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.     

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.     

Birds of a Feather Tweet Together: Integrating Network and Content Analyses to Examine Cross‐Ideology Exposure on Twitter

This study integrates network and content analyses to examine exposure to cross‐ideological political views on Twitter. We mapped the Twitter networks of 10 controversial political topics, discovered clusters – subgroups of highly self‐connected users – and coded messages and links in them for political orientation. We found that Twitter users are unlikely to be exposed to cross‐ideological content from the clusters of users they followed, as these were usually politically homogeneous. Links pointed at grassroots web pages (e.g.: blogs) more frequently than traditional media websites. Liberal messages, however, were more likely to link to traditional media. Last, we found that more specific topics of controversy had both conservative and liberal clusters, while in broader topics, dominant clusters reflected conservative sentiment.     

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.     

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.     

Driving a Wedge Between Evidence and Beliefs: How Online Ideological News Exposure Promotes Political Misperceptions

This article has 2 goals: to provide additional evidence that exposure to ideological online news media contributes to political misperceptions, and to test 3 forms this media‐effect might take. Analyses are based on representative survey data collected during the 2012 U.S. presidential election (N = 1,004). Panel data offer persuasive evidence that biased news site use promotes inaccurate beliefs, while cross‐sectional data provide insight into the nature of these effects. There is no evidence that exposure to ideological media reduces awareness of politically unfavorable evidence, though in some circumstances biased media do promote misunderstandings of it. The strongest and most consistent influence of ideological media exposure is to encourage inaccurate beliefs regardless of what consumers know of the evidence.     

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。     

Knowledge Sharing on Enterprise Social Media: Practices to Cope With Institutional Complexity

This study examines the use of enterprise social media (ESM) for organizational knowledge sharing and shows that professionals face ambiguities because their knowledge sharing behavior is informed by an institutional complexity that consists of 2 dissimilar institutional logics: logics of the profession, and logics of the corporation. Our qualitative case study of an ESM at an IT consultancy organization shows that professionals find ways to manage the ambiguities they experience by engaging the affordances of ESM in such a way as to develop coping practices: connection management, reputation management, and information management. By complementing the affordance perspective with an institutional logics perspective, we are able to advance scholarly understanding on how ESM can facilitate but also frustrate knowledge sharing.     

Confirmation Bias in Online Searches: Impacts of Selective Exposure Before an Election on Political Attitude Strength and Shifts

Impacts of Internet use on political information seeking and subsequent processes have been subject to much debate. A 2‐session online field study presented online search results on political topics to examine selective exposure and its attitudinal impacts. Session 1 captured attitudes, including their accessibility. Session 2 tracked what online search results participants selected and how long they read them; participants then reported attitudes again. The study represented a 4x8x2x2 within‐subjects design: 4 topics, 8 browsing intervals each, with articles presenting opposing stances, with low versus high source credibility. Attitude‐consistent messages and messages from high‐credibility sources were preferred. Exposure to attitude‐consistent search results increased attitude accessibility and reinforced attitudes, whereas exposure to attitude‐discrepant content had opposite effects, regardless of messages' source credibility.     

Online Conversation and Corporate Reputation: A Two‐Wave Longitudinal Study on the Effects of Exposure to the Social Media Activities of a Highly Interactive Company

In this paper, we investigate whether and to what extent exposure to a company's social media activities over time is beneficial for corporate reputation, and whether conversational human voice mediates this relation. In a two‐wave longitudinal survey among 1969 respondents, we assessed consumers' exposure to an international airline's social media activities, perceived level of conversational human voice and perception of corporate reputation. The results show that consumers' level of exposure to company social media activities precedes perceptions of corporate reputation. Also, conversational human voice mediates the relation between consumers' level of exposure to company social media activities and perceptions of corporate reputation. We discuss the implications of the results for the presence of organizations in social media.     

Effects of the News‐Finds‐Me Perception in Communication: Social Media Use Implications for News Seeking and Learning About Politics

With social media at the forefront of today's media context, citizens may perceive they don't need to actively seek news because they will be exposed to news and remain well‐informed through their peers and social networks. We label this the “news‐finds‐me perception,” and test its implications for news seeking and political knowledge: “news‐finds‐me effects.” U.S. panel‐survey data show that individuals who perceive news will find them are less likely to use traditional news sources and are less knowledgeable about politics over time. Although the news‐finds‐me perception is positively associated with news exposure on social media, this behavior doesn't facilitate political learning. These results suggest news continues to enhance political knowledge best when actively sought.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Information Overload,Similarity, and Redundancy: Unsubscribing Information Sources on Twitter

The emergence of social media has changed individuals' information consumption patterns. The purpose of this study is to explore the role of information overload, similarity, and redundancy in unsubscribing information sources from users' information repertoires. In doing so, we randomly selected nearly 7,500 ego networks on Twitter and tracked their activities in 2 waves. A multilevel logistic regression model was deployed to test our hypotheses. Results revealed that individuals (egos) obtain information by following a group of stable users (alters). An ego's likelihood of unfollowing alters is negatively associated with their information similarity, but is positively associated with both information overload and redundancy. Furthermore, relational factors can modify the impact of information redundancy on unfollowing.     

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.     

We Face,I Tweet: How Different Social Media Influence Political Participation through Collective and Internal Efficacy

This study advances a theoretical model centered on collective and internal efficacy to explain the separate pathways through which political sharing on Facebook and Twitter may influence individuals to engage in political activities. We test the model with data from a 2‐wave panel survey conducted with an adult population in 2013 in Chile. We found that frequent usage of Facebook and Twitter for sharing political information is conducive to higher levels of participation through different efficacy measures. Facebook has a significant effect on collective—not internal—efficacy, whereas Twitter's effect is on internal—not collective—efficacy. Results are discussed in light of the diverse affordances and strengths of network ties of Facebook and Twitter.