Social Networking and Communities
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Item The Role of Social Media Technologies in Service Innovation: Perceptions of Exceptional-customer-engaged Value Co-creation(2020-01-07) Wu, Yao; Xiao, Jinghua; Xie, KangSocial media technologies have greatly facilitated customers’ self-empowerment, and have given rise to a handful of exceptional customers who engage in service innovation. Compared with the more common customer behaviors like word-of-mouth and review-and-feedback, exceptional customers actively integrate their heterogeneous resources and creatively cooperate with firms to innovate service. Nevertheless, there have been relatively few studies on how information technologies enable such customer engagement and the co-creation of service innovation. We adopted a qualitative approach and conducted a comparative analysis of two cases, including a pair of firms and their cooperating exceptional customers, to reveal two value co-creation mechanisms enabled by social media technologies: customers as communicators who facilitate the individualization of product promotion through resource sharing and digital engagement with firms; and customers as innovators who facilitate the individualization of brand design through resource convergence and co-creation of new value propositions with firms. This study discovered the enabler role of social media technologies in service innovation and value co-creation between firms and exceptional customers, as well as a theoretical basis and practical guidance for market innovation in the digital era.Item Understanding the Antecedents of Consumer Brand Engagement by Managing Brand Communities on Social Media(2020-01-07) Lin, Kuan-Yu; Huang, Travis; Wang, Yi-Ting; Liao, Yung-HaoAs social media provide companies with opportunities to create touch-points by enabling consumers to interact with brands in new ways, a key issue for organizations is how to use brand communities to engage customers and enhance their relationships with brands. Brand community interactivity is one of the latest developments to engage consumers in online brand communities. The objective of brand communities is not only to attract potential customers, but also to retain loyal consumers and gain advocates. Thus, brands and companies’ social media activity should be appropriately organized and managed for high-level consumer brand engagement (CBE), which is a comprehensive construct that allow companies to examine the bond between their brands and consumers. The essence of this CBE bond is related to the involvement of consumers, as it increases the touch-points between them and the brand. This study examined perceived interactivity as a driving factor in the context of a brand community on social media with the purpose of encouraging consumer community engagement, community satisfaction, and consumer brand engagement (CBE). Two second-order constructs were operationalized in the research model. Communication, responsiveness, and control were treated as reflective factors to create the second-order construct “perceived interactivity,” while the other second-order construct “CBE” comprised cognitive processing, affection, and activation as reflective indicators. The results, based on data collected from 328 social media users who are followers of a smartphone brand’s Facebook page, indicated that perceived interactivity is likely to significantly affect consumer community engagement and community satisfaction, which in turn foster brand engagement. Successful social media marketing practices for companies should take responsibility for transforming consumer community engagement into CBE, as it is imperative for organizations building brand communities to enhance their consumer community satisfaction through proper community management to achieve high CBE.Item Examining Interactions in Social Network Sites through the Lense of Social Capital(2020-01-07) Musembwa, Stephen; Paul, SourenRapid growth of the Internet has led to the proliferation of technology, including the use of social network sites (SNS). Social network sites facilitate communications between online users with shared interests and enable users to share content seamlessly. Accordingly, the rapid growth of social network site usage necessitates analysis of factors affecting usage of SNS and the creation of social networks on the social network sites. A research model that focuses on social capital in SNS and the development of community in SNS is proposed in this paper. The model suggests how the configuration of SNS and the diversity of SNS users influence different relational facets of social capital such as trust, reciprocity and identification needs in SNS and the sense of community in SNS. We conducted a web-based survey to collect the data to test our hypotheses. We find that SNS users interaction needs and trust in interaction have positive relationships with reciprocity in SNS interactions. We also find that the development of the sense of community promotes effective communication in SNSItem From Handpress to Handheld: Rare Book and Special Collections Libraries Forming the Libraries of Instagram(2020-01-07) Sparks, Jillian; Bell, Kimberley; Bregman, AlvanThis paper addresses how Instagram serves as a platform to engage a community of librarians, researchers, and bibliophiles. There is a relative lack of research on Instagram and communities of this kind. Focusing on