The Impact of Cultural Familiarity on Students’ Social Media Usage in Higher Education

Using social media (SM) in Higher education (HE) becomes unavoidable in the new teaching and learning pedagogy. The current generation of students creates their groups on SM for collaboration. However, SM can be a primary source of learning distraction due to its nature, which does not support structured learning. Hence, derived from the literature, this study proposes three learning customised system features, to be implemented on SM when used in Higher Education HE. Nevertheless, some psychological factors appear to have a stronger impact on students’ adoption of SM in learning than the proposed features. A Quantitative survey was conducted at a university in Uzbekistan to collect 52 undergraduate students’ perception of proposed SM learning customised features in Moodle. These features aim to provide localised, personalised, and privacy control self-management environment for collaboration in Moodle. These features could be significant in predicting students’ engagement with SM in HE. The data analysis showed a majority of positive feedback towards the proposed learning customised SM. However, the surveyed students’ engagement with these features was observed as minimal. The course leader initiated a semi-structured interview to investigate the reason. Although the students confirmed their acceptance of the learning customised features, their preferences to alternate SM, which is Telegram overridden their usage of the proposed learning customized SM, which is Twitter. The students avoided the Moodle integrated Twitter (which provided highly accepted features) and chose to use the Telegram as an external collaboration platform driven by their familiarity and social preferences with the Telegram since it is the popular SM in Uzbekistan. This study is part of an ongoing PhD research which involves deeper frame of learners’ cognitive usage of the learning management system. However, this paper exclusively discusses the cultural familiarity impact of student’s adoption of SM in HE

How We Express Ourselves Freely: Censorship, Self-censorship, and Anti-censorship on a Chinese Social Media

Censorship, anti-censorship, and self-censorship in an authoritarian regime have been extensively studies, yet the relationship between these intertwined factors is not well understood. In this paper, we report results of a large-scale survey study (N = 526) with Sina Weibo users toward bridging this research gap. Through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and regression analysis, we uncover how users are being censored, how and why they conduct self-censorship on different topics and in different scenarios (i.e., post, repost, and comment), and their various anti-censorship strategies. We further identify the metrics of censorship and self-censorship, find the influence factors, and construct a mediation model to measure their relationship. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for democratic social media design and future censorship research.Comment: iConference 2023 has accepte

Fanwork Communication through Social Media: A Dynamic Practice of Celebrity Fans in China

Contemporary Chinese celebrity fans mainly engage in two innovative types of fanwork communications through social media: 1) digital relays of sequentially creating and presenting their own complete fan art and fiction and 2) dissemination of fan-made non-digital peripheral materials by mail or in person after online showcasing. Based on unobtrusive observation and semi-structured interviews, this paper presents the specific steps in both types of communication activities among fans of two Chinese musical actors, Ayanga and Yunlong, on the Weibo platform. Exceeding fans’ traditional sole emphasis on cataloging their creations, these fanwork communications comprise the information creation (organization), dissemination, and preservation stages of an information communication chain. Fans also show an impulse to dynamically archive every step of their activities in the moment. While these fans mainly intend to enjoy their fanworks and support fan creators, their online archival records facilitate broader communications and development of contemporary fan culture while allowing fans to negotiate their own hierarchies in what they believe to be transparent ways

Purchasing through Social Platforms with Buy Buttons: Academic and Practical Considerations

Social commerce sales are considerably increasing in recent years. Social platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, and WeChat) play a strategic role in world economy. However, social platforms ran into several burning issues: low ad conversion rates, social platform users’ free-riding behaviors, etc. Although buy buttons, a clickable navigation element leading users from a social platform to an e-commerce platform, could be a solution for such issues, the outcomes of using buy buttons did not reach many professionals’ expectation. This thesis studied four issues related to social shopping with buy buttons. First, as it is undetermined whether a social platform should roll out the buy-button feature or not, it is necessary to study whether the presence of buy button is associated with better outcomes (e.g. users’ higher willingness to purchase through the social platform) or not. Second, as social commerce is a remote shopping mode in which buyers and sellers cannot have face-to-face interactions, high risk and low trust could be two crucial barriers of social commerce. Hence, it is needed to study how risk- and trust-related factors influence users’ direct purchasing behavior. Third, considering that social commerce could be risky, this thesis wants to examine whether the presence of safe shopping measures (vs. an unsafe shopping scenario) can improve the performance of social shopping or not. Finally, social commerce involves a purchase path from a social platform to an e-commerce platform. There are many pain points (e.g., re-entering billing and shipping information) in the purchase path. Meanwhile, as social shopping risks and pain points in the purchase path could be caused by a same factor, the silos between social platforms and e-commerce platforms. It is interesting to study how safe shopping measures and integrated path-to-purchase (users can complete a purchase without leaving the social platform; vs. separated path-to-purchase in which users have to leave the social platform and go to the e-commerce platform to complete a purchase) jointly influence users. In order to answer these questions, three essays have been included in this thesis. Several online surveys were conducted. The between-subjects experimental design and the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique were used. The results showed that the presence of buy button was related to better outcomes. It found that risk- and trust-related factors significantly influenced users’ direct purchasing behavior. Both the safe shopping measures and the integrated path-to-purchase design can generate better outcomes of using a buy button in social shopping. In most circumstances, users showed more positive reactions when the safe shopping measures or the integrated path-to-purchase was present. However, no significant interaction effects between the safe shopping measures (vs. an unsafe shopping scenario) and the integrated path-to-purchase (vs. the separated path-to-purchase) were found. The theoretical contributions have been discussed in contrast to previous literature. This thesis has added academic value by offering new insights for previously established variable relationships in a different research context and studying variable relationships that have not been examined in previously relevant studies. From a practical viewpoint, as buy buttons inject e-commerce capabilities into social platforms, this thesis implies that socially focused platforms could reap benefits from social commerce by rolling out a buy-button feature. It is recommended that social platforms wanting to roll out buy buttons take safe shopping measures and create a seamless shopping experience for users.Tesis Univ. Granada.China Scholarship Council grant number: 201606170055National Natural Science Foundation of China grant number: 7170206

Social Media Use, Media Credibility and Online Engagement Among Young Adults in China

Drawing on data collected online in China, this dissertation consists of four studies that deal – from different angles – with relationships between media use and repertoires, traditional and social media credibility, and online engagement in politics, culture, and health among young adults. In a nutshell, I investigated how much young adults trust the various media outlets at their disposal and how this affects behaviors and forms of engagement vis-à-vis topical issues in the fields of politics, culture and health in the country’s contemporary media environ

Understanding Public Online Donations on Social Media during the Pandemic: A Social Presence Theory Perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the global economy and health care, but online donations from the public on social media have increased significantly. However, the role of social presence in motivating people to donate online during the pandemic has been largely unexplored. This study examines the relationship between social presence on social media and online donation behavior during the pandemic using social presence theory. We explore the interplay between social presence, perceived threat, social properties of social media, and donation intentions. The results showed that social presence based on social media, perception of others and social interaction significantly affected social media online donation participation, and the perceived threat of COVID-19 significantly moderated online donation participation. Our research contributes to the understanding of online donation behavior during a pandemic crisis and provides insights into how social media can be leveraged for effective donation campaigns

How do destination negative events trigger tourists’ perceived betrayal and boycott? The moderating role of relationship quality

This study presented and tested a conceptual model that examined how a negative event at a tourism destination influenced perceived betrayal and boycott among tourists. A mixed method approach with three studies was adopted to verify the proposed hypotheses. In Study 1, using Weibo microblogging platform data, we evaluated the impacts of a negative event on tourists\u27 perception of betrayal and intentions to participate in a tourism boycott. In Study 2, an experimental study was conducted to investigate the relationships among the negative event, perceptions of betrayal, and propensity for a tourism boycott. In Study 3, an additional experimental study revealed that relationship quality would moderate the influences of negative events on perceptions of betrayal and intention to join a boycott. The findings of this study offer theoretical and managerial implications for destination management organizations’ responses to negative events

Short video marketing : what, when and how short-branded videos facilitate consumer engagement

Purpose This study explores whether and how four main factors of short-branded video content (content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality) facilitate consumer engagement (likes, comments and shares), as well as the moderating effect of the release time (morning, afternoon and evening) in such relationships. Design/methodology/approach This study uses Python to write programs to crawl relevant data information, such as consumer engagement and short video release time. It combines coding methods to empirically analyze the impact of short-branded video content characteristics on consumer engagement. A total of 10,240 Weibo short videos (total duration: 238.645 h) from 122 well-known brands are utilized as research objects. Findings Empirical results show that the content characteristics of short videos significantly affected consumer engagement. Furthermore, the release time of videos significantly moderated the relationship between the emotionality of short videos and consumer engagement. Content released in the morning enhanced the positive impact of warmth, excitement and joy on consumer engagement, compared to that released in the afternoon. Practical implications The findings provide new insights for the dissemination of products and brand culture through short videos. The authors suggest that enterprises that use brand videos consider content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality in their design. Originality/value From a broader perspective, this study constructs a new method for comprehensively evaluating short-branded video content, based on four dimensions (content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality) and explores the value of these dimensions for creating social media marketing success, such as via consumer engagement.© 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited. This manuscript version is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY–NC 4.0) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed