The Delocalization of the Local Election

Local elections are no longer just influenced by, marketed toward, or relevant to only a small, geographically constrained electorate. Social media increasingly connect politics to publics that may extend beyond politicians’ or issues’ local constituencies. Every election—from Senator to alderperson—has been rendered accessible and relevant to broad individuals, organizations, and interests. Now, campaigns—particularly in close races or battleground areas—can canvas beyond the local level to seek donations, campaign volunteers, or to encourage local residents to vote. Social media have become venues to demonstrate a candidate’s likability with users, which are parlayed into local goodwill and electability. And foreign nationals and governments increasingly are using social media to spread disinformation or to otherwise sway local issues. Ultimately, what was once a city, county, state, provincial, or national election can now play out on a global stage through social media, with all of the subsequent influence and impacts. This article uses several geographically dispersed and representative examples to exemplify the delocalization of the local election, including Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate Campaign (the US), the effect of nationwide social media popularity and interactivity on local election results (Taiwan and The Netherlands), and Russian influence in the 2016 Brexit Referendum (the UK). It concludes by calling for new understanding of what political involvement and political action may mean in a socially mediated society

Promoting Restaurants Using Social Networks: Still A Lot Of Room For Improvement

We use the Creative Commons copyright license policy, CC-BY, to maximize the exposure of published manuscripts and remove access and reuse barriers. CC-BY gives researchers the right to copy, share, copy, edit, transform, extend, or republish provided that appropriate credit is given.[EN] A growing trend in the hospitality industry is the promotion of products and services on social networks as an effective and economical way to reach a very important population mass with a bidirectional speech. The aim of this paper is to explore the processes used by Spanish restaurants in two ways: adding to the portfolio of services offered and for the recruitment of staff. Business models of social shopping can be divided largely into three categories: 1) social shopping intermediaries, 2) social shopping markets and 3) social shopping search engines. It is observed that more and more Spanish restaurants use social shopping to attract their target audience, but this is not very long term. Therefore a change in the Spanish restaurants¿ model is observed: as the customer loyalty decreases and the online business increases. Understanding the key issues will be crucial in maintaining the competitiveness of the business of catering in Spain.The authors would like to thank Universitat Politècnica de València for its research funding to the Research Microcluster “Globalization, tourism and heritage: towards a sustainable development”.Sanchis Verdeguer, JV.; Peiró Signes, A.; Segarra Oña, MDV. (2014). Promoting Restaurants Using Social Networks: Still A Lot Of Room For Improvement. International Business and Economics Research Journal. 13(7):1613-1618. doi:10.19030/iber.v13i7.8912S1613161813

The Impact of Twitter Features on Credibility Ratings - An Explorative Examination Combining Psychological Measurements and Feature Based Selection Methods

In a post-truth age determined by Social Media channels providing large amounts of information of questionable credibility while at the same time people increasingly tend to rely on online information, the ability to detect whether content is believable is developing into an important challenge. Most of the work in that field suggested automated approaches to perform binary classification to determine information veracity. Recipients´ perspectives and multidimensional psychological credibility measurements have rarely been considered. To fill this gap and gain more insights into the impact of a tweet´s features on perceived credibility, we conducted a survey asking participants (N=2626) to rate the credibility of crises related tweets. The resulting 24.823 ratings were used for an explorative feature selection analysis revealing that mostly meta-related features like the number of followers of the author, the count of tweets produced and the ratio of tweet number and days since account creation affect credibility judgements

Social Networking Sites, Personalization, and Trust in Government: Empirical Evidence for a Mediation Model

Political communication via social media might well counter the eroding political trust. In particular, social networking sites (SNS) enable direct flows of communication between citizens and the political elite, thereby reducing social and political gaps. Based on the concept of personalization of politics, we argue that interactions with politicians on SNS affect trust in government through a two-step process: First, interactions on SNS make citizens evaluate politicians’ characters more favorably. Second, these evaluations serve as cues for the citizens to develop or withdraw trust in government. We test indirect effects using four character traits as mediators: leadership, benevolence, responsiveness, and likeability. A representative online survey (n = 1117; in Germany) reveals that interactions with politicians on SNS increase the perceived likeability of candidates, and thus also trust in government. However, they do not affect the evaluation of the other traits: leadership, benevolence, and responsiveness

Micro, macro and mega-influencers on instagram: The power of persuasion via the parasocial relationship

This study analyzes the effect of the parasocial relationship on the audience's intention to adopt the recom-mendations of micro, macro and mega-influencers, considering the number of followers, perceived popularity and opinion leadership. A sample of 140 Portuguese social media influencers (SMIs) was classified into micro, macro or mega-influencers. 577 valid responses to a questionnaire were analyzed using Andrew Hayes' macro PROCESS for SPSS. The findings suggest that the indirect effect between the number of followers and the intention to adopt SMIs' recommendations is mediated by the perceived popularity and opinion leadership, and are moderated by the parasocial relationship. Significant differences are found between micro, macro and mega-influencers in terms of credibility, attractiveness and established relationship. The categorization into micro, macro and mega-influencers is adapted to the context of a small country. This paper provides relevant infor-mation on the process of SMI selection.- (undefined

Parasocial relationships and interactions in social networking sites. A conceptual review

