Using social media data to understand mobile customer experience and behavior

Understanding mobile customer experience and behavior is an important task for cellular service providers to improve the satisfaction of their customers. To that end, cellular service providers regularly measure the properties of their mobile network, such as signal strength, dropped calls, call blockage, and radio interface failures (RIFs). In addition to these passive measurements collected within the network, understanding customer sentiment from direct customer feedback is also an important means of evaluating user experience. Customers have varied perceptions of mobile network quality, and also react differently to advertising, news articles, and the introduction of new equipment and services. Traditional methods used to assess customer sentiment include direct surveys and mining the transcripts of calls made to customer care centers. Along with this feedback provided directly to the service providers, the rise in social media potentially presents new opportunities to gain further insight into customers by mining public social media data as well. According to a note from one of the largest online social network (OSN) sites in the US [7], as of September 2010 there are 175 million registered users, and 95 million text messages communicated among users per day. Additionally, many OSNs provide APIs to retrieve publically available message data, which can be used to collect this data for analysis and interpretation. Our plan is to correlate different sources of measurements and user feedback to understand the social media usage patterns from mobile data users in a large nationwide cellular network. In particular, we are interested in quantifying the traffic volume, the growing trend of social media usage and how it interacts with traditional communication channels, such as voice calls, text messaging, etc. In addition, we are interested in detecting interesting network events from users' communication on OSN sites and studying the temporal aspects - how the various types of user feedback behave with respect to timing. We develop a novel approach which combines burst detection and text mining to detect emerging issues from online messages on a large OSN network. Through a case study, our method shows promising results in identifying a burst of activities using the OSN feedback, whereas customer care notes exhibit noticeable delays in detecting such an event which may lead to unnecessary operational expenses. --Mobile customer experience,social media,text data mining,customer feedback

Work Life Hell in Finnish Social Media Discussions

This article investigates social media discussions regarding a hellish work life. Relevant blogs and discussion chains are analysed in light of characteristics captured from theological models and interpretations of hell. Although the term ‘hell’ is used colloquially as a metaphor and swear word, this paper demonstrates that classical theological views on hell can shed new light on different aspects of work life. Identifying the classical meanings and traditional features of hell aids in recognising and analysing relevant features of a hellish work life, including the irreversible, hopeless, penalising and (pre)determined nature of hell. The social media content analysed comes from Finnish-language discussion platforms, electronic journals published online and blogs. All social media content and discussions analysed refer explicitly to work life as a hell, indicating sources of job dissatisfaction and occupational stress. Correspondingly, job satisfaction is approached in this study from the perspective of employees’ attitudes to and feelings about the social reality that they perceive in their workplace. According to the results, the key features making one’s work life hellish are the experiences of being mistreated by a boss or workmate and the related feeling of helplessness.© 2020 VAKKI ry and the authorsfi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Use of anonymous social media accounts as self-disclosure media for Generation Z on postmodernism

This paper aims to see how anonymous social media accounts are used as a medium of self-disclosure and by adolescents in the era of postmodernism. This study uses a constructivist paradigm with a descriptive method through a qualitative approach. Data collection is done by using library research techniques. Data sources come from relevant literature, such as books, journals, or scientific articles. Data analysis was carried out by identifying problems that occurred related to the research topic, then analyzed with a postmodernism perspective to reveal social realities that occurred in adolescents in the use of anonymous social media from the standpoint of Jean Baudrillard's simulacra theory and conclusions were drawn. The results of the study show that both the positive and negative impacts of using anonymous social media accounts, in the view of postmodernism, put forward a very subjective truth. In the context of adolescent self-disclosure, limits will be determined by personal will, and the benefits of self-disclosure refer to individual satisfaction. Adolescents are forced to enter into hyperreality conditions that are intended to deceive adolescents in a subtle way, namely deceiving and believing that the simulation is the real reality so that adolescents become dependent on the simulation and possessive

Student Loneliness: The Role of Social Media Through Life Transitions

The move to university can be difficult for students- a transition often characterised by a risk of loneliness and poor mental health. Previous work highlights the important role social media can play in this transition. We report findings from a large-scale survey of 510 first year un-dergraduates across the UK, identifying factors that predict student loneliness, and exploring their social media use. Higher levels of social capital, induction satisfaction, and sense of community are significantly associated with lower levels of loneliness. Conversely, those reporting a more ‘liminal self’- the desire to edit and reinvent yourself online - experience greater loneliness- with an indirect relationship between online social information seeking and loneliness, through social capital. We surmise that being ‘true to yourself’ online is important when starting university, and that social media can be a useful tool in facilitating offline relationships and maintaining ties to old friends

