Social media,social integration and subjective well-being among new urban migrants in China

The current generation of migrants in Chinese cities, named “new urban migrants,” is closely related with social changes in today’s China. As these urban migrants are increasingly dependent on new media, particularly social media for news, entertainment, and social interaction, it is important to know how social media use contributes to their social integration and subjective well-being. Based on an online survey, this study identified positive relationship between new urban migrants’ social media use and their subjective well-being, as well as the possible indirect relationship through social integration. The overall positive socio-psychological effects of social media use within Chinese urban migrants were found. Specifically, this study revealed that social media use can contribute to their social integration, including their building of social identity and social network as well as real-world social participation. New urban migrants’ social integration, particularly their level of social identity, is significantly associated with their subjective well-being.     

Examining the links between active Facebook use,received likes,self-esteem and happiness: A study using objective social media data

For social media users, profile updating and receiving Likes may feel like a reward, and elicit positive emotions, reinforcing use of the platform. Could this mechanism have consequences for users’ self-esteem and happiness? Previous findings on the topic are mixed, and typically limited by use of self-reports of online activity. In the present study, we used objective behavioral data to examine the hypotheses that receiving Likes on Facebook would relate to 1) users’ level of perceived self-esteem, and 2) increased happiness via the mediating role of self-esteem. We recruited 2,349 adult Facebook users (589 men, 1,760 women; 67% aged 18–25, 26% aged 26–35, 7% aged > 35 years). Participants answered an online survey and provided access to their objective Facebook data (i.e., profile updates and received Likes). We found that frequency of users updating their profile and sharing personal content (e.g., self-generated texts, images, friends and location tags) had a direct effect on the frequency and intensity of the feedback (i.e., Likes) they received from other users in their online social network. Additionally, analyses supported a positive link between the frequency and intensity of positive feedback received by users and perceived happiness that was mediated in part by an increase in self-esteem. Overall, findings demonstrate a process linking positive online social feedback and perceived well-being.     

The collective storytelling organisational framework for social media use

The organisational implementation and use of social media for online community engagement is plagued with many challenges. The result is managers being frustrated at not achieving their desired results. Despite an increase in social media research, it is evident that some critical aspects of social media use by organisations are left unexplained by existing theories. The purpose of this research study is to investigate how social media is used within organisations to engage with its online community. The grounded theory method (GTM) was used to develop a substantive theory that increases understanding of this phenomenon. Two organisations were selected as the case studies. Both are industry leaders in South Africa, with one being a prominent retailer with a visible social media presence and the other, being a leading university in South Africa, which is actively growing its social media presence. The results show that organisations enter a collective storytelling process with their online community. The need to reduce risk to reputation and improve on the levels of online community engagement are identified as reasons for this. The strategic alignment of the social media function and the organisational social media use characteristics set the backdrop for the collective storytelling process, while content quality influences the richness of this process. Challenges associated with the collective storytelling process lead to the development and refinement of the organisational social media strategy, which in turn helps to reduce risk to reputation and improve online community engagement.     

The future of online social networks (OSN): A measurement analysis using social media tools and application

The explosion of online social networks (OSN) has created an interactive and communicative global phenomenon that has enabled billions of users to connect to other individuals on Facebook and Twitter but also with media sharing platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. This study examines the current use of social media platforms and explores the factors that help define the long term implications of social media. The study employed a nationwide survey collected from 2012 to 2013 and is available from the PEW Internet research center of more than 2000 American citizens’ behaviour towards OSNs. The results revealed strong predictors of OSN that form the connections among users; and the core significant predictors: age, gender and access to mobile Internet that foster the adoption and usage of OSN in the future. Furthermore, online activities such as posting video content on social networks also highlighted the online usage patterns and trends of using social media to actively engage with other users more willingly than text. This is due to the viral nature of online media sharing on social media and as part of the video viewing and creating experience. An outline of practical implications of the findings and areas for future research is also discussed.     

Characteristics and social impact of the use of social media by Chinese Dama

Against the backdrop of broader social changes, social media has developed rapidly in China, which has pushed the transition of the media environment from a traditional authority-dominated one to a modern media society. In particular, the use of social media by Chinese Dama can be perceived as an exemplar of media-driven social change. ‘Chinese Dama’ is a buzzword coined in tandem with the development of social media since 2013. This term represents a particular group of middle-aged Chinese women who reflect a distinctive social phenomenon in China. It is noteworthy that a growing number of Chinese Dama are learning to use social media and have established thousands of social media communities, exerting significant influence on the wider media and social environment. This study focuses on the major changes undergone by Dama, transitioning from being passively covered by media to becoming active users of social media, and this research analyzes the motivations and hallmarks of their social media activity. Although the use of social media by Chinese Dama, the traditional nucleus of Chinese society, has contributed to narrowing the digital divide and resulted in the Dama’s gaining more discourse power and ushered in new diverse lifestyles, we argue that the Dama also exert a far-reaching positive and negative influence on society, pushing for the modernization transformation of the Chinese society.     

Decreasing social contagion effects in diffusion cascades: Modeling message spreading on social media

Modeling retweeting behaviors is important for understanding and predicting how information spreads on social media platforms. The present study contributes to the literature by examining the decreasing social contagion and increasing homophily effects with the depth of diffusion cascades. To test the hypotheses, the study proposes a matching-on-followers method by combining choice and cascade models. More specifically, the study examines the impacts of interaction frequency, multiple exposures, and interest similarity between parent users and potential retweeters on the likelihood of retweeting. The study also incorporates the depth of diffusion cascades and network structures into the model. By using a random sample of original tweets, their retweets, and potential retweeters (N = 87,139), the study found that cascade depth is negatively associated with social contagion effects (interaction and multiple exposures) and positively associated with the effect of interest similarity on message sharing. These results indicate that influence-based and homophily-driven diffusion operate differently in cascades with different diffusion structures.     

Social media usage and organizational performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers

