Social Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Companies when strategizing are looking for innovative ways to have a competitive advantage over their competitors. One way in which they compete is by the adoption of social media. Social media has evolved over the years and as a result, new concepts and applications are developed which promises to provide business value to a company. However, despite the usefulness of social media, many businesses fail to reap its full benefits. The current literature shows evidence of lack of strategically designed process for companies to successfully implement social media. The purpose of this study is to suggest a framework which provides the necessary alignment between social media goals with business objectives. From the literature review, a social media strategy framework was derived to offer an effective step by step approach to the development and implementation of social media goals aligned with a company’s business objectives. The contribution to this study is the development of a social media strategy framework that can be used by organisations for business value.

The strategic use of social media has increased in importance. However, there is a lack of theory to design and evaluate social media strategies. In a competitive environment, airlines need to excel on service, customer satisfaction and marketing. Social media could support those areas of business. This paper comprises the results of both a systematic literature review and case studies at European airlines. The literature study was based on 85 academic articles, regarding the prevalent approaches to social media strategies. The case studies were conducted within three North-western-European airlines in Germany, France and the Netherlands. As a result, a new conceptual framework and tool for creating social media strategies is created. Engagement, Evaluation and Enabling are its main concepts. The new theoretical framework is more complete and was derived from existing literature and case studies. The 3E Social Media Strategy Canvas can serve both as a decision-making tool and as a theoretical framework for comparison.

The pervasive use of social media is influencing change within organization. This paper uses sociomaterial lens with agential view to understand how social media is reforming strategy in Telecom organization through exploring changes brought by social media to organization, evaluating the changes with selection of strategic theories as well as providing insight on adoption of social media by telecom organizations. Following an interpretivist philosophy with exploratory purpose the study uses case study methodology employing secondary data and observation to explain how social media practices are shaping strategy at Vodacom. Social media is reforming strategy within telecom industry by exerting influence on organizational process for instance product development and marketing strategy.

Social media has incurred changes that can be seen in developing new customer centric strategies, objectives, and goals, to realigning operations to meet the constantly changing and highly sensitive demands of customers, among others. The increase in value of social media channels is more than just a luxury gateway; rather those channels have become quintessential venues of communication between the customer and the organization. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of social media on the business environment with particular emphasis on how it impacts both the customer and the organization. This will be accomplished through focusing on several facets such as social media and globalization, social media vs. traditional media, bridging the gap between the customer and the organization, and how social media empowers the customer. The paper presents some recommendations and precautions pertinent to the utilization of social nets into the core business processes.

The competitiveness among the different organizations in any industry might be raised due to changes in the technology, emergence of new competitive forces, devising and adopting newer business models, developing innovative products with differentiating pricing methods. The social media strategy is adopted by organization to harness the potential and get advantage in terms of the profit. Social media has provided both the opportunities and challenges for the organizations particularly to the high end manufacturing. The study undertakes the literature survey and the expert opinion on the factors which influences the electronics manufacturing industry. The findings suggest the key factors and a model in which the social media plays the important role to enhance the performance of electronics manufacturing sector.

Instagram is a relatively new channel of communication that allows its users to share photos and videos. Since its launch in October 2010, there has been a rapid growth in the number of its users worldwide. In Saudi Arabia women, entrepreneurs in particular have discovered new ways to exploit Instagram accounts to start and manage small online businesses. The use of this application allows them to target and reach interested users and customers, especially given the limited involvement of Saudi women in the labor force. Although social media channels such as Instagram offer a significant opportunity to address the high female unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia (SA) by creating new jobs, no research has yet identified the factors affecting the success of Instagram-based small businesses. Therefore, the current research explores the uses of Instagram as a selling platform by Saudi women entrepreneurs and presents some of their success stories.

The latest web technologies can be instrumental in allowing the dissemination of job opportunities to under-represented groups and in making these groups aware of the job market needs and requirements This paper presents the design, architecture and functionalities of DAEDALUS, an ICT tool that provides collaborative employment services to young people from the Mediterranean basin countries involving regional entrepreneurs, ICT companies, and employment associations. Special attention is paid to the presentation of the services offered by Daedalus that assist regional administrators to monitor the current and forecast the future national and regional matching of market demands and supply needs in order to enhance the regional labor market. Challenges and shortcoming of this effort as well as future evaluation directions are highlighted.

Social media applications have been extensively used and adopted by individuals and organisations in most aspects of daily life. Likewise, researchers have spent much effort in examining and exploring the effectiveness and efficiency of engaging such applications over the marketing context. This study, therefore, realizes the necessity of conducting a review of prior literature of social media over the marketing context especially in the light of the fact that only a small number of studies have been reviewed and conducted in this area. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to systematically review the current literature of social media in the marketing context. By reviewing approximately 71 articles, this study provides an overview of the main themes and trends covered by the relevant literature such as the role of social media on advertising, the electronic word of mouth, customers’ relationship management, and firms’ brands and performance.

