• International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.5-26
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• 2017

A cross-cultural comparison of social networking structure on McDonald's Facebook fan sites between Taiwan and the USA was conducted utilizing the individualism/collectivism dimension proposed by Hofstede. Four network indicators are used to describe the network structure of McDonald's Facebook fan sites: size, density, clique and centralization. Individuals who post on both Facebook sites for the year of 2012 were considered as network participants for the purpose of the study. Due to the huge amount of data, only one thread of postings was sampled from each month of the year of 2012. The final data consists of 1002 postings written by 896 individuals and 5962 postings written by 5532 individuals from Taiwan and the USA respectively. The results indicated that the USA McDonald's Facebook fan network has more fans, while Taiwan's McDonald's Facebook fan network is more densely connected. Cliques did form among the overall multiplex and within the individual uniplex networks in two countries, yet no significant differences were found between them. All the fan networks in both countries are relatively centralized, mostly on the site operators.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.27-37
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• 2014

Purpose - This study analyzed the characteristics of social networking sites (SNSs) using related literatures, and researched the models discussed in precedent studies, to investigate the effects of SNS characteristics upon consumers'awareness, purchase intention, and recommendation. The purpose of the study was to investigate the use of SNSs as a marketing tool. Design, methodology, and approach - For an empirical analysis, the author distributed questionnaires online and offline, to verify the models and hypotheses. Respondents were persons aged 17 or older, who were frequent users of SNSs. The questionnaire survey was conducted for 11 days from September 30, 2013 to October 10, 2013. The author distributed 450 copies and received 430 responses. Finally, 412 copies were used for the analysis after excluding 18 copies having poor answers. Results - The findings about SNS users' behavior could be used as material in the future use of SNS as a marketing tool. Further, the study provided not only theories about SNS characteristics, but also variables and items that were verified during the empirical study. Conclusions - Further studies are needed to overcome the limitations and to establish various kinds of SNS marketing strategies in detail.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.32-41
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• 2017

The $4^{th}$ industrial revolution refers to an era where machines capable of outperforming humans are created. In light of the 4th industrial revolution, university students are demanded problem solving abilities, critical thinking abilities, and problem discovering abilities as general and basic abilities. The need for changes in the university level communication education for engineering students remains imperative in this constantly changing social environment. The era where education is conducted only in classrooms is over. This paper discusses the need for diversified education such as the integration of online and offline education, the reinforcement of learning outside of the classroom as well as an education model that transcends formal and informal education such as games and activities that induce self-learning, both intentional and non-intentional learning, and the utilization of mass media and social networking systems. Through providing an education model that assesses and utilizes the data gained from the learning process provided above, this paper widens the perception of future education methods in the 4th industrial revolution.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.885-896
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the driving motivations of contributing social word of mouth on social networking sites (sWOM) toward both tangible and intangible products. In order to develop a research model, this study adopts the motivation theory and TAM model. Data was collected from 904 members of the cosmetic and restaurant communities by using the snowball method. After assessing the validity of all constructs, the structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the proposed hypotheses. Results show that personal motivations (satisfaction, opinion leadership, self-enhancement, and economic incentives) and characteristics of sWOM (Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use) have positive effect on exposure and engagement behaviors. Here are our specific findings, (1) customer satisfaction positively affects online interactions on SNSs such as Like or Sharing a content; (2) sWOM contribution behavior exists in two structures (Exposure and Engagement) and affects each other; (3) This study combines two groups of personal motivation and TAM to conceptualize a research model; and (4) The motivations of contributing sWOM between a specified service and product are rather similar. These findings help digital managers to understand consumers' behavioral contributions on SNSs and also provide interesting insights for marketers.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.109-125
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• 2013

As the number of SNS users is increasing, it has been very important how companies use SNS strategically. As a result, studies have been performed for the utilization of SNS. Most of the studies, however, focused on the overall characteristics of SNS and did not consider the characteristics of individual SNS. This study classified the main purpose of SNS use as relation-oriented purpose and information-oriented purpose, and identified the types of SNS from two viewpoints : service type and openness. Based on the classification, this study identified the characteristics of Cyworld, Facebook, and Twitter respectively, and analyzed the difference of the purpose of SNS users according to the characteristics of each service. The results showed that more users had the information-oriented purpose in the order of Twitter, Facebook, and Cyworld. There was no difference in the relation-oriented purpose among the three services. The analyses of the motive to join a group or a party made similar results. The results of additional analyses showed that the ratio of users with many acquaintances was high in the order of Facebook, Twitter, and Cyworld. In addition, more users checked their timeline or news feed more frequently in the order of Facebook, Twitter, and Cyworld.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.3868-3888
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• 2022

