Answering Twitter Questions: a Model for Recommending Answerers through Social Collaboration

International audienceIn this paper, we specifically consider the challenging task of solving a question posted on Twitter. The latter generally remains unanswered and most of the replies, if any, are only from members of the questioner's neighborhood. As outlined in previous work related to community Q&A, we believe that question-answering is a collaborative process and that the relevant answer to a question post is an aggregation of answer nuggets posted by a group of relevant users. Thus, the problem of identifying the relevant answer turns into the problem of identifying the right group of users who would provide useful answers and would possibly be willing to collaborate together in the long-term. Accordingly, we present a novel method, called CRAQ, that is built on the collaboration paradigm and formulated as a group entropy optimization problem. To optimize the quality of the group, an information gain measure is used to select the most likely " informative " users according to topical and collaboration likelihood predictive features. Crowd-based experiments performed on two crisis-related Twitter datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our collaborative-based answering approach

Optimizing Intraprofessional Communication at Patient Handover

This performance improvement project aimed to increase the communication competency of nurses during intraprofessional interactions at patient handover. An educational program focused on optimizing communication among nurses was implemented in a community-based, not-for-profit, rural hospital. The course was designed to incorporate a variety of instructional strategies to meet learner needs. Consistency and standardization of the patient handover process was a central theme. Topics of the course focused on the use of a standardized communication tool, the relationship of communication on patient safety, the importance of clear and effective communication, the role of the nurse as gatekeeper and facilitator of patient-specific information to peers during handover events, and intraprofessional collaboration in an acute care setting. The self-perceived communication competency of participating nurses was measured at pre-test and post-test using a valid and reliable instrument. The data collected from the survey informed this process improvement effort

How to Ask for a Favor: A Case Study on the Success of Altruistic Requests

Requests are at the core of many social media systems such as question & answer sites and online philanthropy communities. While the success of such requests is critical to the success of the community, the factors that lead community members to satisfy a request are largely unknown. Success of a request depends on factors like who is asking, how they are asking, when are they asking, and most critically what is being requested, ranging from small favors to substantial monetary donations. We present a case study of altruistic requests in an online community where all requests ask for the very same contribution and do not offer anything tangible in return, allowing us to disentangle what is requested from textual and social factors. Drawing from social psychology literature, we extract high-level social features from text that operationalize social relations between recipient and donor and demonstrate that these extracted relations are predictive of success. More specifically, we find that clearly communicating need through the narrative is essential and that that linguistic indications of gratitude, evidentiality, and generalized reciprocity, as well as high status of the asker further increase the likelihood of success. Building on this understanding, we develop a model that can predict the success of unseen requests, significantly improving over several baselines. We link these findings to research in psychology on helping behavior, providing a basis for further analysis of success in social media systems.Comment: To appear at ICWSM 2014. 10pp, 3 fig. Data and other info available at http://www.mpi-sws.org/~cristian/How_to_Ask_for_a_Favor.htm

User generated growth on social media platforms – weak ties and internationalization

This thesis focuses on user facilitated growth on digital platforms – more specifically on social media. In previous research, weak ties have been recognized for their power of connecting otherwise distant networks and therefore facilitating distribution of information. In network effects the value of the network is created through value exchange. On social media, the network value increases through interactions – exchanging information between users. While prior research suggests that weak ties aid in spreading information, the value provided by weak ties in born-digital platform growth is yet to be discovered. This study aims to combine the previous academic evidence on the nature of weak ties to social media context by building a theoretical framework and a conceptual model which are later analyzed together with the empirical findings to create a base for the research in the field. The empirical study is conducted with a mixed methods approach by utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods in the data analysis. The data was collected with an anonymous questionnaire from demographically distributed social media users. The sampling consists of individuals from three different continents – Asia, Europe and Africa. The results of the study verify that user generated weak ties on social media impact positively on platform internationalization by increasing the engagement and transforming the attitudes of platform users. This study identifies three primary factors that impact the generation of user-to-user weak ties on social media platforms and analyzes the consequences of user attitudes for digital platform internationalization. It can be observed from the data that certain users bring more value to the platform growth than others through their attitudes and habits, thus they act as junctions for different networks and provide a high volume channel for information exchange through their weak ties. By analyzing the findings of the empirical study from the perspective of the conceptual model, this study identifies future research areas and forms a foundation for the academic research in the field.Tämä tutkimus syventyy käyttäjälähtöisen kasvun tarkasteluun digitaalisilla alustoilla – tarkemmin rajaten sosiaalisessa mediassa. Aikaisempi tutkimus digitaalisten alustojen verkostojen saralla on tuonut esiin heikkojen siteiden roolin muussa tapauksessa kaukaisten verkostojen yhdistäjänä ja verkostojen välisen informaation kulun mahdollistajana. Verkostojen arvo muodostuu sosiaalisen median alustoilla käyttäjien välisen informaation vaihdon seurauksena. Aikaisemmat tutkimukset osoittavat, että heikkojen siteiden hyöty piilee juuri informaation jakelussa. Tästä huolimatta heikkojen siteiden arvo ja rooli born-digital alustojen kasvun mahdollistajana on vielä vailla akateemista näyttöä. Tämä tutkimus yhdistää aikaisemman akateemisen näytön heikkojen siteiden luonteesta sosiaalisen median kontekstiin rakentamalla teoreettisen viitekehyksen pohjalta käsitteellisen mallin, jota analysoidaan yhdessä tutkimuksen empiirisen aineiston kanssa akateemisen tutkimuspohjan luomiseksi. Empiirinen tutkimus on toteutettu monimenetelmäistä lähestymistapaa hyödyntäen yhdistelemällä määrällistä ja laadullista tutkimusmenetelmää. Datankeruu toteutettiin tutkimuksessa luomalla anonyymi tutkimuslomake demografisesti hajautetuille sosiaalisen median käyttäjille. Tutkimuksen otanta koostuu Aasiasta, Euroopasta ja Afrikasta kotoisin olevista vastaajista. Tutkimuksen tulokset vahvistavat käyttäjälähtöisten heikkojen siteiden omaavan positiivisen vaikutuksen sosiaalisen median alustojen kasvuun ja kansainvälistymiseen kasvattamalla käyttäjien sitoutumista ja muovaamalla asenteita. Tutkimus identifioi kolme ensisijaista muuttujaa, jotka vaikuttavat käyttäjien välille muodostettuihin heikkoihin siteisiin sosiaalisen median alustoilla ja analysoi käyttäjien asenteiden vaikutusta digitaalisten alustojen kansainvälistymisessä. Aineistosta on tulkittavissa, että käyttäjien tuoma arvo verkostolle vaihtelee asenteiden ja käytöksen seurauksena - näin ollen osa käyttäjistä toimii solmukohtina eri verkostoille ja tarjoaa korkean volyymin kanavan informaation levitykselle heikkojen siteidensä kautta. Tutkimustuloksia käsitteellisen mallin perspektiivistä analysoimalla on huomattavissa, että tutkimus tarjoaa akateemista näyttöä heikkojen siteiden arvon muodostumiselle sosiaalisen median alustojen kansainvälistymisessä ja luo pohjan aiheen jatkotutkimukselle

