How Do Online Game Communities Retain Gamers? Social Presence and Social Capital Perspectives

While online game communities have been found to be useful for retaining gamers, the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is not fully understood. Knowledge about such mechanism enables managers of online games to effectively retain their customers. This study thus investigates how network convergence and interdependence—2 characteristics of online game social networks—fuel gamers' continuance intention. Social presence and social capital theories were used for developing the study hypotheses, and responses from 1,467 online gamers were used in the analysis. The findings indicate that both network convergence and interdependence are positively related to sense of community and relational switching cost (coefficients ranging from .20 to .50), which further contribute to gamer continuance intention (coefficients ranging from .13 to .72).     

Social commerce—state-of-the-art and future research directions

In recent years, social commerce evolved into an emerging phenomenon of global interest for marketers, businesses, and researchers alike. In light of this development, it is not surprising that the number of publications focusing on this phenomenon at the interplay of electronic commerce and social media has been rising substantially. The goal of this paper is to provide a structured overview of social commerce research by means of a structured literature review. Based on our literature search between 2007 and 2014 resulting in 116 published papers, we carve out and assess the knowledge and the research areas that have been predominantly addressed by the Information Systems, Electronic Commerce, and Marketing research community so far. By providing a research agenda, we hope that our results will stimulate and guide future research in this exciting field.     

Social Media Technologies’ Use for the Competitive Information and Knowledge Sharing,and Its Effects on Industrial SMEs’ Innovation

ABSTRACT

The effective use of technologies supporting decision making is essential to companies’ survival. Recent studies analyzed social media technologies (SMT) in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), contributing to the discussion on SMT benefits from the marketing perspective. This article focuses on the effects of SMT use on innovation. Our findings provide empirical evidence on the positive effects of SMT use for acquiring external information and for sharing knowledge and innovation performance.     

Hybrid Social Media Use and Guanxi Types: How Do Employees Use Social Media in the Chinese Workplace?

We investigate how work-related and personal-related social media (SM) use contributes to Chinese employees’ guanxi identification and extra-role behaviors (ERB). Our findings indicate that work-related SM use is positively associated with team member guanxi identification, which further contributes to employees’ ERB targeting the team. Personal-related SM use is positively related to insider guanxi identification and further contributes to ERB targeting the individual. When team communication is highly dependent on SM, the positive effect of personal-related SM use on guanxi identification is weakened. The results contribute to a nuanced understanding of the crucial role of SM use in the Chinese workplace.     

Benefits and Risks of Social Business: Are Companies Considering E-Discovery?

Using social media in business, referred to as social business, is exploding. In reviewing past research according to brand-driving efforts for products, customers, employees, and business partners, we find a focus on benefits, with little attention to risks. Seemingly disregarded in the IS literature is the risk of electronic discovery resulting from legal actions. We categorize and exemplify risks, while analyzing the legal risk. We conclude by providing recommendations for practice and directions for future research.     

The Impact of Social Media on Consumers’ Acculturation and Purchase Intentions

Social media has emerged as a significant and effective means of assisting and endorsing activities and communications among peers, consumers and organizations that outdo the restrictions of time and space. While the previous studies acknowledge the role of agents of culture change, it largely remains silent on the role of social media in influencing acculturation outcomes and consumption choices. This study uses self-administered questionnaire to collect data from 514 Turkish-Dutch respondents and examines how their use of social media affects their acculturation and consumption choices. This research makes a significant contribution to consumer acculturation research by showing that social media is a vital means of culture change and a driver of acculturation strategies and consumption choices. This study is the first to investigate the role of social media as an agent of culture change in terms of how it impacts acculturation and consumption. The paper discusses implications for theory development and for practice.     

