Effects of narcissism, leisure boredom, and gratifications sought on user-generated content among net-generation users

This research identifies the gratifications sought by the net-generation when producing user-generated content (UGC) on the internet. Members of the Net-generation want to vent negative feelings, show affection to their frieds and relatives, be involved in others' lives, and fulfill their need to be recognized. These gratifications were all found to be significantly associated with the users' various levels of participation in UGC (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, blogs, online forums, etc.) What's more, narcissism was predictive of content generation in social networking sites, blogs, and personal webpage, while leisure boredom was significantly linked to expressing views in forums, updating personal website, and participating in consumer reviews. In particular, the results showed the Net-geners who encountered leisure boredom had a higher tendency to seek interaction with friends online. Implications of findings are discussed. --Narcissism,leisure boredom,user-generated content,uses and gratifications

“Sharing” Copyrights: The Copyright Implications of User Content in Social Media

Copyright law in America, in its current stage of development, does not sit well with common social media practices. This article explores the copyright implications of user content on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. It first examines the copyrightability of user-generated content, and the broad licenses that users grant by agreeing to the vague Terms of Use that social media sites set forth. The article then looks to user-found content and activities such as sharing or pinning the creative works of others. Through these practices and conflicting Terms of Use, social media websites both encourage and prohibit widespread copyright infringement. With the websites likely protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor provision, liability falls on the unknowing users. Existing copyright laws and jurisprudence do not adequately address the expanding disregard for copyrights in online forums, and only through the legislative process can these issues be addressed

Sharing feelings online: Studying emotional well-being via automated text analysis of Facebook posts

Digital traces of activity on social network sites represent a vast source of ecological data with potential connections with individual behavioral and psychological characteristics. The present study investigates the relationship between user-generated textual content shared on Facebook and emotional well-being. Self-report measures of depression, anxiety and stress were collected from 201 adult Facebook users from North Italy. Emotion-related textual indicators, including emoticon use, were extracted form users’ Facebook posts via automated text analysis. Correlation analyses revealed that individuals with higher levels of depression, anxiety expressed negative emotions on Facebook more frequently. In addition, use of emoticons expressing positive emotions correlated negatively with stress level. When comparing age groups, younger users reported higher frequency of both emotion-related words and emoticon use in their posts. Also, the relationship between online emotional expression and self-report emotional well-being was generally stronger in the younger group. Overall, findings support the feasibility and validity of studying individual emotional well-being by means of examination of Facebook profiles. Implications for online screening purposes and future research directions are discussed

The copyright protection of online user-generated content

Includes bibliographical references.Online social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube allow creative works to be more easily copied and distributed. This type of content is generally referred to as user-generated content and its creation has become a major component of our daily routine. As a result, user-generated content has the potential to influence not just the nature of social interactions but methods of doing business. The advent of user-generated content poses new challenges to copyright law, the conventional medium of protecting these creative works. The global reach of the internet and the increasing ease of access thereto make infringement of original material more likely and more frequent. User-generated content is also surrounded by legal uncertainty in the areas of defamation and privacy. It is beyond the scope of this paper to deal in any depth with these issues. This dissertation will focus on the implications of user-generated content within the realm of copyright. Specifically, this paper examines whether South African copyright law, in its present state, adequately protect the rights and interests of content creators on one end and website owners and proprietors on the other. This assessment will be guided, in part, by judicial precedent and legislative policies adopted in other jurisdictions

Toward a Comprehensive Understanding of User-Generated Content and Engagement Behavior on Facebook Business Pages

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2018. Major: Business Administration. Advisors: Yuqing Ren, Gediminas Adomavicius. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 196 pages.Social media platforms such as Facebook empower individual users to interact with companies and with each other on company-managed business pages. Users can generate content by posting directly to the business pages, and other users can engage with the content through multiple engagement features. Although such user-generated content (UGC in short) and associated engagement behaviors bear important consequences to the companies, they are not well understood. The three essays of my dissertation fill in this gap, by analyzing data collected from Facebook business pages with multiple empirical methods. The first essay examines the valence and content characteristics of user-generated posts on the Facebook business pages of multiple large companies across key consumer-oriented industries. It demonstrates that user posts on Facebook business pages represent a new form of UGC that is distinct from online product reviews generated by consumers, in terms of valence distribution and content types. Further, it highlights the important valence and content factors that influence two canonical types of engagement activities, i.e., liking and commenting. The second essay discusses how user engagement behaviors are shaped by engagement features on Facebook, and in particular, how the introduction of a new engagement feature affects the usage of existing features as well as overall engagement activities. It aims to uncover new insights regarding the interplay of multiple engagement features. Analyses show that, despite distinct functionalities, the usage of different features is not independent, and user posts that have received engagement are likely to obtain even more engagement of various types. The third essay addresses a methodological challenge of studying UGC on social media or other online contexts, where researchers frequently seek to combine data mining with econometric modeling, but ignore the issue of measurement error and misclassification. Findings of my dissertation advance understanding of UGC and engagement behavior on social media brand pages, and have practical implications for social media platforms as well as businesses that have presence on these platforms

Collect and Handle Personal Social Media Data. Ethical Issues of an Empirical Internet Research