A widely used social networking service like Twitter has the ability to disseminate information to large groups of people even during a pandemic. At the same time, it is a convenient medium to share irrelevant and unverified information online and poses a potential threat to society. In this research, conventional machine learning algorithms are analyzed to classify the data as either non-rumor data or rumor data. Machine learning techniques have limited tuning capability and make decisions based on their learning. To tackle this problem the authors propose a deep learning-based Rumor Detection Neural Network model to predict the rumor tweet in real-world events. This model comprises three layers, AttCNN layer is used to extract local and position invariant features from the data, AttBi-LSTM layer to extract important semantic or contextual information and HPOOL to combine the down sampling patches of the input feature maps from the average and maximum pooling layers. A dataset from Kaggle and ground dataset #gaja are used to train the proposed Rumor Detection Neural Network to determine the veracity of the rumor. The experimental results of the RDNN Classifier demonstrate an accuracy of 93.24% and 95.41% in identifying rumor tweets in real-time events.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.107-135
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• 2017

Purpose Along with the growth of smart phones and social networking service (SNS), social commerce continues to expand. Although online reviews have become an important source of the information that consumers use to make purchasing decisions, theoretical development and empirical testing in this area are still limited. Thus, there is a need to develop further understanding about the influence of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Drawing upon the heuristic - systematic model (HSM) which is one of the dual-process theories, this study develops a research model that explains key factors influencing consumers' eWOM credibility. Furthermore, this study verifies that consumer's eWOM credibility is a key determinant of eWOM and purchase intentions. Design/methodology/approach The proposed model is empirically tested with 493 users who have experience in WeChat-based social commerce. The structural equation model (SEM) analysis is used to evaluate the research model and hypotheses. Findings The major findings are as follows. First, argument quality of eWOM (a systematic factor) has a positive effect on eWOM credibility. Second, source credibility and recommendation consistency of eWOM (heuristic factors) are positively associated with eWOM credibility. Finally, purchase and eWOM intentions greatly depend on eWOM credibility. These results confirm the effectiveness of HSM in explaining eWOM mechanisms in SNS-based social commerce. The details of findings and implications are presented.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.89-105
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• 2017

As the advances of technology in mobile networking and the popularity of online social networks (OSNs), the mobile social networks (MSNs) provide opportunities for marketing strategy. Therefore, understanding the information diffusion in the emerging MSNs is a critical issue. The information diffusion address a problem of how to find the proper initial nodes who can effectively propagate as widely as possible in the minimum amount of time. We propose a new diffusion scheme, called Hotspot DBC, which is to find k influential nodes considering each node's mobility behavior in the hotspot zones. Our experiments were conducted in the Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) using real GPS trace, to show that the proposed scheme results. In addition, we demonstrate that our proposed scheme outperforms other existing algorithms.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.5-18
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• 2014

This exploratory study investigates the use of a computational knowledge engine (WolframAlpha) and social networking sites (Gmail, Yahoo and Facebook) by 200 students at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, their "friends" and their "friends of friends" during the 2009 through 2013 school years, and how this appears to have added value in knowledge generation. The primary aim is to identify what enhances productiveness in knowledge generation in Philippine Tertiary Education. The phenomenological approach is used, therefore there are no specific research questions or hypotheses proposed in this paper. Considering that knowledge generation is a complex phenomenon, a stochastic modelling approach is also used for the investigation that was developed specifically to study un-deterministic complex systems. A list of salient features for knowledge generation is presented as a result. In addition to these features, various problem types are identified from literature. These are then integrated to provide a proposed framework of inclusive (friendly) and innovative social networks, for knowledge generation in Philippine tertiary education. Such a framework is necessarily multidisciplinary and useful for problem-solving in a globalized and pluralist reality. The implementation of this framework is illustrated in the three parts of the study: Part 1: Online lessons, discussions, and examinations in General Psychology, Introduction to Sociology, and Life and Works of Jose Rizal, for the author's students in De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde; Part 2: Facebook Report analytics of students and teachers, their friends and their friends of friends via WolframAlpha; and Part 3: Social Network Analysis of the people and groups influencing the courses' scope-and-sequence in the new General Education Curriculum for Tertiary Schools and Institutions in the Philippines.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.261-281
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• 2014

In light of the recent advancement in networking and information technology, the direct information request through website has increasingly proven to be the preferred means over visiting physical archives. Thus, the proper utilization of a communication tool capable of sufficiently capturing user feedback and requests is an absolute necessity. This paper examines the availability and utilization of alternative user participatory communication tools in government websites with particular focus on the archives in South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, and Japan. In assessing the use of alternative user participatory communication tools in these archives, we examined the availability of communication mediums other than the online forums, email, and telephone with particular focus on social media tools that may offer a degree of familiarity for the user. Our research indicates that the most frequently utilized social media tool is Facebook while the archive offering the greatest variety of alternative user participatory communication tools was the United States archive.