It is no surprise that there are serious disparities between the rhetoric of education and the realities of education. Marketing of university curricula is a challenge that is increasingly becoming a difficult proposition as advances in social media (SM) are enabling prospective students to form opinions and inform their decisions like never before. Whilst the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) plays a central role in matching undergraduate students to courses in universities yet the same does not apply to postgraduate admissions which are sought after by a large number of applicants from overseas as well. This paper looks at some of the areas where SM has been successfully used. The papers then goes onto develop taxonomy of popular SM tools that are being widely used. Using this taxonomy it explores barriers and promoters that exist in the interface between universities and their audiences.

Traditional offline media channels have always served as a reliable backbone for all kinds of marketing campaigns. But with the emergence of new digitally-driven ways of communication, other contenders arise. Very prominent and fostered by ongoing technological advantage are social media services. In this empirical study, we analyze the interplay between two traditional offline channels, print and point-of-sale (PoS) advertising, and two leading social media services, Facebook and YouTube. These channels were used by the brand Volvic during a recent cause-related marketing (CRM) campaign. It supports local supply of drinking water in Ethiopia, and serves as the basis for our investigations. We developed an online survey and asked 114 participants for their perception of four alternating campaign displays. Based on the communication model of Te’Eni, we then calculate an ordinal logistic regression and results reveal that Facebook and YouTube can add significant value to CRM campaigns.

The aim of this study is to reveal how new communication technologies affect corporate social responsibility campaigns by analyzing the new dimensions that corporate social responsibility campaigns acquired in the new digital era from the standpoint of the advertisers who have created these campaigns. Within the scope of this study, the social responsibility campaign undertaken by Vodafone has been investigated in its various characteristics and the study data has been obtained using the in-depth interview technique with the team of the advertisers who created the campaign. In the analysis of data obtained after interviews with the participants forming the team that created the Vodafone “Red Light Application/Between Us” social responsibility campaign it was seen that the data is grouped around three themes: These are; (1) society lifting, (2) effects of digital media and (3) “Between us” Campaign.

Despite all the surrounding hype, it is still not clear exactly how social media affects consumer behavior. In an effort to contribute to the current debate on the effectiveness of social media marketing this study aims to theorize and empirically demonstrate how brand’s social media efforts influence a wide array of consumer mind-set metrics that underlie the consumer purchase decision-making process. Specifically, we relate key dimensions of a brand’s social media actions (intensity, valence and richness) to well established consumer mind-set metrics ranging from awareness through attitude to satisfaction. We hypothesize that brand actions’ intensity (more brand posts) with neutral valence and richer content will have a strong impact on the consumer mind-set. Using a unique data set that captures both social media and consumer mind-set metrics for multiple brands, we propose empirically testing our model with panel vector auto regression.

Companies have been facing the dark side of social media. Particularly, the odds of customer complaints and brand insults have increased tremendously. Social media has given a voice to disappointed consumers. They use the voice when they feel negative emotions, for example, due to product failures, service problems or unethical behavior. It seems reasonable to expect that the more ubiquitous social media becomes, the more it persuades people to share also their negative experiences. However, although social media raises new challenges for companies, it also gives them new opportunities. Social media enables companies to trace disappointed customers, evaluate their impressiveness and communicate with them. The conceptual paper aims to develop a model for the relationship between social media behavior, negative consumer emotions and brand disloyalty. The argument of this paper is that although social media gives consumers more power which is manifested in sharing negative emotions related to the company, the effect this has on brand disloyalty depends on the company’s behavior.

Social media are compelling businesses to review their way of managing customer experiences. There is a dearth of research as to why customers interact with businesses on social media in the grocery sector. This paper aims to explore how customers react to corporate messages on Facebook pages of Tesco and Walmart. Netnography approach was adopted to gain an insight into the various ways customers engage with the grocery stores on its Facebook pages. Findings show that the social customer is both a curse and a blessing to Tesco and Walmart as they can create or destroy value for the business. This paper contributes to knowledge by uncovering the various ways customers react with the business and how value can be created and destroyed.

In recent years, social media and the Web 2.0 have rapidly gained an increasing popularity. Companies have recognized this development and anticipate higher customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer lifetime value through the use of social media for commercial purposes. Social customer relationship management (SCRM) professionalizes the use of social media and aims at value cocreation of companies and their customers. Through a combination of high tech and high touch, this new way of interaction with customers also offers plenty of opportunities to enhance customer service experience. In this inductive, exploratory study, eighteen interviews were held with professionals from several vertical levels of the automotive industry (original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, market research agencies, and strategy consultancies). We aimed at exploring which opportunities, pitfalls and success factors organizations report when using technology-based Social CRM to leverage customer service experience. The findings are then discussed and practical recommendations given.

