A motives framework of social media website use: A survey of young Americans

Social media is increasingly important in daily life and is an especially important social interaction mechanism for young people. Although research has been conducted evaluating user types based on motives for using social media, no such framework has been extended to social media websites. We extend previous research by evaluating the underlying structure of social media website usage motivations using a 13 item survey and evaluations from 19 different social media websites administered to 1686 young Americans. Using a multidimensional scaling approach, we uncover 2 major motive dimensions underlying social media website use: fun-related and content-specific. Based on the derived dimensions, we generate a graphical “quadrant” system for classifying social media websites and depict all 19 social media sites based on their quadrant. We propose that our quadrant system can be used by other researchers to further refine understanding of social media website usage motives.     

Forecasting smog-related health hazard based on social media and physical sensor

Smog disasters are becoming more and more frequent and may cause severe consequences on the environment and public health, especially in urban areas. Social media as a real-time urban data source has become an increasingly effective channel to observe people׳s reactions on smog-related health hazard. It can be used to capture possible smog-related public health disasters in its early stage. We then propose a predictive analytic approach that utilizes both social media and physical sensor data to forecast the next day smog-related health hazard. First, we model smog-related health hazards and smog severity through mining raw microblogging text and network information diffusion data. Second, we developed an artificial neural network (ANN)-based model to forecast smog-related health hazard with the current health hazard and smog severity observations. We evaluate the performance of the approach with other alternative machine learning methods. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to integrate social media and physical sensor data for smog-related health hazard forecasting. The empirical findings can help researchers to better understand the non-linear relationships between the current smog observations and the next day health hazard. In addition, this forecasting approach can provide decision support for smog-related health hazard management through functions like early warning.     

The influence of user interaction and participation in social media on the consumption intention of niche products

Social media may be particularly adept at promoting niche products because of the tendency of consumers to participate in generating reviews and discussing such products, thereby raising interest in them. In this study, we investigate how patterns of user interaction in discussing a niche cultural product may influence participation levels, which in turn enhance consumption intentions. We show that higher levels of participation can indeed enhance consumption intention. Furthermore, interaction patterns with high inclusiveness and betweenness centralization may enhance participation levels, whereas out-degree centralization and core-periphery have a detrimental influence. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Information sharing on social media sites

This study reports on an exploratory survey conducted to investigate the use of social media technologies for sharing information. This paper explores the issue of credibility of the information shared in the context of computer-mediated communication. Four categories of information were explored: sensitive, sensational, political and casual information, across five popular social media technologies: social networking sites, micro-blogging sites, wikis, online forums, and online blogs. One hundred and fourteen active users of social media technologies participated in the study. The exploratory analysis conducted in this study revealed that information producers use different cues to indicate credibility of the information they share on different social media sites. Organizations can leverage findings from this study to improve targeted engagement with their customers. The operationalization of how information credibility is codified by information producers contributes to knowledge in social media research.     

Interpersonal knowledge exchange in China: The impact of guanxi and social media

The employees of professional service firms regularly engage in various knowledge-related activities, including the seeking and sharing of knowledge with other people; we refer to this process as interpersonal knowledge exchange (IKE). Two prominent drivers of IKE in China are the socio-cultural concept of guanxi and social media. We conduct an interpretive investigation into IKE, collecting qualitative data from employees in three Chinese organizations. We explore how guanxi lubricates the social media-based communication practices that are central to IKE in China. We report and generalise our findings into theoretical propositions, discuss the practical implications, and identify opportunities for future research.     

The influence of disposition and social ties on trust in new virtual teammates

With the increased presence of social media tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook, social network information is now commonplace. Social media websites prominently display the social distance or so-called “degrees of separation” among users, effectively allowing people to view their shared social ties with others, including prospective teammates they have not met. Through the presentation and manipulation of social network information, this longitudinal experiment investigated whether dispositional and relational variables contribute to “swift trust” among new virtual teammates. Data from 74 participants were collected to test a path analytic model predicting that social ties and propensity to trust influence perceptions of a new teammate’s trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity) as well as the willingness to trust that new teammate when given the opportunity to do so. Path analysis indicated good model fit, but showed no significant evidence that social ties or propensity to trust affect perceived trustworthiness at the initial point of team engagement. Additionally, only one component of perceived trustworthiness (perceived ability) and propensity to trust were found to predict trusting behavior towards a new, unknown, teammate.     

