Political communication of Hungarian parties in social networking platforms

In recent years, social media platforms are said to have a major impact on communication and communication technologies. More specifically, popular social networking platforms are increasingly employed in political context. Thus, this study examines the online performance of activities and approaches for political communication between Hungarian political parties and civilians in social networking platforms, video hosting services, as well as microblogging services. In order to examine these connections, the author conducted a web-based quantitate analysis and a semantic sentiment analysis to calculate the efficiency and sentiment of social media posts created by political parties. According to the research results, Hungarian political parties underutilize the inherent communication potential of social networking platforms, especially on YouTube and Twitter

Developing Consumers’ Brand Loyalty in Companies’ Microblogs: The Roles of Social- and Self- Factors

This paper aims to explore how social- and self-factors may affect consumers’ brand loyalty while they follow companies’ microblogs. Drawing upon the commitment-trust theory, social influence theory, and self-congruence theory, we propose that network externalities, social norms, and self-congruence are the key determinants in the research model. The impacts of these factors on brand loyalty will be mediated by brand trust and brand commitment. We empirically test the model through an online survey on an existing microblogging site. The findings illustrate that network externalities and self-congruence can positively affect brand trust, which subsequently leads to brand commitment and brand loyalty. Meanwhile, social norms, together with self-congruence, directly posit influence on brand commitment. Brand commitment is then positively associated with brand loyalty. We believe that the findings of this research can contribute to the literature. We offer new insights regarding how consumers’ brand loyalty develops from the two social-factors and their self-congruence with the brand. Company managers could also apply our findings to strengthen their relationship marketing with consumers on microblogging sites

Emerging Communication Technologies and Public Health Information Dissemination

Health promotion is a critical constituent of the public health system. Its primary objective is the empowerment of individuals and communities in the interest of positively influencing health behaviours and outcomes. One of the main ways in which successful health promotion is achieved is by the dissemination of relevant health information to individuals and communities. As global health costs rise to match the demands of an increasing and ageing population, such delivery of cost-effective public health information is explored. The recent advances in communication technologies have led to the development of social digital platforms (Web 2.0), with unprecedented opportunities for the extensive dissemination of relevant health information. The widespread uptake of social networking sites (SNS) presents a novel platform for public health promotion and management that can verily overcome the issues faced by current public health initiatives while reaching global populations of health consumers. This thesis aims to provide an exploratory analysis of the current landscape of health information communication across SNS, primarily through the platform Twitter. The research will address literature gaps in this cross-disciplinary field of health and communication sciences found for various SNS user-types, analyse and characterise the types of health information being disseminated across such platforms, as well as examine SNS activity during public health events. Public health officials and Web 2.0 platform developers can utilise findings from this thesis to address limitations of online public health-related communication insofar as they can assist with: a) advising plans for better engagement of information disseminated during health events; b) developing future applications and technologies that are appropriate for disadvantaged groups; c) identifying information dissemination strategies for authoritative health bodies and organizations to effectively reach populations

A Study of Chinese Students’ Media Dependence on Douyin in Malaysia

This paper uses the “Media System Dependency Theory” proposed by American communication scholars Paul Rockich and Melvin DeFleur as a research framework to investigate the deep-seated reasons for the dependence of Chinese international students on Jitterbug in social media, and to propose countermeasures. Overseas students are an important force for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and their values will influence the values of the whole society in the future. The international students are in the period of value formation and cognition, so it is very important to grasp the cognition formation in this period. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, short video social media, represented by Jitterbug, has become one of the most popular leisure and entertainment platforms for international students. However, while Jitterbug has brought rich experiences to young people, some negative effects have come along with it. Many international students seem to be inseparable from Jitterbug, gradually developing into a strongly sticky “relationship chimera”. It can be said that tens of thousands of international students not only cannot leave Jitterbug, but also gradually develop a kind of “dependency syndrome”—spending a lot of time and energy indulging in it, experiencing negative effects such as reduced attention span and indifferent interpersonal communication, and becoming doubly dependent on Jitterbug in terms of emotion and behavior. This study aims to examine the effects of the dual dependence on Jitterbug. Therefore, this study hopes to analyze the dependence of international students on Jitterbug as a social media and propose countermeasures to improve the media literacy of international students

DRIVERS OF INFORMATION QUANTITY: THE CASE OF MERGER-ACQUISITION EVENTS

Business and research likewise acknowledge the potential and economic value of information exchange in social media (i.e. the quality and the quantity of user-generated content). While existing research has mainly focused on the analysis of the impact of online information exchange, little attention has been devoted to the drivers of information exchange in social media related to major business events. In this study we explore drivers of information exchange relating to such events. In the context of merger-acquisition events, we posit that firm visibility based on firm characteristics and information needs triggered by the event itself influence the information quantity generated in social media. We test these hypotheses using a rich data set that includes a wide range of social media types and platforms. Our results show that both firm visibility and information needs are driving information quantity in social media in the context of corporate actions. Both of these driving factors are highly significant in explaining the information quantity in social media

Identifying Expert Investors on Financial Microblog via Artificial Neural Networks

In the recent years, thanks to social media platform, a plethora of information has been available to financial investors, that were traditionally dependent from financial institutions advisors. Strategies are now shared among web users, performances of stocks are commented in web communities and hints and suggestions are travelling on the internet with a fast pace, in a way that was unthinkable few years before. Several attempts have been made in the recent past, to predict Market movements and trends from activity of Financial Social Networks participants, and to evaluate if contributions from individuals with high level of expertise distinguish themselves from the rest of crowd. The Present Work is leveraging 6 years of tweets extracted from the financial platform StockTwits.com, deep diving in its content, and proposing a predictive Neural Network algorithm of Multi-Layer Perceptron type, based on features derived from text, social network and sentiment analysis. Users have been classified based on the performance achieved during the training, consistence of their prediction has been verified throughout the time and, finally, a trading strategy has been proposed based on following the top actors. The outcomes highlighted that expert investors are outperforming the wisdom of the crowd, and the trading schema put together generated a return of 38.6%, in 2015, when S&P500 had a slightly negative balance

Persuasion in the digital age: a theoretical model of persuasion in terse text

This thesis explores how the increasingly prevalent terse text format of Social Media communication has affected the way we seek to persuade one another and whether it has impacted the applicability of existing models of persuasion, influence and attitude change. Over the past few decades, communication behaviour has evolved dramatically. As a society we increasingly consume information in the format of short messages, rather than lengthy text and verbose speech. Meanwhile our understanding of persuasion has hardly moved on from the 1980’s and continues to be spread across a variety of academic disciplines, such as Behavioural Science/Psychology, Philosophy/Rhetoric, and various sub-fields of linguistics. Existing models of persuasion are to date lacking interdisciplinarity and applicability to the terse text format found in Social Media. The data used in this research is in the format of Twitter microblogs gathered throughout a number of recent political campaigns, such as the 2016 UK Brexit referendum and the 2016 US General Election. The research purpose is fundamental, rather than applied, meaning that it seeks to expand knowledge by increasing the understanding of fundamental principles, rather than answering specific questions and offering a precise solution to a practical problem. The research philosophy that has been adopted for this project is interpretivism. The research approach is idiographic, and the methodology is predominantly qualitative, with occasional use of descriptive statistics. The research was conducted in several distinct phases, starting with the construction of the theoretical model, followed by two validation exercises and further experimental exploration by means of a recall test and computational linguistic analysis, culminating in a revised model of terse text persuasion. This research draws upon and collates existing knowledge from behavioural science, rhetoric, linguistics, and cognitive science and develops a comprehensive understanding of how we seek to persuade through terse text media, based on data collected around a number of recent political campaigns and topics of debate. The research demonstrates that existing models of persuasion, such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) and the Heuristic Systematic Model (Chaiken et al., 1989)cannot be applied to the terse text context without significant modification. A new theoretical model of persuasion in terse text is proposed and evaluated. The findings also show that there is a distinct preference for heuristic over systematic cues in terse text messages with persuasive intent, and – in terms of Aristotelian rhetorical appeals – a preference for appeals to credibility (ethos) and emotion (pathos) over appeals to reason (logos). Additionally, the research explores, by means of a recall test, the most memorable subcategories of terse text microblogs, as well as the examining message structure and features through computational linguistic tools. Although this research focusses on political persuasion in terse text Social Media, the findings have implications that reach far beyond the political sphere into activism, marketing, social engineering, strategic communication and (human centred) information warfare