Using an empirical survey conducted among B2B and B2C companies in India, the paper examines the linkage between social media use, customer relationship management (CRM), social customer relationship management (SCRM) and the customer relationship performance (CRP). A framework was constructed using literature review and validated by the regression analysis. The findings show that the social media use and CRM capabilities interact positively to build SCRM capabilities which then have positive impacts on CRP. The linkages differ slightly for business to business (B2B) and business to consumers (B2C) companies. The paper also shares the challenges faced by the businesses in implementing the SCRM.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the participation of main actors in Facebook. The engagement shows different degrees of participation that directly affect the brand image and reputation. This research applies Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to interaction in the social media. It provides possibilities for decision makers to monitor diverse messages online, understand stakeholder concerns and reply to them adequately, which is especially important in crisis situations. Seven airline organizations were selected for a comparative analysis concerning their online discussions. The verified Facebook and Twitter accounts of those airlines were investigated, the status updates of the airlines and comments issued by other users during 2009-2016 collected along the replies and comments issued by the airlines themselves. The main methods are sentiment analysis, categorization of the messages into four categories and counting.

This paper presents a study on the use of social media among teenagers in Brunei Darussalam. The aim is not merely to reveal the social media usage behavior of teenagers in Brunei Darussalam, but also to illustrate the benefits and challenges brought about by social media usage among youths in the social-cultural context of Brunei Darussalam and its national ideology of Malay Islam Monarchy. Four findings of social networking, romantic intimacy, social media addiction, and cyberbullying are presented and the corresponding social-cultural implications and interventions are discussed. It is hoped that such awareness of how social media usage among youth is perceived in a different social-cultural context will bring about greater mutual understanding in this increasingly divisive world.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of a social networking site called Facebook in context of a landlocked and one of the least populous states in India. The adoption of Facebook is examined by considering technology acceptance model (TAM) as a basic model along with additional constructs such as subjective norm and perceived trust in it. The data were collected from 202 young adults from couple of degree level colleges from one of the least populous and landlocked states called Sikkim in India. The empirical outcomes provided the positive significant connections between nine hypothesised relationships among seven constructs. The article also discusses the resulting theoretical contributions for Facebook adoption and discusses practical implications of Facebook adoption for Facebook providers and users.

The main objective of this study is to assess the impact of perceived connectivity (PC) on the intention to use (IU) social media in organizations, as well as the moderating effects of perceived risk (PR) and perceived security (PS) on this relationship. Data were collected from 2,556 social media users across Australia, Canada, India, the UK, and the US to test our proposed research model. Our results found that PC has a significant positive effect on the IU social media in organizations, and non-significant moderating effects of PR and PS. The study concludes with the implications for practice and research.

This study examines the factors that affect consumer continuance intention to use social networking sites as a business tool. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the theoretical framework, the researcher tested the research model and related hypotheses using structural equation modelling. The results from a survey of 304 Facebook users in Saudi Arabia indicate that trust, perceived usefulness, and perceived enjoyment had significant positive effects on behavioural intention to continue to use social networking sites. Furthermore, perceived ease of use was found to have a significant positive effect on perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and trust. Discussion of the findings and research contribution as well as limitations and future research directions are presented.

Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are not well equipped to use Social Media (SM) and struggle to utilise its full potential in the context of adding value to the business. It is suggested that SMEs often need strategic guidance and support, particularly with regard to optimising SM. The question remains as to how effectively SM is embedded in the business operations of SMEs. This study examines how SM adoption can be realised by SMEs. It considers how SMEs can adapt their business strategies under changing circumstances by adopting SM in their daily practice. By integrating the current models of technology adoption (including the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) and Innovation-Decision-Process from Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) frameworks) a conceptual framework for achieving SM adoption is developed and presented. The results of this study provide a helpful synthesis of the extant literature and act as a useful springboard for further work in this important area.

Social network sites with the increasing importance, take place in the centre of people’s life. By the way companies have taken place in social networks for the aim of both to maintain their presence in the virtual environment and also create customer loyalty, improve brand image and customer satisfaction. Recently, Tweeter, has been preferred both companies and customers to transmit the message fast and clearly. Accordingly, this study aims to examine the current state of Turkey GSM Operators’ Twitter usage, in the term of passing through 4.5G (IMT-Advanced) band speed. In addition to this, within the framework of this study focused on the Turkey GSM Operators usage of Twitter as a marketing tool and how do they use it and what do they tweet about in the term of passing through 4.5G band speed, the content analysis is used.

Mobile activity is increasing in popularity with Smartphones and Tablets being used for a variety of daily online activities. However, the number of mobile users utilizing mobile devices for the purpose of shopping is relatively low and there has been limited theoretical research examining the acceptance behavior of consumers in the UK. This research aims to develop a theoretically grounded adoption model to examine UK consumers’ mobile shopping acceptance behavior. Through consideration into findings from existing research, a theoretically grounded model is developed by extending UTAUT2 with perceived risk, trust, mobile affinity and innovativeness. This theoretical model can subsequently be empirically tested with data gathered from the UK.