Fraping,social norms and online representations of self

This paper reports on qualitative insights generated from 46 semi-structured interviews with adults ranging in age from 18 to 70. It focuses on an online social behaviour, ‘fraping’, which involves the unauthorised alteration of content on a person’s social networking site (SNS) profile by a third party. Our exploratory research elucidates what constitutes a frape, who is involved in it, and what the social norms surrounding the activity are. We provide insights into how frape contributes to online sociality and the co-construction of online identity, and identify opportunities for further work in understanding the interplay between online social identities, social groups and social norms.     

Understanding compulsive social media use: The premise of complementing self-conceptions mismatch with technology

Some anecdotal accounts and research reports have suggested that obsessive social media involvement could turn into a compulsive behavior among university students. Unfortunately, the research that sheds light on the possible conditional nature of that relationship is scarce at best. Therefore, this study tries to address this issue by developing a contingency-based model and tests it using data gathered from a sample of university students. The model postulates that compulsive social media use arises due to self-awareness factors, and together they in turn predict problematic learning outcomes. It also postulates that these relationships are moderated by the influence of technological factors. The results indicate that self-esteem has a significant negative influence on compulsive social media use and that interaction anxiousness has a significant positive influence on the same. The results also reveal that only compulsive social media use has a significant direct influence on problematic learning outcomes; and that social media complementarity plays a moderating role in the model. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

A novel hybrid social media platform selection model using fuzzy ANP and COPRAS-G

The growing popularity of social media platforms has sparked new marketing opportunities for companies. Marketers have turned to social media campaigns as a means to build brand loyalty, exposure, and engagement. While social media has evolved into a powerful marketing tool, marketers must carefully choose the most suitable social media platform. Improper selection of the social media platform can be costly and can be detrimental to the brand. Despite all of the supposed benefits, selecting the right social media platform has been a daunting task for corporate marketers. The social media platform selection problems are inherently complex problems with multiple and often conflicting criteria. We propose a novel analytical framework for social media platform selection. The proposed hybrid framework integrates the Analytic Network Process (ANP) with fuzzy set theory and the COmplex PRoportional ASsessment of alternatives with Grey relations (COPRAS-G) method. The ANP and fuzzy set theory are used to determine the importance weight of the social media platform selection criteria in a fuzzy environment. The COPRAS-G method is used to rank and select the most suitable social media platform. A case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework and exhibit the efficacy of the procedures and algorithms.     

Collaborative storytelling experiences in social media: Influence of peer-assistance mechanisms

Collaborative storytelling activities in social media environments are generally developed in a linear way in which all participants collaborate on a shared story as it is passed from one to another in a relay form. Difficulties with this linear approach arise when collecting the contributions of participants in to a coherent story. This study proposes a hypermedia approach to enable students to integrate the episodes of others to develop different branches of stories. Since these linear and nonlinear approaches facilitate students in developing stories in quite a different manner, students’ perceptions of linear and hypermedia approaches differ in their collaboration mechanisms, which may in turn affect positive inter-dependence and ultimate success in the collaborative storytelling. The results of an empirical study show that the performance of students in the hypermedia group was superior to that of members the linear group insofar as perception of collaborative process, peer support, authorship, and collaborative result where concerned.     

The associations between young adults’ face-to-face prosocial behaviors and their online prosocial behaviors

Drawing on the co-construction theory (Subrahmanyam, Smahel, & Greenfield, 2006), this study investigated the relationship between online and face-to-face prosocial behaviors among 493 (345 women) young adults (ages 18-25 years). Findings indicated that face-to-face prosocial behaviors were positively associated with the engagement in online prosocial behaviors through social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Myspace, Twitter), chat programs (e.g., Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger), email, and text messages, after controlling for gender and time spent using each type of technology. These findings extend the application of the co-construction theory to online prosocial behaviors. Furthermore, these findings suggest that the internet is also a place for positive interactions and call for more research investigating online prosocial behaviors.     

Testing alternative models of individuals’ social media involvement and satisfaction

This study extends the Technology Acceptance Model 3 (TAM 3) within the context of the rapidly evolving area of social media. Since social media requires the user’s active participation and processing of information as well as the creation of user-generated content, this timely study introduces the two relevant constructs of social media involvement and social media satisfaction that are associated with TAM 3. This study then develops three alternative conceptual models and empirically validates each of them using datasets obtained from the United States and Saudi Arabia. The LISREL analysis results show that the Dual Mediation Impact model is the best-fit model for both datasets. Further, the results show that a user’s social media involvement and social media satisfaction are dual mediators of the TAM 3 factors on social media usage intention. While the two country data show some differences in the strength of the relationships in the Dual Mediation Impact model, the identified model provides a common framework for global use. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Habit formation in social media consumption: a case of political engagement

