Internet experience and time displacement of traditional news media use: An application of the theory of the niche

The purpose of this study is to better understand the impact of online news use on traditional news media use by analyzing how Internet experience affects the time on traditional news media consumption. Based on the theory of the niche and the uses and gratifications theory, this study investigates the displacement effect of the Internet on consumer time spent on traditional media. Data were collected in a mail survey with 688 respondents in Northwest Ohio and college students in a Northwest Ohio state university from October to December, 2009. The results indicate that the Internet indeed has a displacement effect on traditional media in the daily news domain and the effect takes place most prominently after 5 years of experience. Consumers’ time spent on traditional media decreases as the years of Internet experience increases with diminishing returns. Among experienced Internet users, there was an increasing overlap between the Internet and traditional media, and they perceived the Internet as superior to traditional media.     

Exploring social and psychological factors that influence the gathering of political information online

Qualitative analysis of college students who searched online during the 2008 US presidential election contributes to three research areas: uses and gratifications, media credibility, and selective exposure. The findings identified new social factors that trigger motivations and psychological factors that affect patterns of media use for political information gathering. Word-of-mouth communication from strong, weak, and nonexistent social ties triggered social utility and information seeking motivations. Offline media contributed to online information seeking. Moderate credibility perceptions of media and weak party loyalty limited ideological selective exposure. Results add to research that links social and psychological factors to motivations and media use.     

Social networking in the aging context: Why older adults use or avoid Facebook

Despite a growing body of research about older adults’ use of social networking sites (SNS), scholars have not fully explored how this technology is meeting this group’s interactional and information-seeking needs. How do these older adults view this technology? What are their communication needs and expectations and why are they drawn to it? To address these questions and fill a gap in the literature, this study draws upon in-depth interviews with 46 older adults (average age: 80.4 years) about their perceptions of Facebook, which was the leading SNS at the time of writing. Analysis of interview data revealed six primary reasons for using Facebook (keeping in touch, sharing photos, social surveillance, responding to family member requests, convenient communication, curiosity) and six primary reasons for not using Facebook (privacy, need for media richness, preference for familiarity, triviality of communication, time commitment, frustration with site tools). Emergent findings hold implications for future research and SNS design.     

Contextualization of motivations determining the continuance intention to use smart devices among people with physical disabilities

This study explores the main motivations for continued use of smart devices among adults with movement or mobility impairments in South Korea. The study analyzed data collected through a survey and focus group interviews. Results from the analyses of the two different sets of data indicated that people with physical disabilities viewed smart devices as a necessity and intended to continue use of smart devices primarily for practical purposes—especially for emergency contact—rather than for entertainment or social purposes. Results from the focus group interviews particularly suggested that the sense of autonomy obtained through the use of smart devices was an important motivation for use in this specific group, suggesting that smart devices play a crucial role in elevating the quality of life of people with disabilities.     

Beyond the privacy paradox: The moderating effect of online privacy concerns on online service use behavior

In the digital information era, dealing with privacy issues is problematic in related research since online activities have become an inevitable trend. Following the privacy paradox, which occurs when online services are increasingly accepted or used despite raising the level of privacy concerns of individuals, there is no need to alleviate individual privacy concerns regarding online services. Accordingly, this study aims to empirically analyze the effect of online privacy concerns, when interacting with individual innovativeness, on individual online service use behavior. For the empirical analysis, a Heckman two-step analysis is performed using South Korean data from the 2019 Korea Media Panel Survey conducted by the Korea Information Society Development Institute. The results provide evidence in contradiction of the privacy paradox. Specifically, the main findings of this study are as follows. First, use of online services and privacy concerns are not a contradictory phenomenon both in principle and behavior but can act as a negative influence or constraint. Second, individuals with high levels of innovativeness actively use online services owing to differences in their acceptance and use of innovation. Third, as online activities become more common, privacy concerns are likely to affect the level of online service use by interacting with other personality traits. As a result, privacy concerns are more likely to act as an influencing variable that moderates the degree or intensity of an individual's use of an online service rather than an independent variable for the use of an online service. The impact of privacy concerns of individuals on the use of online services identified in this study suggests there is a need for an adequate governing mechanism for privacy protection to realize service provision through e-government.     

