Communicating with Constituents in 140 Characters or Less:

This paper affords an opportunity to study the early adoption, implementation and performance of an emerging technology by analyzing which members of Congress have been early adopters and extensive users of Twitter, and which have attracted the most followers. Our research questions and measures draw from the diffusion of innovation literature and early studies of online politics. Three multivariate analyses reveal that two motivators of adoption, party (Republican) and campaign resources are also drivers leading to extensive usage, but the other two, an urban constituency and the member’s own age do not. Instead, a large vote share in the last election joins party and funding in explaining high usage. The latter two plus high influential power differentiate between members with large and small numbers of followers. Collectively, these findings suggest that at this early developmental stage, Twitter is not a game changer, but an additional communications medium. They also underscore the contribution of diffusion of innovation literature to understanding how these interrelationships change depending upon whether we are examining adoption, implementation or performance

The International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce (INPST) and the power of Twitter networking exemplified through #INPST hashtag analysis

Background: The development of digital technologies and the evolution of open innovation approaches have enabled the creation of diverse virtual organizations and enterprises coordinating their activities primarily online. The open innovation platform titled "International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce" (INPST) was established in 2018, to bring together in collaborative environment individuals and organizations interested in natural product scientific research, and to empower their interactions by using digital communication tools. Methods: In this work, we present a general overview of INPST activities and showcase the specific use of Twitter as a powerful networking tool that was used to host a one-week "2021 INPST Twitter Networking Event" (spanning from 31st May 2021 to 6th June 2021) based on the application of the Twitter hashtag #INPST. Results and Conclusion: The use of this hashtag during the networking event period was analyzed with Symplur Signals (https://www.symplur.com/), revealing a total of 6,036 tweets, shared by 686 users, which generated a total of 65,004,773 impressions (views of the respective tweets). This networking event's achieved high visibility and participation rate showcases a convincing example of how this social media platform can be used as a highly effective tool to host virtual Twitter-based international biomedical research events

Determinants of Mobile Broadband Diffusion: A Focus on Developing Countries

Past research on the broadband digital divide indicates a widening divide in which developing countries are falling further behind countries in the developed world. In response to this problem, the World Bank has advocated a mobile first strategy for developing countries. Unfortunately, there is little understanding of what determines mobile broadband adoption or diffusion in developing countries. In this paper, we begin to address this problem by exploring to what extent policy, regulation, government, and governance affect mobile broadband diffusion in the developing world. Our results show that when controlling for distribution and level of income, there is greater mobile diffusion in developing (i.e., non-OECD) countries that encourage competition in their telecommunication industries and practice sound governance in their public sector. Although governance is an important determinant of mobile broadband diffusion, we find no evidence that political structure (i.e., the level of democracy) matters. We also find that regulation of telecommunications licensing is associated with decreased access to mobile broadband. Further examination of our data suggest that national governments have either modernized and streamlined this regulatory measure or are performing important functions related to mobile services (e.g., spectrum allocation) without the need to regulate licenses for telecommunication service providers. We discuss these important results in light of prior literature and suggest new avenues of research that stem from our findings.