The Impact of Boundary-Blurring Social Networking Sites: Self-Presentation, Impression Formation, and Publicness

Individuals have more opportunities than ever before to present themselves in public using social networking sites (SNSs). These sites allow users to make self-presentations by creating online profiles, containing text, photos, or videos, about themselves and their activities. While individual users generate these presentations, millions of individuals can potentially access them over many years. From the perspective of organizations developing these SNSs, the more people, the broader range of people, and the greater interaction among the people that use them, the more sustainable it is. However, individuals tend to live segmented lives and often develop different self-presentations depending on the audience. Maintaining one or multiple presentations is possible offline as long as the audiences are separate and little opportunity for interaction exists. Online, tension can form between boundary-blurring expansion and boundary-preserving development of SNSs. This dissertation seeks to develop better understanding of how boundaries blurred by SNSs affect impressions formed of job candidates. To examine the issue, two studies were conducted, one exploratory qualitative and one experimental. The first study investigates whether, how, and why SNSs are accessed to obtain information about candidates. The second study develops and tests a model of how characteristics of the SNS environment affect impression formation and subsequent hiring decisions. Both studies found that SNSs can have both benefits and detriments for the job candidate by influencing the impression formed by a professional

Growing Local Food Systems: Information Technology Use and Impacts in Geographically-Embedded Markets

Over recent decades, reliance on global food systems involving highly distributed supply chains has increased. However, as awareness of environmental, social, and health consequences of these arrangements has developed, so has interest in local food systems (LFSs) in which consumers are served by nearby producers and intermediaries. Yet, in spite of the purported benefits of LFSs, there are challenges which limit their impact. There is an opportunity for IS scholars to contribute by examining how technology is and could be used in geographically-embedded markets like LFSs. We draw on prior studies of IT use and impacts in markets to generate exploratory propositions regarding ways that IT might be used to in LFSs. The results have the potential to build a bridge between IS research and the study and development of LFSs and, thus, create opportunities for IS scholars to contribute directly to the economic health and quality of life of communities

I Didn\u27t Know You Could See That: The Effect of Social Networking Environment Characteristics on Publicness and Self-Disclosure

Web 2.0 technologies have changed the way users interact with the Internet. Users play a growing role in the generation of content, and while doing so disclose a piece of themselves. We seek to provide a theoretical link between the boundary characteristics of a social networking website and self-disclosure. Utilizing Communication Privacy Management Theory, we focus on two forms of boundaries: mode of entry boundary and ingroup/outgroup boundary. We propose that these boundaries play a role in the implicit boundary coordination and negotiation between the users of the environment and the website. This negotiation influences users’ perceived publicness of the environment, which influences their self-disclosure behaviors due to their risk avoidance. It is believed that by recognizing the public aspect of participation in online social networks, we can provide suggestions on how its perception can be managed to encourage, or discourage, contributions and disclosures of information by users

The Oxygen Paradox, the French Paradox, and age-related diseases

open46openDavies, Joanna M. S.; Cillard, Josiane; Friguet, Bertrand; Cadenas, Enrique; Cadet, Jean; Cayce, Rachael; Fishmann, Andrew; Liao, David; Bulteau, Anne-Laure; Derbré, Frédéric; Rébillard, Amélie; Burstein, Steven; Hirsch, Etienne; Kloner, Robert A.; Jakowec, Michael; Petzinger, Giselle; Sauce, Delphine; Sennlaub, Florian; Limon, Isabelle; Ursini, Fulvio; Maiorino, Matilde; Economides, Christina; Pike, Christian J.; Cohen, Pinchas; Salvayre, Anne Negre; Halliday, Matthew R.; Lundquist, Adam J.; Jakowec, Nicolaus A.; Mechta-Grigoriou, Fatima; Mericskay, Mathias; Mariani, Jean; Li, Zhenlin; Huang, David; Grant, Ellsworth; Forman, Henry J.; Finch, Caleb E.; Sun, Patrick Y.; Pomatto, Laura C. D.; Agbulut, Onnik; Warburton, David; Neri, Christian; Rouis, Mustapha; Cillard, Pierre; Capeau, Jacqueline; Rosenbaum, Jean; Davies, Kelvin J. A.Davies, Joanna M. S.; Cillard, Josiane; Friguet, Bertrand; Cadenas, Enrique; Cadet, Jean; Cayce, Rachael; Fishmann, Andrew; Liao, David; Bulteau, Anne-Laure; Derbré, Frédéric; Rébillard, Amélie; Burstein, Steven; Hirsch, Etienne; Kloner, Robert A.; Jakowec, Michael; Petzinger, Giselle; Sauce, Delphine; Sennlaub, Florian; Limon, Isabelle; Ursini, Fulvio; Maiorino, Matilde; Economides, Christina; Pike, Christian J.; Cohen, Pinchas; Salvayre, Anne Negre; Halliday, Matthew R.; Lundquist, Adam J.; Jakowec, Nicolaus A.; Mechta-Grigoriou, Fatima; Mericskay, Mathias; Mariani, Jean; Li, Zhenlin; Huang, David; Grant, Ellsworth; Forman, HENRY J.; Finch, Caleb E.; Sun, Patrick Y.; Pomatto, Laura C. D.; Agbulut, Onnik; Warburton, David; Neri, Christian; Rouis, Mustapha; Cillard, Pierre; Capeau, Jacqueline; Rosenbaum, Jean; Davies, Kelvin J. A

Too Much Information: The Influence of User Self-Presentation on Success in Mass Collaboration

Self-presentations in social media and online communities influence perceptions. Members of mass collaborations who understand the group’s fundamental structures and governance influence the success of the collaborations. This study linked these two findings in order to investigate the relationship between self-presentation, the development of trust and personal and group identification, and collaboration success in mass collaboration. Ability, a subcomponent of trust, is associated with successful collaborations, but personal and group identifications lead to less successful ones. Ability and integrity, subcomponents of trust, lead to greater effort expended on the collaboration, while personal and group identification do not. These findings demonstrate that self-presentations do have an impact on goal attainment in mass collaborations

Time for a Post-Mortem?: Business Professionals’ Perspectives on the Disillusionment of Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds (VWs) are powerful three-dimensional technologies where users can assume identities and interact with others. While designed as open-platforms for creativity, expression, and experimentation by recreational users, VWs were once lauded for their potential applications to business. Today, much of the business community has either moved on from the hype of VWs or struggles to understand whether value can be obtained by using VWs. This paper attempts to provide an understanding of these outcomes through the analysis of assessments written by 59 business professionals, who each spent an extended period of time in a popular VW during the peak of the hype. From these assessments, four broad perspectives on the value of VWs to organizations (or lack thereof) were identified, along with challenges facing use of VWs if they are to become more widely used within business

Arguing the Value of Virtual Worlds: Patterns of Discursive Sensemaking of an Innovative Technology

With the rapid pace of technological development, individuals are frequently challenged to make sense of equivocal innovative technology while being given limited information. Virtual worlds are a prime example of such an equivocal innovative technology, and this affords researchers an opportunity to study sensemaking and the construction of perspectives about the organizational value of virtual worlds. This study reports on an analysis of the written assessments of 59 business professionals who spent an extended period of time in Second Life, a popular virtual world, and discursively made sense of the organizational value of virtual worlds. Through a Toulminian analysis of the claims, grounds, and warrants used in the texts they generated, we identify 12 common patterns of sensemaking and indicate that themes of confirmation, open-ended rhetoric, demographics, and control are evident in the different types of claims that were addressed. Further, we assert that the Toulminian approach we employ is a useful methodology for the study of sensemaking and one that is not bound to any particular theoretical perspective