Sentiment Analysis on Financial News and Microblogs

Sentiment analysis is useful for multiple tasks including customer satisfaction metrics, identifying market trends for any industry or products, analyzing reviews from social media comments. This thesis highlights the importance of sentiment analysis, provides a summary of seminal works and different approaches towards sentiment analysis. It aims to address sentiment analysis on financial news and microblogs by classifying textual data from financial news and microblogs as positive or negative. Sentiment analysis is performed by making use of paragraph vectors and logistic regression in this thesis and it aims to compare it with previously performed approaches to performing analysis and help researchers in this field. This approach achieves state of the art results for the dataset used in this research. It also presents an insightful analysis of the results of this approach

Differences in Body Satisfaction Between Black and White Heterosexual College-Aged Men

Although there is an increasing amount of research concerning body satisfaction among heterosexual White men, few of these studies have adequately represented heterosexual Black men. This was a quantitative survey study aimed to illuminate gaps in the literature regarding Black men\u27s body satisfaction experiences. The study used surveys and tested research questions to determine whether college-aged heterosexual Black (n = 220, 55%) and White (n = 180, 45%) men differed in their body satisfaction experiences and whether race significantly moderated the relation between sociocultural influences and body satisfaction in the two groups. This study was based on the social comparison theory, and examined sociocultural influences (i.e., media images, parents, peers, internalization of cultural appearance standards, and drives for muscularity) known to be associated with body satisfaction. Results from t test analyses indicated that Black men were significantly more satisfied with their appearance and weight, were significantly more confident that other people liked their appearance, and reported less social pressures to have an attractive body in comparison to their White peers. A series of moderated regression analyses failed to indicate that race moderated the relation between the sociocultural influences and body satisfaction. Seventy-five percent of both groups were dissatisfied with their bodies and desired to be more muscular. Social change implications include alerting clinicians that Black men, like White men, should be screened for problems with body satisfaction: Results may stimulate research to determine why Black men have greater overall body satisfaction than White men, and lead to culturally-specific guidelines for identifying and treating body dissatisfaction

Exploring the Utility of Patient Stories on Social Media for Healthcare Quality Improvement

This thesis explores the phenomenon of patient stories on social media. This phenomenon represents the intersection of two phenomena: patient experience and social media. Healthcare experience refers to the interactions of a patient with the healthcare system members, including the nurses, physicians, and staff, and the resultant emotional and behavioural effects of these interactions on patients, including patient satisfaction, patient commitment to health, and patient adherence to treatment plans. Social media refers to the internet-based applications that enable people to communicate, interact, publish, and exchange all types and formats of information, including text, pictures, audio, and video. Patient stories on social media refer to patients' posts that describe their healthcare experiences. This thesis aims to assess the utility of patient stories on social media for healthcare quality improvement and explore the health system and policy factors that can positively or negatively affect this utility in the healthcare system in Ontario. The thesis is comprised of an introduction chapter, a theoretical perspective chapter, four studies presented in chapters 3 to 6, and a conclusion chapter. Additional material is provided in several appendixes, including a definitions section in Appendix 1.A. The first study seeks to understand the perspectives of healthcare providers and administrators in Ontario regarding the factors affecting the patient experience. Qualitative data were collected between April 2018 and May 2019 by interviewing 21 healthcare providers and administrators in Ontario. Interviewees included physicians, nurses, optometrists, dietitians, quality managers, and policymakers. The study findings show that there are two perspectives on patient experience: the biomedical perspective, which prioritizes health outcomes and gives high weights to healthcare experience factors that can be controlled by healthcare providers, while ignoring other factors, and the sociopolitical perspective, which recognizes the impacts of healthcare politics and the social context of health on patient experience in Ontario. The second study explores the perspectives of healthcare providers and administrators on patient stories on social media and whether they can be used for evaluating healthcare experiences. Data were collected between April 2018 and May 2019 by interviewing the 21 healthcare providers, and administrators in Ontario noted in study one. Study findings show that several barriers prevent healthcare providers from realizing the benefits of social media, including the professional healthcare standards and codes of conduct, the time and effort required to process these stories, and the significant number of stories on social media, which also increase the time needed to process these stories. The third study analyzes the social media policies of the healthcare regulatory authorities, which are the regulating and licensing bodies in Ontario, and explores how these policies encourage or discourage the use of social media by healthcare providers. The study uses document analysis and qualitative content analysis to analyze social media policies and guidelines of some healthcare colleges in Ontario issued between 2013 and 2019. The study findings show that in the healthcare system in Ontario, social media is perceived as a source of risks to the healthcare professions and professionals, and therefore, policies are developed to mitigate those risks. Healthcare regulators emphasize that the codes of conduct and the professional standards of healthcare extend to social media, despite the distinct context of social media. The study found no systematic recognition of patient stories on social media as a source of information that requires the attention of healthcare professionals. The fourth study analyzes patient stories on the Care Opinion platform, which is an online platform that enables patients to post stories about their healthcare experiences and enables the providers to respond to these stories. The study explores the elements of healthcare experience in these stories, the characteristics of the stories that receive responses from healthcare providers, and the association between the satisfaction level of the patient expressed in these stories and the likelihood of receiving a provider response. The study collected 367,573 patient stories from the Care Opinion platform that were posted between September 2005 to September 2019. The study uses topic modelling (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), sentiment analysis, and logistic regression to analyze the data. Data analysis identified 16 topics in these stories. These topics can be grouped into five categories: communication, quality of clinical services, quality of services, human aspects of healthcare experiences, and patient satisfaction. Stories that describe healthcare experience of a family member, or reflect patient thankfulness, gratitude, or satisfaction with communication are associated with a high likelihood of receiving a provider’s response; however; the sentiment score of a story, which I used as a proxy for patient satisfaction, was insignificant. The thesis concludes by identifying several barriers that impede the use of patient stories on social media for quality improvement. These barriers are the beliefs and priorities of healthcare providers, the social media policies of the healthcare regulatory authorities and professional healthcare standards and codes of conduct that restrict patient-provider communication, the time and effort required to process patient stories, and the credibility of patient stories

