An Empirical Analysis of User Content Generation and Usage Behavior in Mobile Digital Media

Different kinds of user-generated content are becoming available in mobile digital and web media settings as well spurred by the rapid advances in the cellular telephony market. We use a unique dataset of individual-level mobile records to study the nature of interdependencies between users’ content generation and content usage behavior. While theories of resource constraints from economics posit the existence of a negative interdependency between content generation and usage, theories of social exchange from sociology posit the existence of a positive interdependency between these two activities. Hence, the final directional nature of this interdependency is an empirical question. We find that there exist negative inter-temporal interdependencies between the content generation and usage behavior. The effect is also asymmetric such that the negative impact of previous period’s content generation on current period’s content usage is higher than vice-versa. Managerial implications for discounting in data transmission prices are discussed

#mytweet via Instagram: Exploring User Behaviour across Multiple Social Networks

We study how users of multiple online social networks (OSNs) employ and share information by studying a common user pool that use six OSNs - Flickr, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube. We analyze the temporal and topical signature of users' sharing behaviour, showing how they exhibit distinct behaviorial patterns on different networks. We also examine cross-sharing (i.e., the act of user broadcasting their activity to multiple OSNs near-simultaneously), a previously-unstudied behaviour and demonstrate how certain OSNs play the roles of originating source and destination sinks.Comment: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, 2015. This is the pre-peer reviewed version and the final version is available at http://wing.comp.nus.edu.sg/publications/2015/lim-et-al-15.pd

The students’ acceptance and use of their university’s virtual learning environment

The proliferation of digital and mobile devices, including; smartphones and tablets has led policy makers and practitioners to include these ubiquitous technologies in the realms of education. A thorough review of the relevant literature suggests that both students as well as their course instructors are becoming increasingly acquainted with the adoption of education technologies in the higher educational context. Hence, this study explores the university students’ readiness to engage with the virtual learning environment (VLE). The methodology has integrated measuring items that were drawn from the educational technology literature, including the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, to better understand the students’ perceptions towards VLE. It investigated whether they were influenced by their instructors or by fellow students to use VLE. The results suggest that most of the research participants were using this technology as they believed that it supported them in their learning outcomes. The findings also revealed that the students were not coerced by their course instructors or by other individuals to engage with VLE. Moreover, the university’s facilitating conditions had a significant effect on the participants’ usage of VLE. In conclusion, this contribution puts forward key implications to practitioners. It also clarifies the limitations of this study and proposes future research directions.peer-reviewe

Are e-readers suitable tools for scholarly work?

This paper aims to offer insights into the usability, acceptance and limitations of e-readers with regard to the specific requirements of scholarly text work. To fit into the academic workflow non-linear reading, bookmarking, commenting, extracting text or the integration of non-textual elements must be supported. A group of social science students were questioned about their experiences with electronic publications for study purposes. This same group executed several text-related tasks with the digitized material presented to them in two different file formats on four different e-readers. Their performances were subsequently evaluated by means of frequency analyses in detail. Findings - e-Publications have made advances in the academic world; however e-readers do not yet fit seamlessly into the established chain of scholarly text-processing focusing on how readers use material during and after reading. Our tests revealed major deficiencies in these techniques. With a small number of participants (n=26) qualitative insights can be obtained, not representative results. Further testing with participants from various disciplines and of varying academic status is required to arrive at more broadly applicable results. Practical implications - Our test results help to optimize file conversion routines for scholarly texts. We evaluated our data on the basis of descriptive statistics and abstained from any statistical significance test. The usability test of e-readers in a scientific context aligns with both studies on the prevalence of e-books in the sciences and technical test reports of portable reading devices. Still, it takes a distinctive angle in focusing on the characteristics and procedures of textual work in the social sciences and measures the usability of e-readers and file-features against these standards.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Online Information Revie

Online Store Locator: An Essential Resource for Retailers in the 21st Century

Most retailers use their websites and social media to increase their visibility, while potential customers get information about these retailers using the Internet on electronic devices. Many papers have previously studied online marketing strategies used by retailers, but little attention has been paid to determine how these companies provide information through the Internet about the location and characteristics of their stores. This paper aims to obtain evidence about the inclusion of interactive web maps on retailers’ websites to provide information about the location of their stores. With this purpose, the store locator interactive tools of specialty retailers’ websites included in the report “Global Powers of Retailing 2015” are studied in detail using different procedures, such as frequency analysis and word clouds. From the results obtained, it was concluded that most of these firms use interactive maps to provide information about their offline stores, but today some of them still use non-interactive (static) maps or text format to present this information. Moreover, some differences were observed among the search filters used in the store locator services, according to the retailer’s specialty. These results provided insight into the important role of online store locator tools on retailers’ websites