‘Systemic rationalization’ in Austria: Social and political mediation in technology use and work organization

The paper analyses restructuring processes occuring with the introduction of information technologies into firms in Austria and assesses how far the evidence lends support to the thesis of a fundamental change in rationalization patterns as postulated by continental industrial sociologists claiming the emergence of a novel type of systemic rationalization. Based on a research perspective putting emphasis on several levels of social mediation of technological change the broad conclusion is the following: there are clear indications of a novel systemic approach to rationalization but the associated forms of work organization show substantial variation. The analysis of the influence of national-level institutions, industry- and firm-specific conditions, and their role in micro-political processes of system and work design, points towards an underutilization of work humanization potentials and suggests an increase in skill supply as one of the possible intervention strategies.     

Hardware, Software, and Infoware

Formanyyears,computersciencehasbeenstrainingattheboundsofthecomputer,hopingforalanguage,atechnique,asysternthatwouldtranscendtherigidboundsofthepurelyprocedural.Allofthoseattemptshavefailed,toagreaterorlesserdegree.Yetnow,withoutintendingit,weperhapsfindourselvesimperceptiblyoverthatedge.Thereisnosinglewatershedevent,butwehaveneverthelesscrossedfromonecomputingeraintoanother.TwoMicrosoftonlineencyclopedias,EncartaandCinemania,standoneithersideofacontinentaldivideinelectronicpublishing.Bothma…     

Egypt's Ongoing Uprising and the Role of Social Media: Is there Development?

In an age, where social media is seen to be a new driving force and a vehicle with a significant impact on political transformation and change, this paper highlights some of the paradoxes and challenges it poses. It has become an important platform for the mobilization, organization and implementation of social movements around the world. However, Egypt's uprising was a function of people, passion and not of any particular communication technology, social media tool or application. It was definitely not the Facebook, Twitter or social media revolution, it was the people uprising that capitalized on state-of-the-art technology to realize a dream of a nation in availing “bread, freedom and social justice.” Having said that, there is no doubt that social media boosted the people's desire for a better future, democracy and socioeconomic development that was for many decades put on hold by the consecutive regimes that ruled Egypt since 1952. The role of social media was more of a catalyst, a driver, a communication tool that helped as a platform for societal change. Yet, the country is still in a state of flux driven by the force unleased through social media manifested in speeding-up the process and in the dissemination of information across different segments of the society irrespective of their social or economic background, location or age. Expectations are high and aspirations reflect the desire of a nation to level up to its full potential; it is going to take some time but undoubtedly Egypt is on the right track. This paper demonstrates the clash of generations between older state power and younger citizens and the role social media played in the political transformation in the build-up to Egypt's uprising in January 2011 and beyond.     

The Global Crisis and Academic Communication： The Challenge of Social Networks in Research

The global economic crisis is seriously affecting academic research. The situation is provoking some big changes and an urgent need to seek alternatives to traditional models. It is as if the academic community was reinventing itself; and this reinvention is happening online. Faced with a lack of funding, researchers have determined to help each other develop their projects and they are doing so on social knowledge networks that they have created for this mission. The purpose of this paper is to analyze different social networks designed for academic online research. To this end, we have made a selection of these networks and established the parameters for their study in order to determine what they consist of, what tools they make use of, what advantages they offer and the degree to which they are bringing about a revolution in how research is carried out. This analysis is conducted from both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective, allowing us to identify the percentage of these networks that approach what would be the ideal social knowledge network. As we will be able to confirm, the closer they are to this ideal, the more effective they will be and the better future they will have, which will also depend on the commitment of users to participation and the quality of their contributions.     

Online Communication and Adolescent Social Ties: Who benefits more from Internet use?*

Literature suggests 4 hypotheses to explain social outcomes of online communication among adolescents: displacement, increase, rich‐get‐richer, and social‐compensation hypotheses. The present study examines which hypothesis is supported, considering differences in social ties (time vs. quality of social relationships; parent‐child relationships; friendships; school connectedness). This study's sample was 1,312 adolescents ages 12 to 18. Displacement hypothesis predicted negative associations between time in online communication and time with parents, but time with friends was not displaced. Examination of relationships among earlier sociability, online communication, and cohesive friendships supported the rich‐get‐richer hypothesis. That is, adolescents who already had strong social relationships at earlier ages were more likely to use online communication, which in turn predicted more cohesive friendships and better connectedness to school.     