The drivers of motivation

This project has been completed for a medium-sized supermarket located on the southern side of Hamilton. They currently have 83 people employed to work there. The reason for researching the drivers of motivation is so employers can begin to understand the best ways to motivate their individual employees The aim of the project was to analyse what drives motivation in the workplace and to provide recommendations for the supermarket. Both a questionnaire and interview were used, the questionnaire with the purpose of gathering a large amount of quantitative data in a short period of time and the interview to build on the results received from the questionnaires and provide qualitative data. Only employees in the grocery and checkout departments were asked to participate. Results from the questionnaire and interview showed that when it came to store culture, most staff felt that it could improve, that the store’s values were not being displayed, and that if store culture improved they would be better motivated. The store culture was also identified as an important motivator, especially for the staff over 26 years of age. When data concerning training and development was analysed, it was found that both training and career development were important motivators, with most staff wishing to undertake training and/or career development opportunities if they arose. From the analyses of the results for the reward and recognition questions, the staff indicated they felt they were not valued as employees and would prefer to receive more feedback to help increase their motivation. Pay was the last motivator to be analysed. The respondents indicated that they felt an increase in their pay rate would improve their motivation. However, upon further analysis through the interview, it was found although initially they would be motivated whether this would permanently improve their motivation was questionable. There were three recommendations for the organisation. These were, to implement a reward and recognition programme that addressed meeting the three motivational needs of the staff mentioned above, rewards and recognition, pay, and training and development. The second was to improve store culture, which would involve taking existing store values and establishing them into everyday life at the supermarket, so they become a shared set of values by them team. The third was to undertake further research to investigate how the motivational needs for the supermarket industry, a typical low skill, entry level job may differ to that of a higher skill job

Green human resource management

Global warming is a reality. Organisations realise their corporate responsibility to conduct their business with the 'future' in mind. Sustainability is having a green conscience and ensuring the steps you take today do not have a negative impact on the future. Green Human Resources Management is to promote the sustainable use of resources within business organisations. The aim of this research is to provide organisations with a Green Human Resource Management Strategy (GHRM). A qualitative approach was followed, and five participants interviewed. The researcher followed this approach to gain an in-depth understanding of business eco-friendly practices, to ascertain if they utilise HR to drive “green” in the organisation and engage employees. The study found that most organisations have implemented some eco-friendly practice and know the value of becoming a 'green' employer. However, the researcher identified a significant gap in that organisations are not aware of or lack the knowledge of how to utilise HR practices to get staff engaged in green policies and procedures. The researcher will strive to come up with various ideas and recommendation to the business on how they can utilise their HR practices to go green and engage their staff