Utilising Mobile Government (M-Gov) services would raise socio-economic benefits. Thus, it is essential to examine the factors that may increase the adoption of M-Gov services within the context of Saudi Arabia. This research aims to examine potential users’ intentions towards different variables that may be significant for supporting higher behavioural intention to use the M-Gov services in Saudi Arabia. This study embraces the following variables: perceived risk, innovativeness, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavioural intention. Data was collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire on a convenience sample that consisted of 600 subjects with a response rate of 69.67 %. The findings were gathered and the statistical analysis suggested that the related variables are perceived as significant by participants and they have a strong behavioural intention to use the M-Gov services. Furthermore, the findings show that perceived ease of use significantly influences perceived usefulness.

With the development and advancement of information communication technology, smart wearable devices are playing a more and more important role in peoples’ daily lives. This study aims to investigate the adoption of smart wearable devices to assist healthcare in China. Based on the previous technology diffusion theories (e.g., TAM, IDT), a research model with ten research hypotheses was proposed in this research. The research model was empirically tested with a sample of 180 users of smart wearable devices in China. The results indicated that seven of the ten research hypotheses were significantly supported. The most significant determinant for users’ attitude towards smart wearable devices was trust. However, personal characteristics did not have a significant positive impact on both users’ attitude and behavior intention to use smart wearable devices.

This paper investigates the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for successful adoption and implementation of Green Information System (Green IS) in organizations. Extensive literature review conducted to identify the CSFs and these CSFs are validated through case studies of two Indian banks- State Banks of India (SBI) and Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited (HDFC). Nineteen CSFs are identified, namely: Leaders Obligation, Environment Changes, Industry’s Vision and Strategy, Resource Allocation, Expert Selection, Communication, Conflicts Resolution, Standard Adoption, Human Resource Induction and Training, Efficient Organization Structure, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Inspection/Audits, Financial Support, Technological Advancement, Customer Demand, System Integration, Rivalry Pressure, Awareness, and Government Policies. An interrelationship among these nineteen CSFs is established and a model is developed for effective Green IS implementation. Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) used to develop the model with the opinion of IT Experts and academicians. Moreover, this paper explores sustainability issues of Green initiatives. This study will enrich existing literature and assists researchers and policy makers in this area.

XBRL has been established as a financial reporting standard in the last 15 years. Many countries already adopting XBRL-based reporting system. In some countries it mandated by the government and for the other voluntary. IT adoption and implementation already existed as a separate process. To get more comprehensive analysis, this article aims to propose a unified conceptual model for IT adoption and implementation processes. A literature review on inter-organizational system (IOS) was conducted to reach that objective. This resulted in a conceptual framework represented by factors influencing adoption and implementation, levels of adoption and arrangement of the system. This framework will be used in further empirical study of XBRL reporting system or in broader, analysing the implementation of inter-organizational system.

The concept of sharing has been amplified with the development of various social media platforms that enable consumers to share knowledge with each other and subsequently influence their attitudes and purchase intentions. However, recent studies have tended to utilise social psychological theories to explore sharing on social media and have concentrated on the behaviour of those that share rather than the underlying individual motivations that lead them to share. This paper outlines some of the theories used within the current sharing literature and suggests that combining uses and gratifications theory and self-construal theory is better suited to examining the underlying motivations of sharing.

Social media information is a useful barometer of value characterising the digital age. To identify the core contributors of value creation, value is in the ‘eye of the beholder’, and ‘sharing’ social media information is indicative of communicating such perceived value. Sharing allows for belongingness, as people do not simply connect with communities, they contribute to communities, and shape them too. Content that is shared needs to be credible, especially as the power to persuade is being co-created by consumers. This is facilitated by sharing content deemed truthful and relevant; accordingly, information conveyed needs to be accurate and timely. Drawing from social network theory and Buckner’s (1965) theory on rumour transmission, we argue that the value of social media information is significantly created from an interplay of: (i) ‘sharing’, (ii) ‘persuasion’ and (iii) ‘timing’. This interplay is not exhaustive, however, as other contributors may exist, thus further research is advocated.

The purpose of the research is to explain how Twitter supports real-time information exchange in popular domains, and examine the influence of source, message, and recipient characteristics on information exchange. University students were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. A model was developed and statistically tested to examine the influence of characteristics on information exchange via Twitter. Different characteristics were demonstrated to be significant predictors of information exchange. For source characteristics, authoritative knowledge, social connections, and attractiveness have a positive influence, while for recipient characteristics, prior knowledge, community engagement, and demographics influence information exchange. For message characteristics, information usefulness and information quality are effective. Overall, influences vary based on the domain. The results help Twitter operators and users to understand the most important source, message, and recipient characteristics for information exchange. This study informs sources about the characteristics that make tweets more informative, and more likely to be exchanged by recipients. It assists Twitter operators to understand what characteristics are important in future system designs.

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) plays an important part in consumer purchase decision. The way consumers perceive the persuasiveness of eWOM message can affect their attitude, and purchase intention, and hence sales. Thus, the topic of persuasiveness of eWOM communications has received much attention from scholars. The objective of this paper is to provide a brief review of the existing literature related to the effectiveness of eWOM communications and offer an overview of the determinants of eWOM persuasiveness. This paper contributes to the existing eWOM literature by reviewing the existing studies on eWOM communications, identifying gaps in the current research and providing directions for future research.

