Cultural Effects on Use of Online Social Media for Health-Related Information Acquisition and Sharing in Taiwan

The aims of this study were to use the technology acceptance model to examine how the cultural characteristics of social media users in Taiwan affect their use of social media for acquiring and sharing health-related information and to examine how their use of online social media benefits their social relationships and health self-efficacy. The research model in this quantitative cross-sectional study was tested with data collected from 321 active Facebook users in Taiwan. All three cultural characteristics/dimensions considered in the research model (masculinity, collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance) significantly affected the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of using the online social media platform. However, masculinity had a significant positive effect on perceived usefulness but not on perceived ease of use. These results imply that technology tools for people in high masculinity cultures should be designed to maximize the effectiveness of the technology for achieving goals rather than to maximize the ease of using the technology. On the other hand, the use of online social media for acquiring and sharing health-related information significantly affected the social relationships of users but not their health self-efficacy. The results of this study imply that participants in online communities share health-related information not only to enhance their health but also to form strong social connections. This study proposes a new construct of technology acceptance, acquisition, and sharing of health-related information and investigates its effects on social relationships and health self-efficacy.     

Adoption of travel information in user-generated content on social media: the moderating effect of social presence

Travel patterns have gradually changed from group travel to individual travel. An increasing number of people acquire travel information through various types of media. One of the alternative information sources is social media, which enables users to exchange information among members. However, one of the characteristics of social media is information sharing, not information search, which involves both giving (i.e. posting) and taking (i.e. selective reading, forwarding, replying, linking, and liking) information. Compared to the ‘giving’ side of information-sharing research, less effort has been spent on the ‘taking’ side of information research. Therefore, we investigate travel information adoption in social media as well as how individuals communicate with each other. We use the elaboration likelihood model, which measures the impact of central (e.g. argument quality) and peripheral (e.g. credibility) cues on traveller information-sharing behaviour corresponding with social presence on social media. The results of an empirical analysis of 527 respondents, who were experienced in travel information adoption via social media, were examined. Our findings revealed that argument quality had a positive effect on perceived usefulness and source credibility positively affected perceived usefulness and social relationships. Perceived usefulness had a significant positive effect on social relationships. Both perceived usefulness and social relationships affected travel information adoption. Lastly, the levels of argument quality and source credibility perceived by social media members were found to differ according to the level of social presence.     

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.     

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.     

News sharing in social media: The effect of gratifications and prior experience

Recent events indicate that sharing news in social media has become a phenomenon of increasing social, economic and political importance because individuals can now participate in news production and diffusion in large global virtual communities. Yet, knowledge about factors influencing news sharing in social media remains limited. Drawing from the uses and gratifications (U&G) and social cognitive theories (SCT), this study explored the influences of information seeking, socializing, entertainment, status seeking and prior social media sharing experience on news sharing intention. A survey was designed and administered to 203 students in a large local university. Results from structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that respondents who were driven by gratifications of information seeking, socializing, and status seeking were more likely to share news in social media platforms. Prior experience with social media was also a significant determinant of news sharing intention. Implications and directions for future work are discussed.     

Exploring social media use in university crisis communication: An experiment to measure impact on perceived crisis severity and attitudes of key publics

This study seeks to investigate the impact of an exposure to a university's social media on publics’ perceptions during a crisis. Data from this study showed that participants (N = 269) expressed more favourable evaluations towards the university and their perceived severity was mitigated after viewing its official statement on university's Facebook posts. The results of this empirical research offer a meaningful suggestion to crisis communication scholars and practitioners interested in assessing the impact of universities’ statements in social media by providing ways to understand the importance of the organizational usage of social media during a crisis, why that is important, and why practitioners should make effective social media communication tactics a priority during a crisis.     

