News Recommendations from Social Media Opinion Leaders: Effects on Media Trust and Information Seeking

Polls show a strong decline in public trust of traditional news outlets; however, social media offers new avenues for receiving news content. This experiment used the Facebook API to manipulate whether a news story appeared to have been posted on Facebook by one of the respondent's real‐life Facebook friends. Results show that social media recommendations improve levels of media trust, and also make people want to follow more news from that particular media outlet in the future. Moreover, these effects are amplified when the real‐life friend sharing the story on social media is perceived as an opinion leader. Implications for democracy and the news business are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Cyberbalkanization and Opinion Polarization: Time‐Series Analysis on Facebook Pages and Opinion Polls During the Hong Kong Occupy Movement and the Associated Debate on Political Reform

Online activity is often cyberbalkanized, but it remains unclear whether this phenomenon leads to polarization of public opinion or if the relationship works in the reverse direction. This study tested the temporal association between cyberbalkanization and opinion polarization during the debate on political reform in Hong Kong. Online communities were constructed by a post‐sharing network of 1,644 Facebook pages (101,410 shares); the differences between intra‐ and inter‐community shares were derived, and a cyberbalkanization index was computed. A time‐series analysis showed that the index temporally preceded the opinion polarization, i.e., most of the opinion poll's respondents gave extreme ratings to government leaders, but not vice versa. The index was particularly predictive of polarization among youth.     

Social Media as Information Source: Recency of Updates and Credibility of Information

Social media are increasingly being used as an information source, including information related to risks and crises. The current study examines how pieces of information available in social media impact perceptions of source credibility. Specifically, participants in the study were asked to view 1 of 3 mock Twitter.com pages that varied the recency with which tweets were posted and then to report on their perceived source credibility of the page owner. Data indicate that recency of tweets impacts source credibility; however, this relationship is mediated by cognitive elaboration. These data suggest many implications for theory and application, both in computer‐mediated communication and crisis communication. These implications are discussed, along with limitations of the current study and directions for future research.     

Political Expression and Action on Social Media: Exploring the Relationship Between Lower‐ and Higher‐Threshold Political Activities Among Twitter Users in Italy

Scholars and commentators have debated whether lower‐threshold forms of political engagement on social media should be treated as being conducive to higher‐threshold modes of political participation or a diversion from them. Drawing on an original survey of a representative sample of Italians who discussed the 2013 election on Twitter, we demonstrate that the more respondents acquire political information via social media and express themselves politically on these platforms, the more they are likely to contact politicians via e‐mail, campaign for parties and candidates using social media, and attend offline events to which they were invited online. These results suggest that lower‐threshold forms of political engagement on social media do not distract from higher‐threshold activities, but are strongly associated with them.     

Urban Social Media Demographics: An Exploration of Twitter Use in Major American Cities

This article explores intersections between place, race/ethnicity, and gender amongst American Twitter users and makes an argument that studying the intensity of tweets provides insights into how and why particular groups tweet. Given recent events in American political life such as the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri and the reactions by young, urban African Americans on Twitter, understanding the role of race, place, gender, and age is important. We observed the time between tweets of urban American Twitter users and explored whether the medium may be providing traditionally marginalized groups, such as young Black men, with potential avenues for mobilizing communication and access to resources.     

Internet,News, and Political Trust: The Difference Between Social Media and Online Media Outlets

What is the relationship between Internet usage and political trust? To answer this question, we performed a cross‐sectional analysis of Eurobarometer survey data related to 27 countries and a supervised sentiment analysis of online political information broadcast during the Italian debate on the reform of public funding of parties. The results disclose the differences between Web 1.0 websites and Web 2.0 social media, showing that consumption of news from information/news websites is positively associated with higher trust, while access to information available on social media is linked with lower trust. This has implications for the debate on social media as a public sphere and for the tension between professional and citizen journalism.     

面向社会媒体的信息抽取：任务、挑战与机遇

社会媒体是人们用来分享意见、见解、观念和经验的平台或工具,目前已经发展成具有日益重大影响力的新媒体。面向社会媒体的信息抽取就是要从充满噪音的、零碎的、非结构化的社会媒体的自由文本中提取有价值的结构化的信息,以利于从社会媒体内容中有效地获取信息。介绍了面向社会媒体的信息抽取这一任务的诞生背景、要解决的主要问题、面l临的主要挑战、相关工作以及未来的研究方向。     

Social Media and Trust during the Gezi Protests in Turkey

The Gezi Protests, an environmental sit‐in that turned into a social movement in Turkey, is often compared to the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement with regard to the importance attributed to social media. This paper examines the role that social media played during the protests, with an emphasis on how trust was built and maintained among the protestors. In‐depth interviews with 21 active Gezi protestors revealed that social trust and system trust were intertwined in actual practices. On one side, technological affordances worked as an interface that facilitated social identification, which helped in trusting the person behind the information. On the other side, technological affordances themselves invited different levels of trust, subject to both physical constraints and technological barriers.     

The Social Media Disorder Scale

There is growing evidence that social media addiction is an evolving problem, particularly among adolescents. However, the absence of an instrument measuring social media addiction hinders further development of the research field. The present study, therefore, aimed to test the reliability and validity of a short and easy to administer Social Media Disorder (SMD) Scale that contains a clear diagnostic cut-off point to distinguish between disordered (i.e. addicted) and high-engaging non-disordered social media users.Three online surveys were conducted among a total of 2198 Dutch adolescents aged 10 to 17. The 9-item scale showed solid structural validity, appropriate internal consistency, good convergent and criterion validity, sufficient test-retest reliability, and satisfactory sensitivity and specificity. In sum, this study generated evidence that the short 9-item scale is a psychometrically sound and valid instruments to measure SMD.     

The Rise of Twitter in the Political Campaign: Searching for Intermedia Agenda‐Setting Effects in the Presidential Primary

Questions exist over the extent to which social media content may bypass, follow, or attract the attention of traditional media. This study sheds light on such dynamics by examining intermedia agenda‐setting effects among the Twitter feeds of the 2012 presidential primary candidates, Twitter feeds of the Republican and Democratic parties, and articles published in the nation's top newspapers. Daily issue frequencies within media were analyzed using time series analysis. A symbiotic relationship was found between agendas in Twitter posts and traditional news, with varying levels of intensity and differential time lags by issue. While traditional media follow candidates on certain topics, on others they are able to predict the political agenda on Twitter.     

Media Niche of Electronic Communication Channels in Friendship: A Meta‐Analysis

The current landscape of communication technologies is characterized by a wide variety of choices. As each medium provides different affordances, each may occupy a different niche and be used in different relationships. Drawing on the theory of the niche, we did a meta‐analysis involving 27 effect sizes from 22 independent samples to test the correlation between media selection/use and friendship closeness. Results showed that the 5 communication channels filled 2 different friendship closeness niches. Mobile phone calls and texting had stronger positive correlations with friendship closeness than instant messaging, social network sites, and online gaming. Culture, but not gender, moderated some of these correlations: Friendship closeness had a stronger positive association with SNS use and online gaming in collectivist cultures.     

Habitual Facebook Use and its Impact on Getting Deceived on Social Media

There are a billion Facebook users worldwide with some individuals spending 8 hours each day on the platform. Limited research has, however, explored the consequences of such overuse. Even less research has examined the misuse of social media by criminals who are increasingly using social media to defraud individuals through phishing‐type attacks. The current study focuses on Facebook habits and its determinants and the extent to which they ultimately influence individual susceptibility to social media phishing attacks. The results suggest that habitual Facebook use, founded on the individual frequently using Facebook, maintaining a large social network, and being deficient in their ability to regulate such behaviors, is the single biggest predictor of individual victimization in social media attacks.     