En este trabajo se realiza una actualización de la noción de interacción y relación parasocial, un concepto acuñado originalmente por Horton y Wohl en 1956 para describir la ilusión de interacción recíproca que muchos miembros de las audiencias experimentaban hacia las figuras mediáticas (celebridades y personajes de ficción), especialmente, de la televisión. A partir de la observación de las prácticas comunicativas que desarrollan los usuarios en los medios sociales, se plantea una reformulación de este concepto clásico para adaptarlo al contexto de estos nuevos espacios.Asimismo, se desarrolla una tipología específica de experiencias parasociales en este contexto y se analiza cómo los usuarios negocian la reciprocidad en la vinculación en un espacio marcadamente público como Twitter, mediante políticas de reciprocidad forzosa en la vinculación como la que expresa la etiqueta #SiMeSiguesTeSigo.It is developed in this paper an upgrade of the notion of parasocial experience. This concept was originally coined by Horton and Wohl in 1956 to describe the illusion of reciprocal interaction that many audience members experienced towards the acting of certain performers in the mass media programs, especially television. From the observation of communicative practices developed by users in social media platforms, a reformulation of this classical concept is proposed to fit the context of these new spaces. Also, it is proposed a specific typology of parasocial experiences developed in the social media’s context. Finally it is discussed how users negotiate the construction of reciprocal relationships in a public space of high visibility like Twitter and how they define some policies of forced reciprocal linking as the label #FFBack express

Competing principals 2.0? : the impact of Facebook in the 2013 selection of the Italian Head of State

Motivated by the literature on \u2018competing principals\u2019, this article studies the effect of interactive social networking sites on the behavior of politicians. For this purpose, 12,455 comments posted on the Facebook walls of 423 Italian MPs have been analyzed to assess whether Facebook played a role in the selection of the Italian Head of State in 2013, enhancing responsiveness. The statistical analysis reveals that the pressure exerted through social media did not affect MPs\u2019 propensity to express public dissent over the party line, which is instead affected by more traditional \u2018principals\u2019 and factors: seniority, primary elections, and factional membership

When Auditors’ Skeptical Judgments do not lead to Skeptical Actions

Auditors are required to maintain professional skepticism through the course of an audit engagement. Professional skepticism is maintained through both skeptical judgment and observable skeptical behavior (skeptical action). However, auditors who exhibit professional skepticism in judgment do not always exhibit professional skepticism in action. The present study examines whether social presence alters the likelihood of auditors acting on skeptical judgments by utilizing an experimental setting where participants interact with a hypothetical client using four different communication mediums varying in social presence. Results suggest that auditor-client interactions high in perceived social presence inhibit auditors from acting on skeptical judgments compared to auditor-client interactions that are low in perceived social presence. Results extend literature on auditor-client interactions, professional skepticism, and communication medium while also informing regulator concern over inappropriately applied, or even absent, professional skepticism

Towards an explication of the presence effects on information processing and persuasion: A construal level framework

Dissatisfied with the existing theoretical account of the effects of presence on the mode of information processing (i.e., heuristic vs. systematic processing) and how this leads to persuasion in the context of mediated communication, the current study suggests an alternative framework that could provide an efficient and reasonable way of understanding the underlying psychological mechanism of the presence effects on persuasion. Drawing on presence theory, construal level theory, and the dual process model of persuasion, this study proposes a conceptual model that posits construal level as a key variable that mediates the effects of presence on the mode of information processing. Specifically, on the basis of the conceptual overlap between psychological distance and presence, which are respectively represented as key constructs in construal level theory and presence theory, this study proposes that a sense of presence has the potential to replace the role of psychological distance in the construal level theory and consequently prime a certain level of construal (i.e., the extent to which people’s thinking is abstract or concrete). Additionally, the conceptual similarity between the construal level in the construal level theory and the dual process model is supposed to lead people to apply the primed level of construal in processing information. In this framework, construal level is posited as a key factor that could mediate the relationship between the degree to which people experience a sense of presence and the mode of information processing. This study also attempts to provide a theoretical understanding of how this framework will serially influence the formation of trust and persuasion (i.e., behavioral intention). Guided by the empirical evidence from earlier studies, heuristic and systematic processing are predicted to respectively increase the degree to which people form affective trust towards brand and cognitive trust towards advertising product information. Consequently, persuasion is predicted to occur through both cognitive trust towards advertising product information and affective trust towards brand, as affect and cognition are intertwined. In order to validate this conceptual model, a two (ad presentation mode: video vs. text) x two (ad type: location-based advertising vs. traditional advertising) between-subjects experiment (N = 180) was conducted in a recent advertising context―i.e., location-based advertising. Consistent with the predictions based on this framework, the results showed that construal level plays a significant role in mediating the effects of presence and social presence on the mode of information processing. In addition, the amount of heuristic and systematic processing, determined by the construal level primed by a sense of presence and social presence, was positively associated with the degree to which people form affective trust towards brand and cognitive trust towards advertising product information. Consequently, both affective trust towards brand and cognitive trust towards advertising product information, formed through heuristic and systematic processing, positively influenced participants’ behavioral (purchase) intention. Through partial least squares structural equation modeling, this framework was statistically validated. Further theoretical implications of this framework are discussed