the development of the Libraries of Instagram community, we consider the importance of hashtag campaigns in generating a community space. The paper also comments on the way the emblematic nature of Instagram posts resonates with the rare book and special collections community. The case of @Jordan_Library, the Instagram account of a Canadian rare book and special collections library, exemplifies the Libraries of Instagram community and the use of Instagram to build community across the cultural heritage sector and beyond.Item Learning with Comments: An Analysis of Comments and Community on Stack Overflow(2020-01-07) Sengupta, Subhasree; Haythornthwaite, CarolineStack Overflow (SO) has become a primary source for learning how to code, with community features supporting asking and answering questions, upvoting to signify approval of content, and comments to extend questions and answers. While past research has considered the value of posts, often based on upvoting, little has examined the role of comments. Beyond value in explaining code, comments may offer new ways of looking at problems, clarifications of questions or answers, and socially supportive community interactions. To understand the role of comments, a content analysis was conducted to evaluate the key purposes of comments. A coding schema of nine comment categories was developed from open coding on a set of 40 posts and used to classify comments in a larger dataset of 2323 comments from 50 threads over a 6-month period. Results provide insight into the way the comments support learning, knowledge development, and the SO community, and the use and usefulness of the comment feature.Item Grassroots Campaign in Technology-Enabled Elections: Madurai and Thiruvananthapuram in 2019 Indian Elections(2020-01-07) Charles, Drupa; Meena, Azhagu; Pal, JoyojeetAs a critical site of democratic action, grassroots electoral campaigning is undergoing a transition with the influence of internet affordances in the political mobilizational areas of narrative building, campaign management, data collection and analysis. Through an ethnographic study conducted in Madurai and Thiruvananthapuram during the months prior to the 2019 Indian Parliamentary Elections, the study attempts to map the technology adoption among political workers, in relation to their party/leaders, voters, and other stakeholders in the electoral landscape. Using the typology presented in the new repertoire of social movement action, the authors categorize internet-based and internet-supported campaigning tools, according to the threshold of risk and effort involved in undertaking the activities. Illustrating with perspectives from the grassroots political agents, the paper aspires to extend the literature related to digital political mobilization and contribute to the study of democratic systems.Item The Anointed Son, The Hired Gun, and the Chai Wala: Enemies and Insults in Politicians’ Tweets in the Run-Up to the 2019 Indian General Elections(2020-01-07) Gonawela, A'Ndre; Kumar, Reeshma; Thawani, Udit; Ahmad, Dina; Chandrasekaran, Ramgopal; Pal, JoyojeetThis study seeks to assess the prevalence, style, and impact of antagonistic messaging on Twitter in the two years preceding the 2019 Indian General Elections. Focusing on the leadership of the two key parties – the ruling BJP, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, and the opposition INC’s president Rahul Gandhi, we attempt to understand how the politicians sought to portray each other on Twitter, and how their followers reacted to these characterizations, through the lens of Murray Edelman’s work on the ‘Political Enemy’. By thematically coding tweets and quantitatively analyzing their retweets, we find that negative tweets by and large are significantly more popular for all three politicians, and that the opposition leader allocated a significantly larger proportion of his tweets to attacks. We conclude that while leaders in power and those in opposition may take different stances with messaging, Twitter as a social networking site can perpetuate the online reward for attacking behavior.Item Quality in Peer Production Systems – Impact of Assortativity of Communication Networks on Group Efficacy(2020-01-07) Rychwalska, Agnieszka; Talaga, Szymon; Ziembowicz, KarolinaMany online peer production systems (e.g. Wikipedia or Open Source Software communities) strive to deliver high quality intellectual goods that could compare with commercial products. While quality is key to the communities’ success – widespread adoption of their products – it is not clear what makes some succeed, while others provide subpar outcomes or fail entirely. Quality of Wikipedia articles has been previously related to the number of editors writing them or to the diversity of editors’ competences. Here we tested the hypothesis that cohesiveness of private communication networks within collaborating groups increases the quality of their products. We analyzed communication within a sample of Wikiprojects on the English Wikipedia – groups of editors that coordinate their activities to improve articles related to a specific topic. We found that most Wikiprojects communicate in a highly hierarchical, disassortative way, but the successful ones break this trend and their communication networks are structured in a more egalitarian way.Item Introduction to the Minitrack on Social Networking and Communities(2020-01-07) Suthers, Daniel D.; Sutherland, Tonia