Social Networking Sites: Their Users and Social Implications — A Longitudinal Study

The rapid adoption of social networking sites (SNSs) raises important questions about the social implications of such usage. Drawing on unique longitudinal data, surveying a representative sample of Norwegian online users (N = 2,000, age 15–75 years) in 3 annual waves (2008, 2009, and 2010), this study found a significantly higher score among SNS users in comparison to nonusers in 3 out of 4 social capital dimensions: face‐to‐face interactions, number of acquaintances, and bridging capital. However, SNS‐users, and in particular males, reported more loneliness than nonusers. Furthermore, cluster analyses identified 5 distinct types of SNS users: Sporadics, Lurkers, Socializers, Debaters, and Advanced. Results indicate that Socializers report higher levels of social capital compared to other user types.     

Understanding How People Select Social Networking Services: Media Trait,Social Influences and Situational Factors

Social networking services (SNSs) have become very popular, and many Internet users use two or more SNSs. However, little research has been done to understand how and when users select multiple SNSs in series. This study investigates Internet users’ SNS selection behavior in daily life. We adopt the notion of media repertoire to explore how Internet users select SNSs in combination, and we adopt uses and gratifications theory to identify the values that drive these users to choose specific SNSs. We interviewed 40 Taiwanese people to explore the media traits, situational factors and social influences that affect users’ SNS selection behavior. The findings of this study can help SNS companies to improve SNS functions, and help marketers devise marketing strategies for target audiences and find suitable SNS platforms on which to communicate with consumers.     

Privacy-Aware Framework for Matching Online Social Identities in Multiple Social Networking Services

With various emerging Social Networking Services (SNS), it is possible for users to join multiple SNS for social relationships with other users and to collect a large amount of information (e.g., statuses on Facebook and tweets on Twitter). However, these users have been facing difficulties in managing all the data collected from the multiple SNS. It is important to match social identities from the multiple SNS. In this study, we propose a privacy-aware framework for a social identity matching (SIM) method across these multiple SNS. It means that the proposed approach can protect user privacy, because only the public information (e.g., username and the social relationships of the users) is employed to find the best matches between social identities. As a result, we have shown by evaluation that the F-measure of the proposed SIM method is about 60%.     

SNS网站用户关系挖掘的设计与实现

针对目前网络社交网站存在的交友形式单薄、好友关系淡化、用户流失等问题,设计基于“寝室”组织形式的社交网站系统,嵌入用户挖掘模块,通过权值更新和潜在关系更新算法帮助用户寻找潜在好友,以达到拓展社交圈的目的。实验结果表明,该系统的好友推荐准确度较高。     

Understanding the Intention of Using Mobile Social Networking Apps Across Cultures

Understanding the user acceptance of mobile social networking apps in different cultures can provide powerful insights for managers and marketers of social networking apps to develop effective globalized and localized strategies to attract users worldwide. Following the theory of planned behavior, this study develops a research model of privacy concern (PC), privacy risk (PR), and perceived enjoyment (PE) as attitudinal beliefs, subjective norm (SN) as normative belief, and smartphone self-efficacy (SE) as control belief to understand users’ intention to use mobile social networking apps. In particular, the impact of culture was investigated, considering the user base of mobile social networking apps is distributed globally and culturally diversified, and cultural values have direct impact on behavior. The research model was validated by survey data collected from 151 participants in the U.S. and 170 participants in South Korea. The data analysis results show that perceived enjoyment and subjective norm are the most important drivers behind users’ intention to use mobile social networking apps for both countries. No significant difference was found for the effects of privacy risk and subjective norm upon users’ intention to use mobile social networking apps across cultures. Implications of the findings upon theory and practice are discussed.     

Topic Evolution Analysis in Social Networking Services: Taking Sina Weibo as an Example

Event-related topics in social networking services are always the epitome of heated society issues, therefore determining the significance of analyzing its evolution patterns. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on the tweets about "ransomware" in Sina Weibo, a famous social networking service similar to twitter in China. The keyword corresponds to a global ransomware attack in May 2017, on which our example event-related topics are based. We collect text data from sina Weibo and vectorize each tweets, before using a dynamic topic model to discover the event-related topics. The results of the topic model are explainable enough and help us to understand the evolution of those topics more thoroughly.     

