The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands

Researchers and brand managers have limited understanding of the effects social media communication has on how consumers perceive brands. We investigated 504 Facebook users in order to observe the impact of firm-created and user-generated social media communication on brand equity, brand attitude and purchase intention by using a standardized online survey throughout Poland. To test the conceptual model, we analyzed 60 brands across three different industries: non-alcoholic beverages, clothing and mobile network operators. When analyzing the data, we applied the structural equation modeling technique to both investigate the interplay of firm-created and user-generated social media communication and examine industry-specific differences. The results of the empirical studies showed that user-generated social media communication had a positive influence on both brand equity and brand attitude, whereas firm-created social media communication affected only brand attitude. Both brand equity and brand attitude were shown to have a positive influence on purchase intention. In addition, we assessed measurement invariance using a multi-group structural modeling equation. The findings revealed that the proposed measurement model was invariant across the researched industries. However, structural path differences were detected across the models

Web 2.0, new literacies, and the idea of learning through participation

In this paper I identify some current elaborations on the theme of participation and digital literacy in order to open further debate on the relationship between interaction, collaboration, and learning in online environments. Motivated by an interest in using new technologies in the context of formal learning (Merchant, 2009), I draw on in-school and out-of-school work in Web 2.0 spaces. This work is inflected by the new literacies approach (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006a), and here I provide an overview of the ways in which learning through participation is characterised by those adopting this and other related perspectives. I include a critical examination of the idea of ‘participatory’ culture as articulated in the field of media studies, focusing particularly on the influential work of Jenkins (2006a; 2006b). In order to draw these threads together around conceptualizations of learning, I summarise ways in which participation is described in the literature on socially-situated cognition. This is used to generate some tentative suggestions about how learning and literacy in Web 2.0 spaces might be envisioned and how ideas about participation might inform curriculum planning and design

Multiplatform Public Service Broadcasting: The Economic and Cultural Role of UK Digital and TV Independents

In this report, produced as part of a two-year Arts & Humanities Research Council project (AH-H0185622-2) on ‘multiplatform public service broadcasting’, focusing on factual/specialist factual as a case study, we detail the role independent production companies play in PSB. We set out how PSB informs the production cultures of independent companies, the tensions that are experienced between profit and public service and the impact multiplatform commissioning and production practices have had on the sector

Usage Patterns and Perceptions of the Achievement, Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS)

This report offers the first systematic examination of actual usage of New York City's Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS). ARIS is a comprehensive data system designed to put student information within easy reach of school administrators and teachers. The findings suggest that ARIS has been used successfully as a school-wide planning tool, but was less valuable as a direct aid to classroom instruction. The Research Alliance will continue its study of ARIS through 2013, including an examination of some of the new components and features that have been developed recently by the Department of Education

Encouraging Privacy-Aware Smartphone App Installation: Finding out what the Technically-Adept Do

Smartphone apps can harvest very personal details from the phone with ease. This is a particular privacy concern. Unthinking installation of untrustworthy apps constitutes risky behaviour. This could be due to poor awareness or a lack of knowhow: knowledge of how to go about protecting privacy. It seems that Smartphone owners proceed with installation, ignoring any misgivings they might have, and thereby irretrievably sacrifice their privacy

Come On In. The Water's Fine. An Exploration of Web 2.0 Technology and Its Emerging Impact on Foundation Communications

According to the authors of Come on in. The water's fine. An exploration of Web 2.0 technology and its emerging impact on foundation communications, foundations that have adopted new and still emerging forms of digital communications -- interactive Web sites, blogs, wikis, and social networking applications -- are finding that they offer "opportunities for focused convenings and conversations, lend themselves to interactions with and among grantees, and are an effective story-telling medium." The report's authors, David Brotherton and Cynthia Scheiderer, of Brotherton Strategies, who spent nearly a year exploring how foundations are using new media, add that "electronic communications create an opportunity to connect people who are interested in an issue with each other and the grantees working on the issue."The report also acknowledges that the new technologies raise skepticism and concern among foundations. They include the "worry of losing control over the foundation's message, allowing more staff members to represent the foundation in a more public way, opening the flood gates of grant requests or the headache of a forum gone bad with unwanted or inappropriate posts."Still, the report urges foundations to put aside their worries and make even more forceful use of new media applications and tools. The report argues that whatever is "lost in message control will be more than made up for by the opportunity to engage audiences in new ways, with greater programmatic impact."Acknowledging that adoption of new media tools will require some cultural and operational shifts in foundations, the report offers suggestions from Ernest James Wilson III, dean and Walter Annenberg chair in communication at the University of Southern California, for how to deal with these challenges. He says that for foundations to make the best use of what the technology offers, they should concentrate on three things:Build up the individual "human capital" of their staffs and provide them the competencies they need to operate in the new digital world.Make internal institutional reforms to reward creativity and innovation in using these new media internally and among grantees.Build social networks that span sectors and institutions, to engage in ongoing dialogue among private, public, nonprofits and research stakeholders.As Wilson also says, "All of these steps first require leadership, arguably a new type of leadership, not only at the top but also from the 'bottom' up, since many of the people with the requisite skills, attitudes, substantive knowledge and experience are younger, newer employees, and occupy the low-status end of the organizational pyramid, and hence need strong allies at the top.

Smart radio and audio apps: the politics and paradoxes of listening to (anti-) social media

The recent crop of vocal social media applications tends to appeal to users in terms of getting their voices heard loud and clear. Indeed, it is striking how often verbs like ‘shout’ and ‘boast’ and ‘brag’ are associated with microcasting platforms with such noisy names as Shoutcast, Audioboom, Hubbub, Yappie, Boast and ShoutOmatic. In other words, these audio social media are often promoted in rather unsociable terms, appealing less to the promise of a new communicative exchange than to the fantasy that we will each can be at the centre of attention of an infinite audience. Meanwhile, many of the new forms of online radio sell their services to listeners as offering ‘bespoke’ or ‘responsive’ programming (or ‘audiofeeds’), building up a personal listening experience that meets their individual needs and predilictions. The role of listening in this new media ecology is characterised, then, by similarly contradictory trends. Listening is increasingly personalised, privatised, masterable and measurable, but also newly shareable, networked and, potentially, public. The promotional framing of these new media suggests a key contradiction at play in these new forms of radio and audio, speaking to a neo-liberal desire for a decentralization of broadcasting to the point where every individual has a voice, but where the idea of the audience is invoked as a mass network of anonymous and yet thoroughly privatised listeners. Focusing on the promotion and affordances of these various new radio- and radio-like applications for sharing speech online, this article seeks to interrogate what is at stake in these contradictions in terms of the ongoing politics, experience and ethics of listening in a mediated world