Social Media and Information Overload: Survey Results

A UK-based online questionnaire investigating aspects of usage of user-generated media (UGM), such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, attracted 587 participants. Results show a high degree of engagement with social networking media such as Facebook, and a significant engagement with other media such as professional media, microblogs and blogs. Participants who experience information overload are those who engage less frequently with the media, rather than those who have fewer posts to read. Professional users show different behaviours to social users. Microbloggers complain of information overload to the greatest extent. Two thirds of Twitter-users have felt that they receive too many posts, and over half of Twitter-users have felt the need for a tool to filter out the irrelevant posts. Generally speaking, participants express satisfaction with the media, though a significant minority express a range of concerns including information overload and privacy

What Trends in Chinese Social Media

There has been a tremendous rise in the growth of online social networks all over the world in recent times. While some networks like Twitter and Facebook have been well documented, the popular Chinese microblogging social network Sina Weibo has not been studied. In this work, we examine the key topics that trend on Sina Weibo and contrast them with our observations on Twitter. We find that there is a vast difference in the content shared in China, when compared to a global social network such as Twitter. In China, the trends are created almost entirely due to retweets of media content such as jokes, images and videos, whereas on Twitter, the trends tend to have more to do with current global events and news stories

Motivations of User Engagement in eWOM of Chinese Microblog

This study examined the motivations of user engagement in electronic word-of-mouth behavior through a netnography. The sample includes more than 2,000 posts from the Chinese microblog-Sina Weibo and 20 follow-up interviews about film reviews. 5 types of motivations were examined, including egoistic motivations, motivations for the reward, reciprocal motivations, altruistic motivations, and motivations in the sense of community. Results confirmed the effect of egoistic motivations, reciprocal motivations, and motivations in the sense of community for the increasing volume of eWOM. However, motivations for the reward and altruistic motivations were found less powerful. Hence, the reward was found to decrease the generation of eWOM.The findings would give implications for marketers to plan and leverage eWoM and help scholars understand eWoM in a microblog context

Social media influencers and their marketing effects on followers?: An exploratory study in restaurant review microblogs

The current study investigates the factors that influence the effects of social media influencers’ brand-related e-WOM on users. Moreover, the study evaluates the moderating impact of individualism/collectivism on consumers’ responses towards social media influencers’ e-WOM. The context of the study is focused on the Weibo microblogs related to restaurant reviews. By conducting an experimental survey, the study collected 463 valid data. The findings of the study indicate that the microblogs, either providing more product disclosure in contents and with higher degree of popularity, tend to enhance consumers’ greater cognitive trust on the bloggers. Whereas, the microblogs revealing more bloggers’ social disclosure in contents incline to induce consumers’ greater affective trust on the bloggers. The study also confirms that the effects of product disclosure and popularity on cognitive trust and the effect of social disclosure on affective trust are stronger when consumers are collectivism-oriented than when consumers are individualism-oriented. Moreover, higher cognitive trust can result in higher affective trust which, in turn, leads to consumers’ feedback intentions towards bloggers. Cognitive trust, affective trust, perceived enjoyment of reading e-WOM massages, and perceived usefulness of bloggers’ recommendations are all proved to have positive influences on consumers’ product attitudes. Additionally, the impact of cognitive trust on product attitudes is mediated by perceived usefulness. The findings of this study provide useful suggestions for bloggers and brands to implement effective e-WOM.O presente estudo investiga os fatores que influenciam os efeitos do e-WOM relacionado à marca dos influenciadores de mídias sociais dos usuários. Além disso, o estudo avalia o impacto moderador do individualismo / coletivismo nas respostas dos consumidores em relação ao e-WOM dos influenciadores de mídias sociais. O contexto do estudo está focado nos microblogs do Weibo relacionados às revisões de restaurantes. Depois duma pesquisa experimental, o estudo coletou 463 dados válidos. As descobertas do estudo indicam que os microblogs, fornecendo mais divulgação de produto em conteúdos e com maior grau de popularidade, tendem a aumentar a confiança cognitiva maior dos consumidores nos blogueiros. Considerando que, os microblogs revelando mais divulgação social de blogueiros em conteúdo tendem a induzir maior confiança afetiva dos consumidores nos blogueiros. O estudo também confirma que os efeitos da divulgação do produto e da popularidade sobre a confiança cognitiva e o efeito da divulgação social sobre a confiança afetiva são mais fortes quando os consumidores são orientados para o coletivismo do que quando os consumidores são orientados pelo individualismo. Além disso, uma confiança cognitiva mais alta pode resultar em uma confiança afetiva mais alta, o que, por sua vez, leva às intenções de feedback dos consumidores em relação aos blogueiros. A confiança cognitiva, a confiança afetiva, o prazer percebido de ler as massagens no e-WOM e a utilidade percebida das recomendações dos blogueiros provaram ter influências positivas nas atitudes dos produtos dos consumidores. Além disso, o impacto da confiança cognitiva nas atitudes dos produtos é mediado pela utilidade percebida. As conclusões deste estudo fornecem sugestões úteis para que blogueiros e marcas implementem e-WOM efetivo

PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF A PUBLIC HEALTH TWITTER CAMPAIGN: WORLD HEALTH DAY 2014

Public health campaigns aim to positively affect health-related behaviors and/or raise awareness of specific health conditions, risk factors and issues. These campaigns have traditionally relied upon various media and mechanisms for success, such as mass media distribution by television and radio, information propagation by individuals, involvement and engagement of stakeholders, and recruitment to the campaign of celebrities or advocates well known to the community.More recently, microblog platforms such as Twitter have also been increasingly utilized for public health campaign delivery. This is a relatively recent phenomenon and so is not yet well understood or studied. In this paper we provide an initial description of a case study of a global Twitter-based public health campaign, namely that involving the use of the #worldhealthday hashtag during and surrounding the 2014 World Health Day, April 7th 2014.In addition, the various characteristics and properties of this public health campaign within this contemporary medium are explored utilizing software tools that enable the capture and analysis of Twitter information flows

Impact of Online Influencer Endorsement on Product Sales: Quantifying Value of Online Influencer

In recent years, firms are making significant investments in online influencer endorsement. The effectiveness of online influencer endorsement and ways to develop effective endorsement strategies however are not clear. In this study, we conduct an exploratory study and empirically test the impact of online influencer endorsement on product sales. Using endorsement information from microblog site, Sina Weibo and sales data from online e-commerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall, we found positive impacts of online influencer endorsements on sales and the effect of online endorsement is stronger for influencers with more followers. We also found evidence that frequently endorsing products is counterproductive to the online influencer’s endorsement effort. The results of this study contribute to celebrity endorsement literature and practice

Cultural differences in social media use, privacy, and self-disclosure : research report on a multicultural study

This research report presents comparative results from five nations (United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and China) with regard to social media use, self-disclosure, privacy perceptions and attitudes, and privacy behavior in online environments. The data stemmed from an online survey that was conducted from November, 2011, to December, 2011. Across all five nations, N = 1,800 participants completed the survey. The findings suggest that a broad differentiation between Western and Eastern cultures only partly accounted for differences in social media use and privacy behavior. Rather, the results of this report suggest that European countries (United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands) share similar privacy perceptions and show similar behavioral patterns. Non-European cultures (the USA and China) on the other hand, use social media differently. Participants from European countries had generally smaller audiences on social network sites and microblogging platforms, tended to limit the visibility of their postings and profile information more, and used more privacy settings to safeguard their privacy. In particular, German social media users seemed to be guarded, protective, and rather reluctant to participate in online communication. Users from the US, on the other hand, rated privacy-related behavior as less risky and were hence less likely to imply sophisticated privacy strategies. Apart from these findings, the report also shows that there are more commonalities than differences. People from all five countries think that it is important to protect privacy. Most users consciously decides what to share and what not to share. Accordingly, social media users do not always share intimate and detailed information about their lives

A Survey of Location Prediction on Twitter

Locations, e.g., countries, states, cities, and point-of-interests, are central to news, emergency events, and people's daily lives. Automatic identification of locations associated with or mentioned in documents has been explored for decades. As one of the most popular online social network platforms, Twitter has attracted a large number of users who send millions of tweets on daily basis. Due to the world-wide coverage of its users and real-time freshness of tweets, location prediction on Twitter has gained significant attention in recent years. Research efforts are spent on dealing with new challenges and opportunities brought by the noisy, short, and context-rich nature of tweets. In this survey, we aim at offering an overall picture of location prediction on Twitter. Specifically, we concentrate on the prediction of user home locations, tweet locations, and mentioned locations. We first define the three tasks and review the evaluation metrics. By summarizing Twitter network, tweet content, and tweet context as potential inputs, we then structurally highlight how the problems depend on these inputs. Each dependency is illustrated by a comprehensive review of the corresponding strategies adopted in state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, we also briefly review two related problems, i.e., semantic location prediction and point-of-interest recommendation. Finally, we list future research directions.Comment: Accepted to TKDE. 30 pages, 1 figur