Quantifying the invisible audience in social networks

This paper combines survey and large-scale log data to examine how well users’ perceptions of their audience match their actual audience on Facebook.AbstractWhen you share content in an online social network, who is listening? Users have scarce information about who actually sees their content, making their audience seem invisible and difficult to estimate. However, understanding this invisible audience can impact both science and design, since perceived audiences influence content production and self-presentation online. In this paper, we combine survey and large-scale log data to examine how well users’ perceptions of their audience match their actual audience on Facebook. We find that social media users consistently underestimate their audience size for their posts, guessing that their audience is just 27% of its true size. Qualitative coding of survey responses reveals folk theories that attempt to reverse-engineer audience size using feedback and friend count, though none of these approaches are particularly accurate. We analyze audience logs for 222,000 Facebook users’ posts over the course of one month and find that publicly visible signals — friend count, likes, and comments — vary widely and do not strongly indicate the audience of a single post. Despite the variation, users typically reach 61% of their friends each month. Together, our results begin to reveal the invisible undercurrents of audience attention and behavior in online social networks.Authored by Michael S. Bernstein, Eytan Bakshy, Moira Burke and Brian Karrer

Playing with music while shopping online : the effects of interactive music on consumer engagement and behavioral intention

The current study investigates the potential of applying interactive music to the design of e-commerce website in order to create more engaging consumer experience. Through a single-factor experiment with three conditions (the control condition without background music, the static background music condition, the interactive background music condition), behavioral and attitudinal data were collected via Google Analytics and a self-report questionnaire (N = 251). We found that consumers in the interactive music condition were more affectively engaged in the shopping task, regarding the website more novel due to its perceived vividness. This enhanced engagement led to more positive brand attitudes and perceptions and increased users’ behavioral intention to purchase. Additionally, three moderators were found crucial to predict the target audience profile for application of interactive music – existing attitudes of users toward online shopping, price and web features as purchase decision-making factors.Advertisin

Holistic Model of Website Design Elements that Influence Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness of a website relies foremost on a good first impression which includes the visitor’s perception of the user interface. The focus of this research is to investigate the effects of website design elements on user perception of trustworthiness of a site and provide a set of guidelines for website designers. The research design is based on Yosef Jabardeen’s (2009) “conceptual framework analysis”. In this research paper, a holistic model is developed to depict the relationships among website design elements and trustworthiness. The model was tested, validated and updated using the results of the repertory grid technique, a process that elicits perceptions about a topic from an individual. For this research, the topic was website trust, the objects were the website design elements, and the constructs were elicited perceptions regarding those website design elements. The repertory grid technique was applied in two stages to a set of participants made up of website users and website designers. Analysis yielded useful information regarding website design associations and correlations of perceptions. The research findings confirmed original suggestions regarding associations and produced an updated, validated model of website design elements. The research indicated that while all design elements had their importance regarding trust, those elements that provided for the function and security of the website rated the highest in importance and expectation. The validated model will aid website designers in understanding what elements are appealing to the visual senses and conjure credibility and trust. Most importantly, this new understanding may help designers to create websites that attract and retain new users and establishing a successful presence on the Internet

Examining the influence of corporate website favorability on corporate image and corporate reputation: findings from fsQCA

This study uses the attribution and signaling theory perspective to scrutinize the key impacts of the determinants of corporate website favorability. In addition, this paper examines the main influences of satisfaction and attractiveness on corporate image and reputation, observes the role that the demographics of consumers (gender and age) play in such relationships, and proposes a research model along with research tenets. To examine these tenets, the conceptual framework was empirically evaluated through the perceptions of 563 consumers toward the financial setting in Russia (563). This study employs complexity theory, which integrates the principle of equifinality. To examine the data, this research employs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Additionally, this study makes a managerial contribution to the understanding of marketing and communication managers and website designers regarding the associations among corporate website favorability, its antecedents, and its consequences

Designing Culturally Compatible Internet Gaming Sites

Rising e-commerce volumes the world over provide opportunities to global marketers to expand their markets using the Internet. While Internet casinos have had their share of failures, the industry still rakes in three times the revenues as web pornography. Converging web technology allows for Internet gaming operators to expand their markets all over the world. However, appealing to consumers in different countries and regions requires adaptation of websites to the cultural milieu of the various target markets. This paper reviews existing literature on culture and website design and goes on to discuss the impact of culture on designing Internet gaming sites. A series of propositions hypothesizing the impact of culture on consumer responses to online gaming sites have been formulated using Hofstede\u27s cultural dimensions. Theoretical and managerial implications of the proposed framework have also been discussed

Interpreting infrastructure: Defining user value for digital financial intermediaries.

The 3DaRoC project is exploring digital connectivity and peer-to-peer relationships in financial services. In the light of the near collapse of the UK and world financial sector, understanding and innovating new and more sustainable approaches to financial services is now a critical topic. At the same time, the increasing penetration and take-up of robust high-speed networks, dependable peerto- peer architectures and mobile multimedia technologies offer novel platforms for offering financial services over the Internet. These new forms of digital connectivity give rise to opportunities in doing financial transactions in different ways and with radically different business models that offer the possibility of transforming the marketplace. One area in the digital economy that has had such an effect is in the ways that users access and use digital banking and payment services. The impact of the new economic models presented by these digital financial services is yet to be fully determined, but they have huge potential as disruptive innovations, with a potentially transformative effect on the way that services are offered to users. Little is understood about how technical infrastructures impact on the ways that people make sense of the financial services that they use, or on how these might be designed more effectively. 3DaRoC is exploring this space working with our partners and end users to prototype and evaluate new online, mobile, ubiquitous and tangible technologies, exploring how these services might be extended.Executive Summary: Drawing from Studies of Use - the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digital intermediaries to their users. The UK economy has a huge dependence on financial services, and this is increasingly based on digital platforms. Innovating new economic models around consumer financial services through the use of digital technologies is seen as increasingly important in developed economies. There are a number of drivers for this, ranging from national economic factors to the prosaic nature of enabling cheap, speedy and timely interactions for users. The potential for these new digital solutions is that they will allay an over-reliance on the traditional banking sector, which has proved itself to be unstable and risky, and we have seen a number of national policy moves to encourage growth in this sector. Partly as a result of the 2008 banking crisis, there has been an explosion in peer-to-peer financial services for non-professional consumers. These organisations act as intermediaries between users looking to trade goods or credit. However, building self-sustaining or profitable financial services within this novel space is itself fraught with commercial, regulatory, technical and social problems. This document reports on the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digital intermediaries to their users, describing analysis of contextual field studies carried out in two retail digital financial intermediary organisations: Zopa Limited and the Bristol Pound. It forms the second milestone document in the 3DaRoC project, developing patterns of use that have arisen on the back of the technical infrastructures in the two organisations that form cases for examination. Its purpose is to examine how the two different technical infrastructures that underpin the transactions that they support–composed of the back-office hardware and software, data structures, the networking and communications technologies used, supported consumer devices, and the user interfaces and interaction design–have provided opportunities for users to realise their financial and other needs. While we orient towards the issues of service use (and its problems), we also examine the activities and expectations of their various users. Our research has involved teams from Lancaster University examining Zopa and Brunel University focusing on the Bristol Pound over approximately a one-year period from October 2013 to October 2014. Extensive interviews, document analysis, observation of user interactions, and other methods have been employed to develop the process analyses of the firms presented here. This report comprises of three key sections: descriptions of the user demographics for Zopa and the Bristol Pound, a discussion about the user experience and its role in community, and an examination of the role of usage data in the development of these a products. We conclude with final analytical section drawing preliminary conclusions from the research presented.The 3DaRoC project is funded by the RCUK Digital Economy ‘Research in the Wild’ theme (grant no. EP/K012304/1)

The Influence of Customized Internet Banner Ad on Attitude-Ad-Brand-Behavioural Relationship

This paper examines the influence of customizing banner ads to entice higher users’ interactivity and sequentially builds not only positive attitudes toward the ad and the brand but also positive behavioral outcomes. It also attempts to introduce a new profilingtargeting parameter based on psychographics for customizing banner ad based on Internet user’s individual differences according to their personality, types of goal-directed motives and preferred information processing strategies. Data was gathered through an online survey with a sample of 385 respondents. The Covariance Structural Modeling results supported a positive attitude-ad-brand-behavioral relationship. Positive attitude towards the ad generates more positive behavioral outcomes. Contrary to expectations, the results did not support the proposition that a positive brand attitude produces more positive behavioral outcomes. The findings provide evidence to support the proposition that customization of banner ads’ creative and appeals (in terms of presentation modality, verbal versus visual presentation and information-rational versus entertainment-emotional appeals) based on users’ individual differences in need for cognition, goal-directed motives and preferred information processing strategies effects positive attitudes toward the ad and the brand

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Investigating the Effects of Instagram Filters on Perceived Trust in Online News Posts

The increasing overgrowth of information is only getting harder to navigate through and the spread of fake news and misinformation is concerning. With the shift towards digital deliv- ery of news and concerns about the accuracy and reliability of information shared on social media, it is important to understand the factors that contribute to trust in social media news. Motivated by these challenges, this study aimed to investigate what effect Instagram filters have on users’ perceived trust in online news posts. Trust ratings of four different articles with four different image filters, including the original image, were collected through an on- line user study. Also, the role of general trust and familiarity with the topic and the context of the different topics were explored. We did an online experiment with 204 participants recruited from a crowdsourcing platform. Participants were asked to answer six questions per online news post shown. Our analysis revealed that while Instagram filters overall may not affect perceived trust, specific visual characteristics of the filters such as brightness and contrast may play a role. Additionally, individual differences in general trust and attitude to- wards the topic may influence the users’ perception of trust. The study also found that there may be differences in perceived trust across different news topics. Thus, there could be other factors influencing the users’ participants of trust.Masteroppgave i informasjonsvitenskapINFO390MASV-INF

Internet Information and Communication Behavior during a Political Moment: The Iraq War, March 2003

This article explores the Internet as a resource for political information and communication in March 2003, when American troops were first sent to Iraq, offering us a unique setting of political context, information use, and technology. Employing a national survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project. We examine the political information behavior of the Internet respondents through an exploratory factor analysis; analyze the effects of personal demographic attributes and political attitudes, traditional and new media use, and technology on online behavior through multiple regression analysis; and assess the online political information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War. The factor analysis suggests four factors: activism, support, information seeking, and communication. The regression analysis indicates that gender, political attitudes and beliefs, motivation, traditional media consumption, perceptions of bias in the media, and computer experience and use predict online political information behavior, although the effects of these variables differ for the four factors. The information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War differed significantly. We conclude with a brief discussion of the value of "interdisciplinary poaching" for advancing the study of Internet information practices