The impact of innovation and gratification on authentic experience,subjective well-being,and behavioral intention in tourism virtual reality: The moderating role of technology readiness

Despite the increasing amount of attention paid to virtual reality (VR) tourism and the rising importance of VR tourism, a theoretically integrated model of behavior has not been developed. To fill this void, we build and test a framework based on both innovation diffusion and uses and gratifications theories to explain why people participate in VR tourism. The moderating role of VR tourists’ technology readiness (optimism and innovativeness) between subjective well-being and behavioral intention is also examined. Results demonstrate that authentic experience and subjective well-being are affected by simplicity, benefit, compatibility (attributes of innovation diffusion), informativeness, social interactivity, and playfulness (uses and gratifications attributes). Behavioral intention is more positively influenced by subjective well-being than by authentic experience. The moderating role of technology readiness between subjective well-being and behavioral intention is stronger in individuals with high optimism and innovativeness than their counterparts with low optimism and innovativeness.     

The influence of online forum and SNS use on online political discussion in China: Assessing “Spirals of Trust”

Echoing the significance of mobile online networks in fueling the Arab Spring, the present study seeks to better understand social media influences in China by studying political activity among Chinese netizens. A survey of Chinese college students examines the influence of online social networks in the context of political attitudes and political participation. Study results reveal a moderate but positive impact of online forum and social networking site use on online political discussion. Implications for political change in the social networking era, particularly in regimes that practice Internet censorship like China’s, are discussed.     

The structural features and the deliberative quality of online discussions

This paper examines the quality of online political discussions from the perspective of deliberative democracy. Reason-giving and mutual respect are two important principles of deliberative democracy and, therefore, deemed indicators of the deliberative quality of online discussions. A content analysis of discussion threads about the 2004 US presidential election randomly selected from eight online spaces during the last month of the election was conducted to assess the relationships between the structural features of the spaces—diversity and moderation—and the deliberative quality of the discussions. The results showed that the relationship between moderation and the discussion quality was conditioned on the diversity of the spaces. The finding indicates that the structural features of online spaces may shape the deliberative quality of political discussions and, thus, deserve further scholarly attention.     

The use of mobile technology for online shopping and entertainment among older adults in Finland

Older adults are becoming an important market segment for all internet-based services, but few studies to date have considered older adults as online shoppers and users of entertainment media. Utilising the concept of life course, this article investigates the use of mobile technologies for online shopping and entertainment among consumers aged 55 to 74. The data were collected with a web-based survey completed by a panel of respondents representing Finnish television viewers (N = 322). The results reveal that consumers aged 55 to 74 use a smartphone or tablet to purchase products or services online as often as younger consumers. In contrast, listening to internet radio and watching videos or programmes online with a smartphone or tablet are most typical for younger male consumers. The results demonstrate that mobile-based online shopping is best predicted by age, higher education, and household type (children living at home), and use of entertainment media by age and gender.     

ED-SWE: Event detection based on scoring and word embedding in online social networks for the internet of people

Online social media networks are gaining attention worldwide, with an increasing number of people relying on them to connect, communicate and share their daily pertinent event-related information. Event detection is now increasingly leveraging online social networks for highlighting events happening around the world via the Internet of People. In this paper, a novel Event Detection model based on Scoring and Word Embedding (ED-SWE) is proposed for discovering key events from a large volume of data streams of tweets and for generating an event summary using keywords and top-k tweets. The proposed ED-SWE model can distill high-quality tweets, reduce the negative impact of the advent of spam, and identify latent events in the data streams automatically. Moreover, a word embedding algorithm is used to learn a real-valued vector representation for a predefined fixed-sized vocabulary from a corpus of Twitter data. In order to further improve the performance of the Expectation-Maximization (EM) iteration algorithm, a novel initialization method based on the authority values of the tweets is also proposed in this paper to detect live events efficiently and precisely. Finally, a novel automatic identification method based on the cosine measure is used to automatically evaluate whether a given topic can form a live event. Experiments conducted on a real-world dataset demonstrate that the ED-SWE model exhibits better efficiency and accuracy than several state-of-art event detection models.     