Always Connected or Always Distracted? ADHD Symptoms and Social Assurance Explain Problematic Use of Mobile Phone and Multicommunicating

Multicommunicating via mobile phone during face‐to‐face encounters with family and friends was examined with data from an online survey of 432 adults in the US. Multicommunicating was positively associated with problematic mobile phone use and explained by attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and a social need to belong. Those with ADHD symptoms were more likely to engage in problematic mobile phone use and frequent multicommunicating. Strong need for social assurance, which involves an “always‐on‐and‐connected” lifestyle through mobile devices, explained problematic mobile phone use and multicommunicating. Need for social assurance also was related to multicommunicating via social connectedness, and this effect was significant among females, but not males. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Differentially private data fusion and deep learning Framework for Cyber–Physical–Social Systems: State-of-the-art and perspectives

The modern technological advancement influences the growth of the cyber–physical system and cyber–social system to a more advanced computing system cyber–physical–social system (CPSS). Therefore, CPSS leads the data science revolution by promoting tri-space information resource from a single space. The establishment of CPSSs increases the related privacy concerns. To provide privacy on CPSSs data, various privacy-preserving schemes have been introduced in the recent past. However, technological advancement in CPSSs requires the modifications of previous techniques to suit its dynamics. Meanwhile, differential privacy has emerged as an effective method to safeguard CPSSs data privacy. To completely comprehend the state-of-the-art developments and learn the field’s research directions, this article provides a comprehensive review of differentially private data fusion and deep learning in CPSSs. Additionally, we present a novel differentially private data fusion and deep learning Framework for Cyber–Physical–Social Systems , and various future research directions for CPSSs.     

Adaptive Social Robot for Sustaining Social Engagement during Long-Term Children–Robot Interaction

One of the known challenges in Children–Robot Interaction (cHRI) is to sustain children’s engagement during long-term interactions with robots. Researchers have hypothesized that robots that can adapt to children’s affective states and can also learn from the environment can result in sustaining engagement during cHRI. Recently, researchers have conducted a range of studies where robots portray different social capabilities and have shown that it has positively influenced children’s engagement. However, despite an immense body of research on implementation of different adaptive social robots, a pivotal question remains unanswered: Which adaptations portrayed by a robot can result in maintaining long-term social engagement during cHRI? In other words, what are the appropriate and effective adaptations portrayed by a robot that will sustain social engagement for an extended number of interactions? In this article, we report on a study conducted with three groups of children who played a snakes and ladders game with the NAO robot to address the aforementioned question. The NAO performed 1) game-based adaptations, 2) emotion-based adaptations, and 3) memory-based adaptation. Our results showed that emotion-based adaptations were found out to be most effective, followed by memory-based adaptations. Game adaptation didn’t result in sustaining long-term social engagement.     

Social Networks in Silicon Valley

Social network is a dominant, distinguishing characteristic of Silicon Valley. Because innovation entails coping with a high degree of uncertainty,such innovation is particularly dependent on networks.     

热潮涌动的Social Software

在今年，相信关注互联网的人都见证了一个社交网站Friendster的崛起。最好的证明就是对它市值的估价——5000万美金，相当让人震惊。这个今年3月才投入运行的网站，据称已发展到200多万名会员。还有一个类似于它的站点Linkdein，也是人气越来越旺。     

Social TV:电视2.0

作为一项赋予用户更多选择权、丰富用户观看体验的新技术,社会化电视终究会走出一片新天地.大约十年前,Web2.0的出现使互联网用户从被动的阅读者变为主动的内容创造者.而十年之后的今天,电视用户大多还停留在被动     

Social Networks in Silicon Valley

Social network is a dominant , dis tinguishing characteristic of Silicon Valley. Because innovation entails coping with a high degree of uncertainty , such innovation is particularly de pendent on net- works. In Silicon Valley, networks have special im- portance in the movement of labor, the evolution of influence and power, and the actual production of innovation. One of the most important aspects of Silicon Valley is the way its labor market works. Extensive labor mobili ty creates rapidl…