Pinning it down: An evaluation of Pinterest’s function in the British academic library

University libraries have found a useful resource for themselves in many social media platforms. At Leeds Beckett University Library (formerly Leeds Metropolitan University), Twitter has proved a popular way to connect with students, other libraries and universities. Our Twitter following has exceeded 3,800, and our library Facebook had over 1,100 followers by May 2014. While we continue to develop these two sites, however, we acknowledge that we are not part of a stable environment. Social media is faddish; the favoured platforms change frequently. Facebook has largely taken custom away from Myspace, while Myspace used to tussle for users with Bebo, and Google Plus has taken their share of professional networks away from other platforms. With this in mind, any organisation using social media has to think about whether they should use – and if so, how to use – emerging virtual social networks

White, Man, and Highly Followed: Gender and Race Inequalities in Twitter

Social media is considered a democratic space in which people connect and interact with each other regardless of their gender, race, or any other demographic factor. Despite numerous efforts that explore demographic factors in social media, it is still unclear whether social media perpetuates old inequalities from the offline world. In this paper, we attempt to identify gender and race of Twitter users located in U.S. using advanced image processing algorithms from Face++. Then, we investigate how different demographic groups (i.e. male/female, Asian/Black/White) connect with other. We quantify to what extent one group follow and interact with each other and the extent to which these connections and interactions reflect in inequalities in Twitter. Our analysis shows that users identified as White and male tend to attain higher positions in Twitter, in terms of the number of followers and number of times in user's lists. We hope our effort can stimulate the development of new theories of demographic information in the online space.Comment: In Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'17). Leipzig, Germany. August 201

Beyond User Gaze: How Instagram Creates Tourism Destination Brand?

AbstractThis paper focused on how Instagram become a popular media to promote tourism site in Indonesia. Bali and Malang are the most well-known tourism destination in Indonesia, but now, conventional tourism promotion is not enough for promoting both of them. We found that everyone tried to promote their city with their own way. Therefore, we think Instagram provide a complete communication facilities, from tourism branding to user generated content photography. Using photo elicitation interview (PEI), we tried to describe the potential value of Instagram for promoting tourism site in Indonesia and describing how Instagram creating brand destination through photography side

The Impact of Content, Context, and Creator on User Engagement in Social Media Marketing

Social media has become an important tool in establishing relationships between companies and customers. However, creating effective content for social media marketing campaigns is a challenge, as companies have difficulty understanding what drives user engagement. One approach to addressing this challenge is to use analytics on user-generated social media content to understand the relationship between content features and user engagement. In this paper we report on a quantitative study that applies machine learning algorithms to extract textual and visual content features from Instagram posts, along with creator- and context-related variables, and to statistically model their influence on user engagement. Our findings can guide marketing and social media professionals in creating engaging content that communicates more effectively with their audiences