Truth,trust, and civic duty: Cultural factors in citizens' perceptions of mobile phone apps and social media in disasters

This study investigates how citizens perceive the role of mobile phone apps specifically designed for disaster communication, and how these perceptions may differ from perceived roles and functions of social media in disaster‐related tasks/situations. Focusing on trust in authorities and technology use, results suggest that social media use not only fosters trust via shared narratives and collective sense‐making but may also improve trust relationships through local authorities assuming the function of a trustworthy information provider. In disaster apps usage, trust between citizens and authorities is generated through perceptions of shared responsibility rather than shared narratives. Apps were seen as mechanisms that reveal authorities' general willingness to share control, which may help overcome citizens' perceptions that they are distrusted by authorities.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

Sharing Political Content in Online Social Media: A Planned and Unplanned Behaviour Approach

Human’s decision making is not necessarily always planned; their unplanned behaviour—determined by natural personality traits—also contributes to the decision making process. In this study, we investigate factors related to planned and unplanned behaviour to understand why people share political content in online social media. Based on an online survey of 257 social media users, our results demonstrate that the factors representing both planned (i.e., perceived social recognition and altruistic motivation) and unplanned behaviour (i.e., extroversion and impulsiveness) affect people’s political content sharing behaviour. Our study understands that sharing political content is not like sharing other forms of content such as tourist attractions—the former can provoke serious punishment in some countries. Accordingly, trait impulsiveness is negatively associated with political content sharing behaviour. We also found that collective opinion moderates people’s planned behaviour, but not their unplanned behaviour. In other words, personality traits are unaffected by others’ opinions, but traits that humans can control can be shaped by others’.     

Reflection-through-performance: personal implications of documenting health behaviors for the collective

Previous work has examined how technology can support health behavior monitoring in social contexts. These tools incentivize behavior documentation through the promise of virtual rewards, rich visualizations, and improved co-management of disease. Social influence is leveraged to motivate improved behaviors through friendly competition and the sharing of emotional and informational support. Prior work has described how by documenting and sharing behaviors in these tools, people engage in performances of the self. This performance happens as users selectively determine what information to share and hide, crafting a particular portrayal of their identity. Much of the prior work in this area has examined the implications of systems that encourage people to share their behaviors with friends, family, and geographically distributed strangers. In this paper, we report upon the performative nature of behavior sharing in a system created for a different social group: the local neighborhood. We designed Community Mosaic (CM), a system with a collectivistic focus: this tool asks users to document their behaviors using photographs and text, but not for their own benefit—for the benefit of others in their community. Through a 6-week deployment of CM, we evaluated the nature of behavior sharing in this system, including participants’ motivations for sharing, the way in which this sharing happened, and the reflexive impact of sharing. Our findings highlight the performative aspects of photograph staging and textual narration and how sharing this content led participants to become more aware and evaluative of their behaviors, and led them to try to eat more healthfully. We conclude with recommendations for behavior monitoring tools, specifically examining the implications of users’ perceived audience and automated behavioral tracking on opportunities for reflection-through-performance.     

Consuming,sharing, and creating content: How young students use new social media in and outside school

This survey study investigated 186 secondary 2–5 school students from two schools to understand how and why they used new social media both in and outside of school to consume, share, and create content. It found that whereas students tend to consume and share more social media content outside of school they create more in school. Perceived importance of sharing content with peers or others is the most significant predictor having positive impact on all social media activities, both in and outside school. However, the negative impact of self-regulation ability on outside school social media activities implies the conscientiousness of their social media engagement, which calls for a further investigation on the quality of the social media content.     

Can spiral of silence and civility predict click speech on Facebook?

Opinion expressions on Facebook are characterized by “click speech” in which people express their opinions and support (or disagreement) of posts through the “like,” “comment,” and “share” buttons. This study uses a 2 (low vs. high opinion congruency) x 2 (message civility vs. incivility) between-subject factorial experiment to examine the spiral of silence on participants' likelihood to interact with social media. We randomly assigned 502 participants to one of four experimental conditions. Results indicate that the fear of isolation increased the likelihood of commenting on Facebook posts and a civil climate increased the likelihood of liking comments on Facebook posts. Findings suggest that “click-speech” could be considered a form of opinion expression.     