The role of transformational leadership as a mediating variable in DeLone and McLean information system success model: The context of online learning usage in Yemen

Governments and higher education institutions around the world are placing online learning in their respective visions and policies as it has already transformed the way in which individuals learn, socialise and do business. Leadership is therefore increasingly playing a major role in the implementation and success of online learning goals. Although researchers have investigated adoption and usage of online learning in different settings, the mediation role of transformational leadership is yet to be examined using the Delone and Mclean IS success model. Data collected from 448 students in nine Yemeni public universities and the subsequent analysis employing structural equation modelling (SEM) via SmartPLS 3.0, revealed five main results: first, overall quality (system, information, and service quality) has a positive impact on transformational leadership; second, transformational leadership has a positive impact on actual usage; third, overall quality has an indirect positive effect on actual usage via transformational leadership; fourth, actual usage significantly affects user satisfaction and performance impact; and fifth, user satisfaction has a positive impact on student performance. The proposed model explains 61% of the variance in performance impact, and theoretical and practical implications are provided as well.     

The role of media in user participation: Focusing on the knowledge activity in online space

Media technology have been considered a catalyst for boosting communication between the sources of information. Contrary to traditional media, new media which use online communication shows high interactivity properties. This characteristic allows people to participate in collective activities such as discussion, evaluation, or creating documents. Consequently, the role of media in online space has focused on delivering individual knowledge to others rather than just adopting selected information. We studied the effect of media usage patterns on creating knowledge in online communities. In our study, we divided user groups into three based on the degree to which people participate in knowledge collaboration in the online space: active participant, passive participant, and bystander. The results indicate that the active participant group is most likely to use smartphone and tablet PC to create knowledge in online space which means they prefer high accessibility rather than familiar mediators.     

网络环境下汉语言文学发展困境

随着社会的发展,科技的进步,互联网出现。互联网的出现对传统的汉语言文学来说是一项挑战,也是机遇。本文以互联网为切入点,具体分析了汉语言文学专业在发展的过程中可能面临的问题,并找出了解决的路径。     

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.     

The role of social support networks in proxy Internet use from the intergenerational solidarity perspective

Digital inequalities research has documented a set of practices related to people’s Internet use that questions the binary division between Internet users and non-users. In particular, among older adults, a considerably large group of individuals has been identified as not using the Internet by themselves; rather, they ask members of their personal networks to do things online for them—they “use” the Internet by proxy. Since previous research shows that children and grandchildren are important sources of help when it comes to Internet use, the current paper indicates that the notion of intergenerational solidarity is a sound conceptual basis for understanding the relationship between social support networks and proxy Internet use among Internet non-users. Notably, the concept of functional solidarity as a dimension of intergenerational solidarity is advanced, as this relates to the frequency of the intergenerational exchange of resources and services encompassing various types of assistance and support offered between two generations. Empirically, this paper investigates how the two types of social support networks and their characteristics are associated with proxy Internet use. The results from multivariate analyses of survey data from a nation-wide representative sample show that when comparing emotional support and socializing networks, only the latter is associated with proxy Internet use: Internet non-users who have (grand-)children in their socializing support network are more likely to engage in proxy Internet use. The results also indicate that non-users who are younger, more educated, have children, and live in urban areas are more inclined to engage in proxy Internet use, regardless of the type of social support. The findings indicate the importance of empirical investigation related to different aspects of functional solidarity, as the effects on proxy Internet use depend on the type of social support.     

“三网融合”对广播电视系统的冲击与影响

电信网、广播电视网、互联网的三网融合,对原先相对封闭的广播电视系统造成了很大影响。本文旨在探讨三网融合造成的影响以及广播电视系统应该如何应对。     

以科研带动基础课学科建设的做法与效果

介绍了笔者所在的电子线路教研室以科研带动学科建设的做法,成绩及其学术价值。     

The role of ion characteristics in determining the structural and electrical quality of InN grown by metalorganic molecular beam epitaxy

The effects of growth temperature and nitrogen plasma biasing on the electrical and structural properties of InN grown using electron cyclotron resonance metalorganic molecular beam epitaxy (ECR MOMBE) have been investigated. These results are compared to those found from InN grown using a higher energy radio frequency (rf) plasma source (rf MOMBE). By varying the bias of the nitrogen plasma or the growth temperature, it is possible to achieve smooth surface morphologies. However, biasing can also be used to increase the mobility by a factor of two while the growth temperature has only a small effect. By contrast, use of an rf plasma improves mobility by nearly a factor of ten. None of the growth conditions investigated were found to significantly alter the electron concentration, which was measured to be 1−5 × 10²⁰ cm⁻³.