Brand-related consumer to consumer communication, eWOM, is taking place in many forms across the social media space. Rules that governed credibility assessment of brand-related communication, WOM, in the Face to Face context may vary on social media, specifically because of anonymity that is afforded on different social media sites. The current study looks closely on the impact of anonymity in typical eWOM behaviour context on social media by drawing observations from a recent case in point and literature. The paper concludes with a list of relevant factors and propositions that must be tested empirically to draw greater understanding of the phenomenon.

With social media gaining rapidly in popularity, a large number of companies have initiated attempts to capitalize on the large user base present on such platforms. Yet, it still remains unclear how affordances that social media facilitate can influence consumer intentions to purchase and engage in word-of-mouth. This paper builds on the distinction between utilitarian and hedonic features, and empirically examines how these aspects present on social media platforms affect consumer behavior. Using survey data from 165 social media users we perform fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analyses (fsQCA) to extract patterns of factors that impact both purchase, and word-of-mouth intentions. The outcomes of the analyses demonstrate that realizing high purchase and word-of-mouth intentions can be achieved through multiple ways which also depend on gender and spending history. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed, particularly concerning how these findings can guide the design of successful social media outlets for commerce.

Despite the overwhelming and unabated popularity of social networks in the past years, the motivation behind an individual’s registration to such platforms is still largely uncharted. Based on an in-depth review of leading Information Systems literature, this paper investigates which factors potentially influence individual´s self-disclosure in social networks. The literature review reveals information privacy violation as the primary risk of online platform use. Regarding benefits, two categories are identified: social benefits, like reciprocity, relationship building and maintenance, or self-presentation as well as non-social benefits related to convenience, like personalization, entertainment, and safety and security. The later ones are mostly neglected in existing models. The main contribution of this paper consists of filling this gap by developing an enhanced research model of the user’s self-disclosure in social networks.

Social media is ubiquitous and most professionals feel compelled to use it for both personal and professional purposes. Although interacting with workplace colleagues and managers across online-offline and work-life offers several advantages, it also poses several image related challenges. This study aims to assess how individuals manage their image when interacting with professional contacts online. The article does this by studying individuals’ experiences of interacting online and their responses to cope with emerging conflicts. For this purpose, 31 interviews were conducted among Indian IT professionals. The findings suggest that respondents exercised audience segregation and content segregation to convey a desired professional image. By focusing on the impact of interactions with professional contacts online, the study suggests that individuals enact a ‘Restricted Self’ online. In doing so, the article contributes to the literature on online impression management.

Social media is an important platform to seek advice from its members. It is important to consider members of social media as trustworthy before one may seek advice. Reciprocity is a defining feature of social media. Trust propensity of a trustor is considered an important antecedent of trustworthiness and is cited more than 10,000 times. However, it is not clear how norm of reciprocity affects trustworthiness. This study asserts that Norm of reciprocity may be a more important antecedent of trustworthiness than trust propensity Partial least squares-structured equation modelling was used to model constructs. This study extends the Mayer’s model of trustworthiness. It has important implications for computer scientists and organization consultants working in area of trust in social media.

Social media has greatly affected the way the virtual teams in construction sector of UAE collaborate and share information among each other. The social media is needed to support synchronicity, a shared pattern of coordinated behavior among individuals as they work together. Research shows that, although computer-supported collaborative work has increased, many distributed virtual teams are facing a number of issues in managing and controlling the teams which leads to distrust among the team members. Trust among virtual team members is considered to be one of the primary concerns that affect the performance of virtual teams in Construction Sector. This paper is a result of literature review of around 150 papers which dealt with positive and negative effect of social media interactions on trust among virtual team members. Through Literature review, it was found that conflict and cohesion within the team members greatly affects the role of communication on trust among virtual project team members.

Social Internet of Things is a new paradigm where Internet of Things merges with Social Networks, allowing people and devices to interact, facilitating information sharing and enabling a variety of at-tractive applications. However, face to this new paradigm, users remain suspicious and careful. They fear disclosure of their data and violation of their privacy. Without trustworthy technologies to ensure user’s safe communications and trustworthy interactions, the SIoT will not reach enough popularity to be considered as a well-established technology. Accordingly, trust management becomes a major challenge to ensure reliable data analysis, qualified services and enhanced security. It helps people exceed their fears and promotes their acceptance and consumption on IoT services. However, current research still lacks a comprehensive study on trust management in SIoT. In this paper, we expose basic concepts, properties and models proposed for the trust management in SIOT environments. Furthermore, we discuss unsolved issues and future research trends.

The spread of misinformation online is specifically amplified by use of social media, yet the tools for allowing online users to authenticate text and images are available though not easily accessible. The authors challenge this view suggesting that corporations’ responsible for the development of browsers and social media websites need to incorporate such tools to combat the spread of misinformation. As a step stone towards developing a formula for simulating spread of misinformation, the authors ran theoretical simulations which demonstrate the unchallenged spread of misinformation which users are left to authenticate on their own, as opposed to providing the users means to authenticate such material. The team simulates five scenarios that gradually get complicated as variables are identified and added to the model. The results demonstrate a simulation of the process as proof-of-concept as well as identification of the key variables that influence the spread and combat of misinformation online.