Online users’ digital traces provide valuable information and empirical evidence, but Internet research requires scientific rigor in accessing and managing User Generated Contents (UGCs). The article challenges these practices and advocates for a reflexive approach to social media research ethics. Although platforms offer viable access, utilizing such data can intrude on subjects’ private lives. Defining responsibilities toward data and subjects is crucial when studying online contents, such as Instagram stories and Facebook posts. The subject’s centrality and ethical implications becomes particularly significant in social inquiry, where the object is closely tied to actively signifying subjects and social relations mediated by institutions or technologies. The paper explores ethical issues in a concrete research project, “7 friends for 7 days”, and presents alternative research practices for observing and analyzing online content within the post-API research context. It discusses ethical challenges in Internet research, focusing on social media data, and examines a study that analyzed user-generated content through human-type coding. The paper reflects on the ethical considerations in fabricating research evidence, particularly regarding UGC published on personal social media platforms and the critical awareness of those involved in observing and disseminating such data

Automated Copyright Enforcement Online: From Blocking to Monetization of User-Generated Content

Global platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok live on users ‘freely’ sharing content, in exchange for the data generated in the process. Many of these digital market actors nowadays employ automated copyright enforcement tools, allowing those who claim ownership to identify matching content uploaded by users. While most debates on state-sanctioned platform liability and automated private ordering by platforms has focused on the implications of user generated content being blocked, this paper places a spotlight on monetization. Using YouTube’s Content ID as principal example, I show how monetizing user content is by far the norm, and blocking the rare exception. This is not surprising, since both platforms and copyright owners significantly profit from monetization. However, contrasting complex automated enforcement tools such as Content ID against basic principles of copyright law, this paper shows how users loose out when their content is exploited. As aggravating factors, the paper points to far-reaching powers that platforms as ‘functional sovereigns’ wield within their respective domains; and to the fundamentally distinct nature of norms set by these sovereigns. The platform’s application and enforcement of its own rules is hard-coded, immediate and automated: embedded in its infrastructure and code, implemented through automation, and adjudicated in its own courts, platform rules constitute brute facts, directly shaping our reality – hence transforming the nature of law as institutional (that is, socially constructed) facts. The paper concludes by critically reviewing mechanisms to protect users, including those set out in Article 17 of the EU’s Digital Single Market Directive

Consumer trust in user-generated brand recommendations on Facebook

The transparency of social web paves the way for user-generated content (UGC) to become a trusted form of brand communication. Research offers little guidance on UGC and trust development in social networking sites (SNS) and has yet to debate the effects of ad-skepticism in the context of UGC and SNS. This study builds on theory to develop a conceptual framework that yields insights into the development of consumer trust towards user-generated brand recommendations (UGBR). A set-theoretic approach using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is applied to data derived from 303 consumers. The study findings suggest that high levels of trust in UGBR are associated with high levels of trust toward Facebook friends and provide support for the moderating role of ad-skepticism. Benevolence and integrity are found to be necessary/core conditions for the development of trust toward Facebook friends. Ability and disposition to trust are of peripheral importance. The significance of the findings and their implications are discussed

How Do Social Networking Sites Users Become Loyal? A Social Exchange Perspective

Since its emergence as a new electronic communication media supported by Web 2.0, social media has become a popular means of communication among the public. Among different types of social media that depend on user-generated content (UGC), social networking sites (SNS) are becoming the best-known communication mode. While many researchers have examined significant factors affecting SNS users’ behaviors and their impact on SNS usage, the current research extends the traditional concept of IS loyalty and examines factors impacting SNS users’ creation of SNS loyalty through a lens of social exchange theory (SET) and satisfaction. A total of 291 college students participated in an empirical test. The findings indicate that SET has an effect on creation of loyalty in the context of Facebook, which is currently the most popular SNS. Implications of these findings and limitations of the research are discussed

Identifying opinion leaders and their activity on a local apparel business Facebook fan-page

As technology continues to grow, new marketing opportunities arise. Facebook is an online social network that allows companies to understand their consumer base (Shih, 2011). Little research has been conducted to understand how Facebook is used as a marketing tool. Word of mouth advertising is created on Facebook fan-pages, business pages that allow consumers to interact with each other with User-Generated Content (UGC). Identifying opinion leaders on these fan-pages can help businesses understand their customers and help them build relationships with them on Facebook. The current research presents a qualitative approach to profiling users of a Facebook fan-page wall, identifying opinion leaders, and analyzing the documented messages on the wall. The Facebook fan-page used was from Tru Colors Apparel a local apparel business targeting college football fans in the South East region of the United States. The profile identified thirty-three opinion leaders, whose comments were analyzed for themes. Eighteen themes were identified from the fan comments and opinion leader comments. The themes identified were brand/line, styles, excitement, purchase intention, purchase, team spirit, suggestions, pricing, sizing, photos, store/location, website, gratitude, emails, blog referral, recommendations, winners, and articles. The comments were analyzed over a three season period. The three seasons are defined based on the football season from June to February. Each comment from all the fans and from the opinion leaders were compared to identify relationships between themes and to support the identification process of opinion leaders. Purchase intention, Team Spirit, and the Brand/Line were consistently more prevalent when comparing the opinion leader comments to the other fans comments. Implications are presented for small apparel companies with narrow niche markets