Open Challenges in Relationship-Based Privacy Mechanisms for Social Network Services

Social networking services (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter have experienced explosive growth during the few past years. Millions of users have created their profiles on these services because they experience great benefits in terms of friendship. SNSs can help people to maintain their friendships, organize their social lives, start new friendships, and meet others who share their hobbies and interests. However, all these benefits can be eclipsed by the privacy hazards that affect people in SNSs. People expose intimate information about their lives on SNSs, and this information affects the way others think about them. It is crucial that users be able to control how their information is distributed through the SNSs and decide who can access it. This article presents a list of privacy threats that can affect SNS users and what requirements privacy mechanisms should fulfill to prevent this threats. Then the article reviews current approaches and analyzes to what extent they cover the requirements.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Social Networks and Social Networking

This issue's theme includes three articles on research activities that have drawn on ideas from social networking to drive innovative designs. The focus covers the design, development, and study of social technologies at the level of individuals, groups, and organizations. Although the tools described here are all intended for individuals, each article highlights how new technologies and technical competencies will further push our understanding of human social-networking drives and desires.     

Understanding Situated Social Interactions: A Case Study of Public Places in the City

Ubiquitous and mobile computer technologies are increasingly being appropriated to facilitate people’s social life outside the work domain. Designing such social and collaborative technologies requires an understanding of peoples’ physical and social context, and the interplay between these and their situated interactions. In response, this paper addresses the challenge of informing design of mobile services for fostering social connections by using the concept of place for studying and understanding peoples’ social activities in a public built environment. We present a case study of social experience of a physical place providing an understanding of peoples’ situated social interactions in public places of the city derived through a grounded analysis of small groups of friends socialising out on the town. Informed by this, we describe the design and evaluation of a mobile prototype system facilitating sociality in the city by (1) allowing people to share places, (2) indexing to places, and (3) augmenting places.     

移动SNS的社交网络传播方式现状分析与改进探索

鉴于社交网络的传播效果对移动SNS的使用尤为重要,本文充分分析了移动SNS的社交网络近距离传播方式现状后,探索性的提出了蓝牙网络和Wi-Fi网络两种技术改进方法,为进一步研究指引了方向。     

An Empirical Study Evaluating Social Networking Continuance and Success

Social networking site (SNS) use decisions have led to major economic and social transformations worldwide. While many organizations seek to use SNSs from a strategic perspective to reach their customer, it is important to understand what makes SNSs successful in order to use them for competitive purposes. The current research evaluates the influence of the social capital theory on SNS success measures. A model was developed and empirically tested using two data samples to ensure valid and reliable results for success of SNSs. The results display the importance of social capital in SNS success followed by practitioner and academic implications.     

Use Contexts for the Mobile Internet: A Longitudinal Study Monitoring Actual Use of Mobile Internet Services

The mobile Internet, which gives access to the World Wide Web through a mobile device, has been gaining in popularity. The mobile Internet differs from the traditional stationary Internet in that it can be used in a wider variety of contexts. However, no studies have identified the contexts in which mobile Internet services are used most frequently, or determined which contexts exert significant influence on a user's choice of mobile service. This article proposes a framework of use contexts that reflects the characteristics of the mobile Internet. To explore these contexts, a research method was devised and a longitudinal monitoring study was conducted. The results indicate that mobile Internet use is heavily clustered around a few key contexts, rather than dispersed widely over diverse contexts. Further, participants in the monitoring study were found to concentrate their use on a few mobile services, rather than on exploring diverse services. Perhaps most interestingly, some contextual factors were found to correlate closely with the selection of specific mobile Internet services. On the basis of these results, the article concludes with implications for developers of mobile Internet services.     

SMEs and Mass Collaborative Knowledge Management: Toward Understanding the Role of Social Media Networks

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that mass collaborative knowledge management (MCKM) and social media networks (SMNs) tend to enhance productivity in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A case study methodology was employed to highlight the complementary advantages of MCKM related to the use of SMNs in a small business operating in southern Italy. The research aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on MCKM. This article offers a fresh perspective by discussing the relevance of this construct for SMEs.     