A method for de-anonymizing social network accounts is presented to clarify the privacy risks of such accounts as well as to deter their misuse such as by posting copyrighted, offensive, or bullying contents. In contrast to previous de-anonymization methods, which link accounts to other accounts, the presented method links accounts to resumes, which directly represent identities. The difficulty in using machine learning for de-anonymization, i.e. preparing positive examples of training data, is overcome by decomposing the learning problem into subproblems for which training data can be harvested from the Internet. Evaluation using 3 learning algorithms, 2 kinds of sentence features, 238 learned classifiers, 2 methods for fusing scores from the classifiers, and 30 volunteers’ accounts and resumes demonstrated that the proposed method is effective. Because the training data are harvested from the Internet, the more information that is available on the Internet, the greater the effectiveness of the presented method.

The transformation of social media has paved a way to express one’s views, ideas, and opinions in an effective and lucid manner which has resulted in its increased popularity. However, there are both pros and cons of this socio-technological revolution. This may lead to its misuse with planned and targeted attacks which often have the potential of massive economic effects. This paper articulates the negative aspects, especially, of how the social media is being misused for greedy needs. Spammers may defame the product to achieve their greedy goal of earning more profit by decreasing the competing effect of their opponents. This paper discusses, analyzes and proposes two novel techniques by which one can either decrease or completely abolish these types of socio-economic attacks.

Sensor technology has become increasingly pervasive, leading to its use in many areas, such as health care and wellness. Current technologies and services are based on one-way connectivity, such that sensors are primarily used to transmit information. Though data generation is essential to the pursuit of meaningful information, having the right information at the right time in the right context is what successfully integrates the social web into real-world situations. This paper extends the concept of the Internet of Things and develops a conceptual framework of the Social Sensor Web that employs sensors to elaborate context-aware information in order to determine an effective approach to social interaction. The paper also highlights the importance of dual connectivity of sensor devices through workshops based on the state of the art. We present five dimensions of the Social Sensor Web that can serve as a guide for designing future health and wellness technologies.

Organizations become more data-intensive and companies try to reap the benefits from this. Although there is a large amount of data available, this data has often different qualities which hinders use. Creating value from big data requires dealing with the variations in quality. Depending on their quality, data need to be processed in various ways to prepare this data for use. Although the processes vary, dealing with certain levels of data quality is a recurring challenge for many organizations. By developing generic process patterns organizations can reuse each other solutions. In this paper, process patterns for dealing with various levels of data quality are derived based on a case study of a large telecom company that employs all kinds of data to create operational value. The process patterns can possibly be used by other organizations.

User Generated Content (UGC) requires new business intelligence methods to understand the influence of online opinion formation on customer purchasing decisions. We developed a conceptual model for deriving business intelligence from tweets, based on the Classical Model of Consensus Formation and the Theory of Planned Behaviour. We applied the model to the dynamic high-tech smartphone market by means of three case studies on the launch of new smartphones. By using Poisson regression, data- and sentiment-analysis on tweets we show how opinion leadership and real-life events effect the volume of online chatter and sentiments about the launch of new smartphones. Application of the model reveals businesses parameters that can be influenced to enhance competitiveness in dynamic high tech markets. Our conceptual model is suitable to be turned into a predictive model that takes the richness of tweets in online opinion formation into account.

The value of blogs to consumer research has been established; however, its full potential is still to be realized as empirical analyses into their use have been dominated by quantitative studies. There is a fundamental research gap in the range of methods adopted by researchers which has limited blogs as a source of valuable insights. This paper asserts the importance of language and the rhetorical functions of blogs as social interaction contexts where meanings are created and channeled; thus, offering a route to develop better understandings of authors and their narratives. Using discourse analysis to examine blogs, the paper demonstrates how a focus on language can provide rich insights to understand consumption experiences. Discourses of travel that emerged from the analysis were presented and theoretical and practical implications were outlined.

Social media and big data have been in high focus due to their potentially huge impact on business, society and polity. This research contributes to the same domain and peruses the twitter community before and after an event which is a major breakthrough for an economy. Here, the event being monitored is the Union Budget-2016 in India. The research taps the occasion to understand the various groups which participate in the online discussion amongst 43,924 tweets from 22,896 users and the pre and post budget twitter metrics are analyzed, deducing the sensitivity of the groups to the day of proposal of the budget. The research framework incorporates twitter analytics and relies on visual and quantitative data, drawing inferences from the intelligence. How the personality dimensions change before and after the event, is also analyzed. This change in dimensions can directly account for the influencing nature of the social media group.

