Exploring the virtual space of academia

The aim of this chapter is to provide a view on how researchers present themselves in a social network specifically developed for supporting academic practices, how they share information and engage in dialogues with colleagues worldwide. We analysed data from 30,428 users who have registered on a publicly available website to study the effect of academic position, university ranking and country on people's behaviour. Results suggest that the virtual network closely mirrors physical reality, reproducing the same hierarchical structure imposed by position, ranking, and country on user behaviour. Despite the potential for bridging and bonding social capital the networks have not achieved substantial changes in structures and practices of the academic context. Furthermore, our analysis highlights the need of finding new strategies to motivate the users to contribute to the community and support equal participation, as so far the community is mainly exploited as a static website

The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands

Researchers and brand managers have limited understanding of the effects social media communication has on how consumers perceive brands. We investigated 504 Facebook users in order to observe the impact of firm-created and user-generated social media communication on brand equity, brand attitude and purchase intention by using a standardized online survey throughout Poland. To test the conceptual model, we analyzed 60 brands across three different industries: non-alcoholic beverages, clothing and mobile network operators. When analyzing the data, we applied the structural equation modeling technique to both investigate the interplay of firm-created and user-generated social media communication and examine industry-specific differences. The results of the empirical studies showed that user-generated social media communication had a positive influence on both brand equity and brand attitude, whereas firm-created social media communication affected only brand attitude. Both brand equity and brand attitude were shown to have a positive influence on purchase intention. In addition, we assessed measurement invariance using a multi-group structural modeling equation. The findings revealed that the proposed measurement model was invariant across the researched industries. However, structural path differences were detected across the models

Facebook versus television: Advertising value perceptions among females

The purpose of this paper is to compare female students' perceptions of the value of advertising on social network sites (SNSs) to their perceptions of the value of television advertising. An online questionnaire was fielded among students from three major universities in the USA, as well as SNSs (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter). The final sample (n=259) was comprised of female students who had used social media and television during the past month. The authors developed two structural equation models using Amos 18 statistical software. The analysis indicated that Ducoffe's Ad Value model does not provide a good fit for assessing advertising value in social media or television. While Irritation was a factor in assessing Attitude toward advertising, the respondents assessed ad value on the basis of Entertainment (higher for social media) and Informativeness (higher for television). In examining the relative importance of each component of Ducoffe's model, it is clear that Entertainment and Informativeness play key roles in assessing advertising value for both traditional (television) and non-traditional media (SNSs). While Irritation did not play a significant role in value assessment, it was found to directly impact attitude towards advertising, a critical juncture in the consumer purchase cycle. If practitioners seek to interact via SNSs with young female consumers they should focus on providing entertaining content in a format that makes brand engagement seamless while not impeding goals. This initial investigation provides the impetus for future research about consumers' perceptions of advertising value across all SNSs, in comparison to their traditional counterparts

Connecting funding to entrepreneurs: a profile of the main crowdfunding platforms

The general purpose of this chapter is to describe and analyse the financing phenomenon of crowdfunding and to investigate the relations between crowdfunders, project creators and crowdfunding websites. More specifically, it also intends to describe the profile differences between major crowdfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The results showed that both Kickstarter and Indiegogo are among the most popular crowdfunding platforms. Both of them have thousands of users and these users are generally satisfied. Most of them rely on individual approaches for crowdfunding. Despite this, Kickstarter and Indiegogo could benefit from further improving their services. Furthermore, according to the results, it was possible to observe that there is a direct and positive relationship between the money needed for the projects and the money collected from the investors for the projects, per platform.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio