12 research outputs found

    Dynamics between social media engagement, firm-generated content, and live and time-shifted TV viewing

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    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study consumer engagement as a dynamic, iterative process in the context of TV shows. A theoretical framework involving the central constructs of brand actions, customer engagement behaviors (CEBs), and consumption is proposed. Brand actions of TV shows include advertising and firm-generated content (FGC) on social media. CEBs include volume, sentiment, and richness of user-generated content (UGC) on social media. Consumption comprises live and time-shifted TV viewing. Design/methodology/approach The authors study 31 new TV shows introduced in 2015. Consistent with the ecosystem framework, a simultaneous system of equations approach is adopted to analyze data from a US Cable TV provider, Kantar Media, and Twitter. Findings The findings show that advertising efforts initiated by the TV show have a positive effect on time-shifted viewing, but a negative effect on live viewing; tweets posted by the TV show (FGC) have a negative effect on time-shifted viewing, but no effect on live viewing; and negative sentiment from tweets posted by viewers (UGC) reduces time-shifted viewing, but increases live viewing. Originality/value Content creators and TV networks are faced with the daunting challenge of retaining their audiences in a media-fragmented world. Whereas most studies on engagement have focused on static firm-customer relationships, this study examines engagement from a dynamic, multi-agent perspective by studying interrelationships among brand actions, CEBs, and consumption over time. Accordingly, this study can help brands to quantify the effectiveness of their engagement efforts in terms of encouraging CEBs and eliciting specific TV consumption behaviors

    The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

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    INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

    Does it pay off to communicate like your online community? Evaluating the effect of content and linguistic style similarity on B2B brand engagement

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    Business-to-business (B2B) social media efforts have largely focused on creating brand engagement through online content. We propose to analyse company social media texts (tweets) according to its two main dimensions, content and linguistic style, and to evaluate these in comparison to the overall content and style of the company's community of Twitter followers. We combine 15 million tweets originating from 254,884 followers of ten company profiles and link these to 10,589 B2B company tweets. Using advanced text analytics, we show that content similarity has positive effects on all engagement metrics, while linguistic style similarity mainly affects likes. Readability acts as a moderator for these effects. We also find a negative interaction effect between the similarity metrics, such that style similarity is most useful if content similarity is low. This research is the first to integrate content and linguistic style similarity and contributes to the brand engagement literature by providing practical message composition guidelines, informed by the social media community
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