Instagram's Social Media Influencers: A study of Online Popularity From Source Credibility to Brand Attitude

Social Media Influencers (SMIs) and their sponsored posts on the Social Media represent a growing part of tomorrow’s digital marketing landscape. Marketers hire them to recommend their products to their large audiences through friendly and engaging social media posts. To please marketers, increasing and maintaining their audience size is of the utmost importance. Consequently, number of followers, likes, and comments have become the metrics of SMIs success. However, recent contradictory publications of business magazines and academic research raised the question of SMIs’ online popularity, credibility, and their efficiency as brand endorsers. Hence, an online-based survey experiment based examined the audience’s attitude of SMI credibility across three different level of online popularity using Ohanian’s (1990) source credibility model. Further, the relationship between SMI credibility and brand attitude, and the mediating effect of attitude toward sponsored post were investigated using a research model adapted from Attitude toward advertising models. The findings revealed that the more an SMI is popular, the more he is perceived as a credible brand advocate, and SMI credibility was found to positively and directly influences brand attitude. Semi-structured interviews strengthened the discussion of the quantitative results. Theoretical and managerial contributions of the study are presented and suggestions for future research ensue

A new simple neural-network based approach to predict the seismic response of levees and small height earth dams

International audienceThe issue of the seismic stability of embankments has been raised by several recent events. Given their very large cumulated length, together with the large variability of their owners, it is rarely possible to perform detailed investigations and complex numerical simulations, especially in moderate seismicity areas. Analyzing their capacity to withstand seismic loading thus requires the use of simple tools, based on a few easily available parameters. This work aims at providing an easy-to-use tool to assess peak acceleration at crest of embankments and peak acceleration of potential sliding blocks then allowing to evaluate their stability in case of earthquake. It is based on a 2D numerical parametric study combining 135 realistic configurations of embankments and natural soil layers, and four loading levels, characterized by peak acceleration at outcropping bedrock (0.01g, 0.1g, 0.3g and 0.5g). For each configuration and loading level, nonlinearity is taken into account by using equivalent shear modulus and damping consistent with the strain level (derived from a set of 1D linear equivalent computations). Artificial neural networks are then used to identify the parameters that best control the seismic response of the embankment while being easily available. They also provide a relation between these input parameters and the researched outputs (peak accelerations at embankment crest and for potential sliding blocks). A few abacus based on those neural networks are also provided as a visual tool to help engineers understanding the main trends

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National audienceCode commenté et annot

Arènes du débat public

Ce Dossier contribue à mieux saisir les évolutions des formes du débat public. Les Échangesconcluent la discussion engagée sur ce que pourrait être un programme de recherche critique en communication et en ouvrent une nouvelle sur la narratologie. Les Notes de recherche traitent des effets de sincérité dans le discours journalistique télévisuel de l’enquête en immersion, des déplacements de frontières réalisés par un projet d’accompagnement d’élèves pendant leurs trajets domicile-école, des fonctions des représentations (post-)apocalyptiques en science-fiction et des nouvelles formes identitaires émergeant chez les jeunes journalistes belges francophones. En VO, Lilie Chouliaraki explique le changement de la structure communicationnelle de la solidarité. Les Notes de lecture rendent compte de publications dans le domaine de l’information-communication

Arènes du débat public

Ce Dossier contribue à mieux saisir les évolutions des formes du débat public. Les Échangesconcluent la discussion engagée sur ce que pourrait être un programme de recherche critique en communication et en ouvrent une nouvelle sur la narratologie. Les Notes de recherche traitent des effets de sincérité dans le discours journalistique télévisuel de l’enquête en immersion, des déplacements de frontières réalisés par un projet d’accompagnement d’élèves pendant leurs trajets domicile-école, des fonctions des représentations (post-)apocalyptiques en science-fiction et des nouvelles formes identitaires émergeant chez les jeunes journalistes belges francophones. En VO, Lilie Chouliaraki explique le changement de la structure communicationnelle de la solidarité. Les Notes de lecture rendent compte de publications dans le domaine de l’information-communication