Can We Reduce Social Comparison and Fear of Missing Out with Labels on Instagram?

The rapid rise in social media platforms has led to an increase of research surrounding its uses and effects. Thus far, results are heavily mixed with researchers finding both positive and negative effects. Activist campaigns, such as Status of Mind, have chosen to highlight negative outcomes such as increased social comparison and fear of missing out (FOMO). They have proposed platforms introduce a label to be placed on edited posts to help remind viewers they have been altered and are not an accurate depiction of reality. The current study examines whether labels are effective in reducing social comparison and FOMO in Instagram. Additionally, traits such as personality and perceived peer belonging and their connection to susceptibility to engage in social comparison and FOMO were assessed. College students (N = 46) viewed crafted Instagram posts both with and without edit labels and were asked to rate themselves on scales of social comparison and FOMO. Participants engagement in social comparison and FOMO were not significantly different across the two conditions indicating that the addition of the label had no effect. Likewise, perceived peer belonging and personality were not linked to greater social comparison or FOMO. Future studies should continue to explore this possibility with larger sample sizes and more specific measures to determine if labels are truly able to reduce social comparison and FOMO

Customer relationship management field lab at PCDIGA: marketing campaigns

The appearance and development of the Internet created a new paradigm in the marketing area, where companies are becoming increasingly focused on developing a customer centricity strategy in order to create a more engaging relationship with the customers. This Work Project aims to analyse, measure and evaluate the impact of PCDIGA’s communication channels and respective strategies to establish contact with their customers, namely through marketing campaigns via e-mail or social media platforms. According to the data collected and knowledge gathered, some recommendations, suggestion for improvements and initiatives were proposed in order to align with a customer-centric strategy

STALKING MYTH ACCEPTANCE: AN INVESTIGATON OF ATTITUDINAL CONSTRUCTS ASSOCIATED WITH GENDER DIFFERENCES IN JUDGMENTS OF INTIMATE STALKING

Emerging research has shown that women and men perceive criminal stalking differently, yet there is little research addressing why these differences exist. For example, mock juror research on intimate stalking has found that men are more likely than women to render lenient judgments (e.g., not-guilty verdicts). Understanding the underlying attitudes associated with differences in how men and women interpret whether certain behaviors would cause reasonable fear is crucial to an evaluation of current anti-stalking legislation. The primary goals of this research were: (1) to examine the extent to which beliefs that support stalking (i.e., stalking myth acceptance – SMA victim blame, SMA flattery, and SMA nuisance) predicted individual trial judgments of men and women, and (2) to test whether endorsement of SMA can be predicted from particular attitudinal correlates (e.g., hostility toward women). Overall, women were more likely than men (N = 360) to render trial judgments (e.g., guilty verdicts) supportive of the victim and were less likely to endorse SMA beliefs. Results also indicated that endorsement of particular SMA beliefs and personal experience (being the victim of and/or knowing a victim) explained why women and men differed on some trial judgments. For example, the odds of rendering a guilty verdict were less for participants who endorsed SMA flattery beliefs. In addition, participants who reported knowing someone who had been a victim were at greater odds of rendering a guilty verdict. Finally, participants who endorsed more traditional gender-role stereotypes were more likely to adhere to SMA beliefs. Results provide insight into the efficacy of current anti-stalking legislation that relies on a juror’s capacity to evaluate an “objective” interpretation (i.e., “reasonable person”) standard of fear for intimate stalking