网络化社会媒体的传播及应用

介绍社会媒体的网络特性与信息传播特点和社会媒体的传播机制．以及当前主要的研究课题,其中包括社会媒体的传播方法与模型、传播影响力、主题模型发现和情感倾向性分析等,简单介绍社会媒体信息传播在虚拟社会管理和社会媒体服务中的应用前景。     

突发事件网络舆情的璃变机制及导控策略

为了更好地应对突发事件,探索突发事件网络舆情的演变机制,将突发事件网络舆情的演变过程划分为酝酿、扩散、爆发和消退四个阶段,在每个阶段分别对应起主导作用的形成机制、驱动机制、作用机制和终结机制。描述了突发事件网络舆情的演变过程,分析了其演变机制,提出了针对性的舆情导控策略。     

Social Media Use for News and Individuals' Social Capital,Civic Engagement and Political Participation

Recently, scholars tested how digital media use for informational purposes similarly contributes to foster democratic processes and the creation of social capital. Nevertheless, in the context of today's socially‐networked‐society and the rise of social media applications (i.e., Facebook) new perspectives need to be considered. Based on U.S. national data, results show that after controlling for demographic variables, traditional media use offline and online, political constructs (knowledge and efficacy), and frequency and size of political discussion networks, seeking information via social network sites is a positive and significant predictor of people's social capital and civic and political participatory behaviors, online and offline.     

Civil Society in Times of Crisis: Understanding Collective Action Dynamics in Digitally‐Enabled Volunteer Networks

Social media play an important role in political mobilization. Voluntary engagement can especially benefit from new opportunities for organizing collective action. Although research has explored the use of Twitter by decentralized individuals for this, there has been little emphasis on its use for community engagement and the provision of public goods. Even less is known about its role in the emergence and offline expansion of spontaneous self‐organized solidarity initiatives. This paper investigates how networked communication facilitates self‐organization and the development of ties in a network of volunteers in Greece. To examine whether initiative‐specific community feelings that can transcend online‐offlsine divides evolve in such hybrid networks, the analysis is complemented with individual‐level data drawn from a survey with the initiative's volunteers.     

高校校园网络舆情特点及研羊机制研究

高校校园网络舆情对大学生的思想和行为产生着重要的影响。研究高校校园网络舆情的现状、特点及存在的问题,探索舆情发展的规律,并在此基础上,提出高校校园网络舆情的研判与分析预警机制,构建网络舆情研判预警系统,促进高校大学生群体网络舆情的研判预擎制度的建立与应用。     

The Double‐Edged Sword: The Effects of Journalists' Social Media Activities on Audience Perceptions of Journalists and Their News Products

As social media become popular news platforms, journalists and news organizations have been keen to capitalize on their potential to build and maintain audiences. However, little is known about the extent to which these efforts may have adverse implications. Based on normative theories, the present study investigates the influence of journalists' social media activities (specifically, self‐disclosure and interaction with other users) on audience perceptions of journalists. An experiment (N = 267) revealed that: Although both journalists' self‐disclosure and interaction positively influenced audience perceptions of the journalists in the personal dimension, interaction negatively influenced audience perceptions in the professional dimension; and the perceptions transferred to perceptions of news products, thereby mediating the relationship between journalists' social media activities and audience news perceptions.     

基于CCA和数据引力场模型的社交媒体信息置信度评估方法

近年来,微博平台作为社交媒体载体之一,已经成为新闻信息传播的重要工具.然而,微博平台自身特性决定了其无法提供避免谣言或是虚假信息传递的有效机制.针对这一问题,建立一套完整的算法框架来判断微博的置信度.首先,从不同视角对微博数据提取特征,并将这些多视角的特征通过典型相关分析法（Canonical Correlation Analysis,以下简称CCA）映射到共同子空间中.接下来,从物理学的重力场理论中获得启发,设计一种新的判别学习算法-数据引力场模型（Data Gravitational Field,以下简称DGF）并从大量信息中判别出错误信息或虚假信息.实验表明,这种信息置信度自动检测方法能够达到较高的准确率和召回率.同时,相比较于其它学习算法,数据引力场模型也有更好的表现.     

基于二次线性模型的网络舆情演化研究与实现

针对目前网络舆情形成迅速,对社会影响巨大,主要讨论在加强互联网信息监管的同时．研究网络舆情的演化趋势并研究相关算法以对其发展做出科学的预测．目的是对网络舆情的特性有一定的了解,掌握其基本的变化规律,以便提早采取应对措施,对于及时应对网络突发的公共事件和全面掌握社会民情民意有重大意义。