In the era of social networks, we have a huge amount of social geotagged data that reflect the real world. These data can be used to provide or to enhance situational and public safety awareness. It can be reached by the way of analysis and visualization of geotagged data that can help to better understand the situation around and to detect local geo-spatial threats. One of the challenges in the way of reaching this goal is providing valuable statistics and advanced methods for filtering data. Therefore, in the scope of this paper, we collect sufficient amount of public social geotagged data from Twitter, build different valuable statistics and analyze them. Also, we try to find valuable parameters and propose the useful filters based on these parameters that can filter data from invaluable data and, by this way, support analysis of geotagged data from the perspective of providing situational awareness.

This paper analyzes issues in organizational needs for extracting information from social media during emergency response. By interviewing 16 Canadian emergency professionals, we gained insight into such things as: how they currently monitor social media; what types of information they are interested in, what challenges they encounter and what strategies they use to overcome those challenges. The most frequent requirements mentioned by participant were the need for prioritization and categorization of social media data to mitigate information overload. These professionals are also concerned about the reliability of information and counteracting the rumors.

According to “Wisdom of Crowds” hypothesis, a large crowd can perform better than smaller groups or few individuals. Based on this hypothesis, we investigate the impact of online social media, a group of interacting individual, on financial market in Indian context. The interaction of different users of www.moneycontrol.com, a popular online Indian stock forum, is put to a social graph model and several key parameters are derived from that social graph along with the user’s suggestion such as (Buy, Sell or Hold) related to a stock. The user’s impact in that forum is then calculated using the social graph of the users. Stock price movement is then predicted using user’s suggestions and their impact in that forum. As per our knowledge, this is the first paper which considers the impact of www.moneycontrol.com user’s suggestions and social relation to predict the stock prices.

Public organizations are facing increasing challenges to the management of their infrastructure assets. New sources of data, such as social media and IoT, can provide new insights for organizations to help them deal with these challenges. Yet data must be of sufficient quality in order to be acted upon. The objective of this study is to develop and approach to evaluate how data governance improves decision-making in asset management organizations. This paper describes a quasi-experiment which identifies and quantifies relationships between data governance and improvements in asset management decision-making. The quasi-experiment focusses on data requirements for determining current and future asset conditions, which is critical for assessing remaining service life and risk of failure. The quasi-experiment utilizes a pre-test post-test control group design. We expect that the inclusion of data governance improves the quality of data which allows for improved decision-making in asset management organizations.

We examine the evidence of growing social media use among political elites in low- and middle-income countries, including in places where the proportion of actual voters on social media is small. We propose three ways to view this phenomenon of– first, as signaling, second, as a means for politicians to access elite populations, and third as a way to circumvent mainstream media and exercise direct control over political communication.

Public administration has endured signification transformation over the last decade enabled largely through Information and Communication Technology. In recent times, second generation web technologies (Web 2.0) such as social media and networking sites are increasingly being used by governments for its digital activities ranging from public relations to knowledge management. However, as Web 2.0 technologies are more interactive than the traditional models of information provision or creation of digital services, these technologies have brought about a new set of opportunities and challenges to those government authorities. This study draws on the extant literature to examine the opportunities that Web 2.0 technologies offer to public authorities and the challenges they may need to overcome when integrating these technologies into their work practices.

This paper contributes to the current debate on Web 2.0 technologies and their implications for local governance through the analysis of the perceptions of policy makers of local governments about the governance model to be adopted in the management of Web 2.0 applications for the delivery of public services. Also this paper analyses political factors as attributes that could explain the governance patterns to be adopted by municipalities. To achieve this aim, an e-survey has been performed by policy makers in Spanish municipalities. Findings indicate that policy makers are mainly prone to implement Web 2.0 technologies under the “Bureaucratic Model” framework, keeping the leading role in this implementation. Nonetheless, right-wing ideologists and majority governments are prone to implement collaborative models of governance, whereas left-wing ideologists and minority governments are in favor to implement non-collaborative models of governance.

This paper attempts to collate and derive insights from various initiatives on mobile governance by Urban and local bodies in India. The first generation e-governance initiatives by urban local bodies resulted in computerization of the legacy systems/practices in government with limited ability to internalize the advances in information and communication technologies (ICT). The paradigm shift from e-governance tom-governance results in radical differences in the key processes of creating, maintenance and usage of knowledge, creation of secure mobile transaction and delivery system, establishment of the appropriate infrastructural support for multi-mode direct citizen interface and delivery mechanisms. The paper identifies the various mobile app use case scenarios for residents, urban local body managers, system integrators, telcos, data services provider, and other stakeholders. Based on these mobile apps, it is attempted to classify the cities in various categories.

The governance for smart cities must improve democratic processes, transparency in governance, citizen-centric development and political strategies for the cities. To achieve this, the government needs to gather information about citizens’ perceptions, demands, development priorities, grievances, and feedbacks about policies that are being developed or implemented. To involve the citizens in governance, governments should facilitate multiple ways to citizens to communicate. Social media platform empowers the citizens to use technology oriented common platform to communicate among themselves as well as with government. This study proposes a conceptual framework for smart governance illustrating how the governance could be transformed towards smart governance through social media platform.