This study draw upon the theory of habit formation in consumption from macroeconomics to support the evidence on the existence of habit formation in social media consumption. Treating social media consumption as a form of digital good consumption and using aggregated weekly posts from the Facebook pages of a group of 12 politicians in the cabinet of Singapore, we verified through a non-separable recursive time model that social media consumption habits were developed among this group of politicians. This study further confirms the existence of reciprocity by validating habit formation in the social media consumption of citizens and followers of these politicians’ posts using time aggregated data of ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘comments’. Further, this study shows the relationship between the strength of habit formation in social media consumption of politicians and citizens is positively correlated: the stronger the habit formation, the stronger the social capital reciprocity. Through these measurements, our analysis proved that political engagement in social media is a bi-directional habitual process and the use of a habit formation coefficient as a new parameter to measure ‘reciprocal engagement’ in social media provides a better understanding of the dynamic exchange between users of social media.     

Intercultural differences in responses to health messages on social media from spokespeople with varying levels of ethnic identity

In this study respondents were exposed to a social media page with either an African American avatar communicating high ethnic identity or low ethnic identity, encouraging them to read a story on the dangers of heart disease. Respondents were then asked to rate perceived response efficacy and behavioral intentions. Caucasians and African Americans did not differ on response efficacy across conditions; however African Americans in the high ethnic identity group indicated a change in behavioral intentions whereas other respondents did not. The results are discussed in relation to healthcare information targeting, future healthcare campaigns and emergent technologies.     

User opinion classification in social media: A global consistency maximization approach

Social media is a major platform for opinion sharing. In order to better understand and exploit opinions on social media, we aim to classify users with opposite opinions on a topic for decision support. Rather than mining text content, we introduce a link-based classification model, named global consistency maximization (GCM) that partitions a social network into two classes of users with opposite opinions. Experiments on a Twitter data set show that: (1) our global approach achieves higher accuracy than two baseline approaches and (2) link-based classifiers are more robust to small training samples if selected properly.     

Branding with social media: User gratifications,usage patterns,and brand message content strategies

The emergence of social media provides a new platform for developing brand–consumer relationships. The aim of the current study is to examine the differences in Chinese users’ gratifications of different social media and the impact of brand content strategies on the quality of brand–consumer communication via social media. In the first study, 209 SNS and 161 microblog users were surveyed. Five dimensions of social media gratifications emerged from the factor analysis. Significant differences in the strengths of gratifications were found between SNS and microblog users. Usage patterns of SNS and microblog are analyzed and compared. In the second study, we examined the impact of users’ gratification and the type of social media on the effectiveness of different brand content strategies through a two-week experiment involving 60 SNS users and 61 microblog users. Implications for developing branding strategies on different social media platforms are discussed.     

Facebook use depending on age: The influence of social comparisons

Facebook use is analyzed depending on age and occurrence of social comparisons. The hypotheses state that age is negatively associated with Facebook use and that this association is mediated by social comparison orientation. Data collection was realized via the Internet. The online-questionnaire included information on Facebook use on the basis of a behavioral report (cf., McAndrew & Jeong, 2012), an inventory for measuring social comparison orientation by Gibbons and Buunk (1999), and demographic questions. Results are based on 335 participants. They confirm both the negative association between age and frequency of Facebook activities and the mediation of this association by comparison orientation. These results are interpreted on the basis of evolutionary theory. This study offers new insights on the mediating role of social comparisons in the relationship between age and Facebook use. In the discussion suggestions for further routes of research on the link between age, comparison orientation, and Facebook use are outlined.     

Withholding effort in knowledge contribution: The role of social exchange and social cognitive on project teams

Few investigations have been made to determine what factors influence people in withholding knowledge from their colleagues. We created a construct, knowledge withholding (KW), defined as the likelihood that individuals contribute less knowledge to others in the organization than they could. We have formulated a model, based on social exchange theory and social cognition theory, to analyze the antecedents of KW from both personal and contextual perspectives. The contextual influencers were subdivided into dimensions of rational choice, normative conformity, and affective bonding to help in understanding KW. Results of a survey of 162 MIS alumni of a university, who had experienced software development, trust, distributive justice, and team-related work showed that personal outcome expectations had a substantial influence on KW.     

Unveiling the dark side of social networking sites: Personal and work-related consequences of social networking site addiction

Although previous research has explored the effects of social networking site (SNS) use in organizations, researchers have focused little on its negative consequences. This article attempts to fill this void by examining, through the lens of social cognitive theory, the extent SNS addiction impacts personal and work environments. The results, based on 276 questionnaires completed by employees in a large information technology corporation, show that addiction to SNSs has negative consequences on the personal and work environments. SNS addiction reduces positive emotions that augment performance and enhance health. SNS addiction fosters task distraction, which inhibits performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.