Understanding Continuance Intention of Mobile Payment Services: An Empirical Study

Research on continued use of mobile payment services is scarce. To address part of this research gap, we examine a research model, derived from IT continuance, risk-trust, and affect-cognition literature. The results show that user satisfaction with mobile payment services has a substantive positive impact on continuance intention with such services; the disconfirmation of preadoption perceived usefulness about mobile payment services positively impacts user satisfaction and postadoption perceived usefulness; the disconfirmation of preadoption perceived risk about mobile payment services negatively impacts user satisfaction and positively impacts postadoption perceived risk; postadoption perceived usefulness is positively associated with continuance intention; user satisfaction positively impacts both institution-based trust in mobile payment technologies and trust beliefs in service providers; institution-based trust shows a positive impact on postadoption perceived usefulness and a negative impact on postadoption perceived risk.     

Online Social Networking Sites Continuance Intention: A Model Comparison Approach

Retaining existing users and letting them continue to use the current social networking sites (SNSs) have become increasingly challenging for developers. This study takes a model comparison approach to investigate this important issue. Based on technology acceptance model, self-determination theory, and net-valence model, our study develops four models that explain individuals’ continuance intention. Based on the data collected from U.S. SNS users, all four models can predict individuals’ intention reasonably well, and net-valence model with perceived benefits and risks as second-order constructs explains the largest amount of variance of SNS continuance intention. This study is among the first model comparison studies in the SNS continuance area. It is also among the first to apply self-determination theory and net-valence model to investigate SNS continuance.     

How User Experience Changes over Time: A Case Study of Social Network Services

While interacting with a product or a service, people have diverse experiences, which constitute user experience (UX). In this study, the hierarchical dimensions of UX were considered, including overall UX, its elements (usability, affect, and user value) and their subelements. To determine how UX changes over time, the temporal changes of the influence of each element and subelement were analyzed. Twenty subjects participated in a longitudinal experiment by using a social network service (SNS). The most important element of UX changed from usability to user value after one week of use. These results suggest that adoption of an SNS occurs in two phases: a phase of affected by usability and a phase affected by user value. Identification of these phases and the systematic approach used in the study are expected to contribute to design and evaluation of new SNSs and other products and services.     

基于内容的移动社交网络审计分析引擎

随着移动互联网的飞速发展以及社会化网络的出现,微信等移动社交类应用在生活的各个层面为人们带来便利,但同时也带来了谣言、泄密等网络安全问题。传统的基于字符串匹配的关键词过滤审计引擎已经不能满足人们的需求。针对传统特征项权重算法在处理变异短文本方面的不足,提出了改进的TF-IDF算法,同时将社会网络计算的相关技术应用到审计引擎中,实现了基于内容的事件抽取和表达。实验结果表明,改进后的算法具有较高的准确率和召回率。     

Understanding Neural Complexity: A Role For Reduction

Psychoneural reduction is under attack again, only this time from a former ally: cognitive neuroscience. It has become popular to think of the brain as a complex system whose theoretically important properties emerge from dynamic, non-linear interactions between its component parts. ``Emergence' is supposed to replace reduction: the latter is thought to be incapable of explaining the brain qua complex system. Rather than engage this issue at the level of theories of reduction versus theories of emergence, I here emphasize a role that reductionism plays – and will continue to play – even if neuroscience adopts this ``complex systems' view. In detailed investigations into the function of complex neural circuits, certain questions can only be addressed by moving down levels and scales. This role for reduction also finds a place for approaches that dominate mainstream neuroscience, like the widespread use of experimental techniques and theories from molecular biology and biochemistry. These are difficult to reconcile with the anti-reductionist sentiments of the ``complex systems' branch of cognitive neuroscience.     

集成建模环境中建模过程自动理解方法研究

模型的自动构建是集成建模环境中的一个重要功能，构模知识的获取是自动构模中的一个瓶颈问题。提出一种建模过程理解方法，通过这种方法，系统能够对专家构建的模型进行理解，获取相关的构模知识。