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.     

Queer identity online: Informal learning and teaching experiences of LGBTQ individuals on social media

In this study, we explored how social media, particularly social networking sites, serve as informal learning environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and otherwise-identified (LGBTQ) individuals during formative stages of their evolving LGBTQ identity. We conducted semi-structured interviews (N = 33) probing LGBTQ individuals’ use of social media and identified three educational uses tied to online information seeking: traditional learning (e.g., information seeking about LGBTQ-related issues), social learning (e.g., observing role models or other LGBTQ individuals’ behavior and experiences), and experiential learning (e.g., experimenting with online dating sites and dating apps). These experiences were especially common during the coming out process. Participants also reported a fourth educational function, teaching (e.g., sharing information with others about their experiences as an LGBTQ individual). Teaching was more common among individuals who were out and those with less common identities (e.g., asexual and transgender). Several affordances of social media, including visibility, association, persistence, anonymity, and interactivity enabled these learning experiences.     

企业生产数据报表集成方式研究与实现

信息化在有色企业生产报表处理中的应用越来越广泛,但如何更有效的达到企业级MES平台上的生产数据集成与数据共享,最大限度地消除信息孤岛,仍是值得研究和探讨的。本文在对行业生产报表详细分析的基础上,介绍了B／S架构下生产报表的实现方式,并针对采用C#、Oracle编程实现报表的关键技术进行了详细分析,给出了在某有色企业“烟气制酸”节能减排实践中的一种行之有效的报表处理方法。     

Towards sharing life-log information with society

We are living in an era of social media such as online communities and social networking sites. Exposing or sharing personal information with these communities has risks as well as benefits and there is always a trade off between the risks versus the benefits of using these technologies. Life-logs are pervasive tools or systems which sense and capture contextual information from the user's environment in a continuous manner. A life-log produces a dataset, which consists of continuous streams of sensor data. Sharing this information has a wide range of advantages for both user and society. On the other hand, in terms of individual privacy, life-log information is very sensitive. Although social media enable users to share their information, due to life-log data structure, current sharing models are not capable of handling life-log information while maintaining user privacy. Our approach here is to describe the sharing of life-log information with society based on the identification of associated risks and benefits. Subsequently, based on the identified risks, we propose a data model for sharing life-log information. This data model has been designed to reduce the potential risks of life-logs. Furthermore, ethics for providing and using life-logs will be discussed. These ethics focus on reducing risks as much as possible while sharing life-log information.     

Cyber-volunteering: Social media affordances in fulfilling NGO social missions

Cyber-volunteering behavior through social media is becoming popular among nongovernmental organization (NGO) members. Cyber-volunteering activities have become more aggressive with the availability of social media in recent years. The objective of this paper is to discuss voluntary behavior in fulfilling NGO social missions through social media usage based on affordance theory. There is substantial literature discussing social media affordances in the context of enterprise organization, but there has been less literature discussing the activities of NGOs in social media. Hence, seven key affordances derived from the enterprise organization were used in the context of NGO working behavior, visibility, editability, persistence, virtual collaboration, synthetic representation, individualized, and collective. This research applies a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews with 25 NGO members from seven selected Islamic NGOs in Malaysia that are active in different fields of Islamic education. The interviews focus on social media affordances that have influenced the execution of social missions in the NGOs. Data was analyzed using thematic coding based on the seven identified key social media affordances. The results suggest that the social media affordances related to cyber-volunteering are achieved through promoting, training, fundraising, knowledge sharing, and problem-solving activities. These affordances are highly influenced by cyber-volunteering behavior through work culture and personal privacy. The collective, individualized, and visibility affordances are most associated with cyber-volunteering behavior, followed by persistence, virtual collaboration, and editability, and synthetic representation is found to be the least.