effect of domain-specific values and global values on interactive behaviour with social media. Global values do not influence domain-specific values, nor has a direct impact on behaviour.     

A meta-analytic review of the relationship between social media use and employee outcomes

Employees’ social media use and its relationships with work-related outcomes have received significant research attention in recent years. Extant research, however, has provided neither consistent findings regarding the extent and direction of such relationships nor consensus on potential moderators involved. To provide robust conclusions about the association between social media use and employee outcomes which could inform research and practice, a systematic culmination of findings from 29 empirical works published in peer-reviewed journals from 2009 to 2018 was conducted. The meta-analytic review assessed the relationships between employees’ social media use and employee outcomes (job performance, job satisfaction, work engagement, emotional exhaustion, and work-life conflict) and their moderators (types of social media, purposes of use, and background variables). The results of the random-effects model suggest that social media use, in general, had significant, small, positive relationships with job performance, job satisfaction, work engagement, and work-life conflict. Its relationship with emotional exhaustion, however, was significant but negligible. The sub-group and meta-regression analyses further identified the moderators among the positive associations found: purpose of social media use moderated the relationships of social media use with job performance and job satisfaction while job position moderated the association between social media use and job satisfaction.