We investigate the factors that affect the use of social media for civic engagement and social capital, and examine if online civic engagement also results in offline civic engagement. Using data from 282 university students, we find significant relationships between social media use, social capital, online and offline civic engagement. This study also tests the relationship between personality traits of individuals and how these traits relate to the use of social media for civic engagement and social capital. While agreeableness and conscientiousness are strongly associated with perceived usefulness of social media use, agreeableness was found to have a negative association with perceived usefulness of social media in the context of civic engagement.

The purpose of this study is to establish and examine a model explaining sharing of political content in social media. From individuals’ perspective, this study identifies two personal (i.e., altruism and social recognition) and two content related attributes (i.e., perceived truthfulness and value) that can directly affect sharing intention of political contents in social media. Moreover, the proposed direct effects are arguably contingent upon ‘collective opinion’. The empirical results support all the hypotheses except the moderating effect of collective opinion between perceived value and intention. The implications of the findings and future research directions are also discussed.

Along with a growing environmental consciousness and the advancement of information communication technology, car sharing and apartment sharing as the prominent examples of the sharing economy is becoming increasingly popular in China. This study aims to have a better understanding of business models in the sharing economy in China. Four research questions are presented. On the basis of a literature review on the business model and sharing economy, we proposed an analysis framework consisting of four major dimensions of business model concepts to study how the sharing economy works in China, including value network, value architecture, value proposition, and value finance. To address this, a case study with the Uber China is carried out. The key findings from the case study are presented in accordance with identified four dimensions of business model concepts.

The current paper examined three research questions. First,what are the perceived benefits for social network users who have role models online? Second, to what extent does having role models online influence one’s self-presentation on social media? And finally, are users who expect more in return (greater reciprocity) more likely to have role models on social media? Using two opportunity survey samples and exploratory analyses, study 1 (N = 236) demonstrated that having role models was associated with greater perceived support for one’s career aspirations, and perceived access to information. The results of study 2 (N = 192) revealed that participants who had role models online reported that their online profile presented a more realistic self-presentation of values and priorities, as well as having higher reciprocity expectation.

This paper explores the ways in which Facebook is used in the quest for finding missing persons in South Africa. Graphs are used to indicate differentiated roles of the Facebook communities: some communities act mainly as originators of the messages whereas others act more as distributors or end points of the messages. Crowd-sourcing is used as a conceptual tool to further our understanding of the way messages are shared among different Facebook communities. The four pillars of crowdsourcing as proposed by Hosseini et al., are used to analyse the network of communities as a crowd-source system. It is argued that Facebook can be effective as crowdsourcing system despite the fact that there is no guarantee that missing persons reported there will be found, since it most likely provides much needed emotional support to friends and relatives of the missing person.

This paper contributes to the understanding of social media strategy by examining how, Hillsong, a megachurch, is using social media. Whilst there, is a growing body of research on megachurches, and on the use of social media by not-for-profit organisations, no prior studies have examined the use of social media in megachurches. The study uses a content analysis of Hillsong’s social media platforms on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, to demonstrate the distributed model of social media presence adopted by Hillsong, and relates this to the various purposes for which Hillsong uses social media. Discussion and conclusions evaluate this approach to social media strategy.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the unofficial presence of Universities in India on Social Media with a focus on Facebook and Twitter. Content analysis was used in terms of quantitative approach. A checklist was developed as the main research instrument based on other checklists and questionnaires. It was observed that all the selected institutions have online presence, however, some are very active online and some have static presence. One third of the institutions are on social media and surprisingly one-fourth has unofficial accounts on social media. Government institutions as compared to Private have larger unofficial presence on social media. Unofficial presence on Social Media can be a concern for higher education institutions in terms of security and branding.

Use of blended learning system in a structured manner results in achieving higher order skills in cognitive domain. However, there is a need to quantify skills improvements as the students go through lower level skills to higher level skills. To ascertain this progression, it is necessary to develop a mathematical model of learning which can indicate the effectiveness of teaching and learning methods on skills improvement. In this study, mathematical learning model has been developed, which predicts the students’ knowledge, depending on the amount of instruction they receive. It is expected that this model will enable development of direct correlation between teaching and learning methods, and the skills level attained by the students. The model is applied for different categories of learning. Parameters in the model are determined after least-square fitting has been applied on observed student learning data.

“Social media banking” refers to the use of social media as a form of delivery channel for banking services. This research examines the attitudes and preferences for social media banking among users with emphasis on University of Southampton students. The purpose of the study was to examine the use of social media banking by students using the framework of Rogers Diffusion of Innovation theory and to gain an understanding of the factors which influence the adoption and usage of social media banking. A survey method was used to collect data from a sample of students at the University of Southampton. Data was analysed using an appropriate software which assessed factors that influence the attitude of students to social media banking. These factors were relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability. Descriptive, correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to analyse data. The findings show that three attributes of the diffusion of innovation namely relative advantage, compatibility and trialability were statistically significant in the attitude towards social media banking.