Group influence on blogs design behaviour

Issues of national culture influence on web design behaviour have been rampant and stimulating on static web pages across the globe. The emergence of a new breed of publication-type web page brought about by the advancement of web technology however, saw a different species of online communication groups. Bloggers as these groups are called; used blogs as their communication and publication tool to distinguish themselves from other websites and online social media users. Since bloggers are groups that are recognised and credited to cultivate their own culture, the idea that national culture has an influence on blogs design behaviour and preferences may have been weakened. Bloggers groups themselves would be the influential factor that determines design preferences of bloggers in a network of blogs. To address the issue, this paper has conducted an assessment on blogs from six countries using content analysis method, national culture traits and SIDE model to ascertain design features characteristics and behaviour. Results from both the global and local blogs in each country showed that blogs design preferences in one country differ between both the global and local bloggers. Furthermore, global bloggers design preferences in countries under observation are found to be similar to one another

Women and genital cosmetic surgery

This Issues Paper critically explores female genital cosmetic surgery in the Victorian context: to better understand what it is, who is undertaking it, and their reasons for doing so. The incidence of female genital cosmetic surgery appears to be increasing. This trend has been the subject of substantial analysis and opinion, but there is a lack of rigorous evidence on risks, efficacy, complications, and patient satisfaction. This Issues Paper considers how both individual and sociocultural factors are likely to contribute to the emerging trend, and how professional bodies, health professionals, and advocates might respond. It is intended as a starting point for further conversation, evidence-gathering, and action

Toward an Empirically-generated Typology of Weblog Genres

In their article Toward an Empirically-generated Typology of Weblog Genres Maciej Maryl, Krzysztof Niewiadomski, and Maciej Kidawa propose a typology of weblog genres based on empirical data, namely on the analysis of metadata and the study of blogs\u27 content. In Study 1 they explore 287 categories used by Polish bloggers to classify their blogs. The analysis shows that most categories are topical, but some could be useful for genre analyses. In Study 2 they analyse syntagma combinations of 2-3 categories assigned to 88 252 blogs on one of the Polish blog platforms. Through quantitative analysis and clustering 3 main groups are identified: public sphere, private sphere, leisure-time activities. And in Study 3 the authors present an alternative take on findings conducting a qualitative, non-topical analysis of 322 Polish blogs aimed at uncovering weblog genres according to their communicative purpose. In consequence, the following genres emerge: diaries, reflection, criticism, information, filter, advice, modelling, and fictionality

Chameleons in imagined conversations: A new approach to understanding coordination of linguistic style in dialogs

Conversational participants tend to immediately and unconsciously adapt to each other's language styles: a speaker will even adjust the number of articles and other function words in their next utterance in response to the number in their partner's immediately preceding utterance. This striking level of coordination is thought to have arisen as a way to achieve social goals, such as gaining approval or emphasizing difference in status. But has the adaptation mechanism become so deeply embedded in the language-generation process as to become a reflex? We argue that fictional dialogs offer a way to study this question, since authors create the conversations but don't receive the social benefits (rather, the imagined characters do). Indeed, we find significant coordination across many families of function words in our large movie-script corpus. We also report suggestive preliminary findings on the effects of gender and other features; e.g., surprisingly, for articles, on average, characters adapt more to females than to males.Comment: data available at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/movie

The Secret of Internet Celebrities: A Qualitative Study of Online Opinion Leaders on Weibo

Internet celebrities are widely observable on social media platforms and are an essential component to a social media marketing program. Drawing on the media success literature and online influencer research, this study reflects Internet celebrities’ fame-seeking practices and discusses on three issues from literature: definition of Internet celebrities, Internet celebrities’ identification criteria and what factors can contribute to individual online influence. A series of interview from three Internet celebrities and three followers of each celebrity were conducted to enrich this study. The results show that Internet celebrities are people who have become famous by means of Internet, and have the ability to influence others. They are characterized as having a certain number of followers; high level of interactivity on their profile; and promising business value. Moreover, this study suggests a five-dimensional perspective to understand individual online influence. We believe that these findings provide new insights for interpretation of Internet celebrities and suggest a possible success formula for fame-seekers to achieve influence on the increasingly competitive social media platforms