A typology categorization of millennials in their technology behavior

Hay un interés creciente por los millennials; y sin embargo, hasta la fecha hay escasas segmentaciones de los millennials en cuanto a su comportamiento en relación a la tecnología. En este contexto, este estudio trata las siguientes cuestiones:”¿Son los millennials monolíticos o hay diferentes segmentos en esta generación en cuanto a su comportamiento tecnológico?”. Y si este fuera el caso: “¿Existen diferencias importantes en cuanto a la forma en que los millennials usan la tecnología?”. Nuestro objetivo consiste en examinar los potenciales perfiles de los millennials en relación a su comportamiento y uso de la tecnología. Los datos obtenidos de una muestra de 707 millennials se analizaron mediante un análisis de componentes principales y análisis clúster. A continuación, los segmentos se caracterizaron mediante un análisis MANOVA. Nuestros resultados revelan la existencia de cinco segmentos o tipologías de millennials en cuanto a su comportamiento tecnológico: los “devotos de la tecnología”, los “espectadores”, los “prudentes”, los “adversos” y los “productivos”. Este estudio contribuye de forma detallada al conocimiento sobre cómo las diferentes categorías de millennials usan la tecnología.There is an increasing interest for millennials; however, to date millennials’ segmentations regarding their technology behavior are scarce. In this context, this study addresses the following questions: “Are millennials monolithic, or are there segments within this generation group regarding the technology behavior?”. And if so: “Are there important variances in the way that millennial segments use technology?”. Our purpose is to examine the potential profiles of millennials regarding their technology use and behavior. Data from a sample of 707 millennials was gathered and analyzed through principal component analysis and cluster analysis. Then, millennials’ segments were profiled using a MANOVA analysis. Our findings revealed five different segments or typologies of millennials regarding their technology behavior: technology devotees, technology spectators, circumspects, technology adverse users and productivity enhancers. This study contributes with a detailed perspective of how different millennial segments use technology

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

Investigating the adoption and use of smartphones in the UK : a silver-surfers perspective

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by the authors. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and conditions invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be re-posted without the explicit permission of the copyright holdersSmart phones are innovations that currently provide immense benefits and convenience to users in society. However, not all members of society are accepting and using smart phones; more specifically, for this research study silver-surfers or older adults (50+) are a demographic group displaying such an attitude. Currently, there is minimal knowledge of the reasons for older adults adopting and using smartphones. Bearing this in mind, this research study aims to investigate the adoption and usage behaviours of silver-surfers. For this purpose, the conceptual framework applied to this research draws factors from the following theories: Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), the Diffusion of Innovations theory (DoI), and TAM3 (Technology Acceptance Model). From the online survey of 204 completed replies it was found that observability, compatibility, social influence, facilitating conditions, effort expectancy and enjoyment are important to the adoption and use of smartphones within silver-surfers. The contributions of this research are an identification and understanding of the factors that encourage or inhibit smartphone use within the older adult population. Second, this research can inform the design of computing devices and applications used for silver-surfers. Finally, this research can enlighten policy makers when forming decisions that encourage adoption and use of smartphones among silver surfersFinal Published versio

Impact of Mobile Usage on the Interpersonal Relations

Communication via mobile telephones is widespread in East Asian metropolis such as Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo. In the last ten years, the number of mobile telephone users has increased dramatically, with the younger generation in particular depending on the services available via mobile telephones. This paper explores the relationship between the voice and text messaging communications of these young consumers through their mobile telephones and their interpersonal relations. It analyses how mobile telephone usage affects relationships between respondents by comparing models of the cause-effect relationship of several latent factors in different environments, namely dependency on mobile telephone communication, perception of friendships, individual factors and IT literacy. By applying a covariance structure analysis, the correlations between latent and observable variables can be successfully visualized. The results show that mobile telephones have little influence on the perception of relationships among the younger generation, although somewhat different structures of interdependency exist in these metropolitan areas.mobile telephone calls; text messaging; Seoul; Taipei; Tokyo; communication; younger generation; relationship and covariance structure analysis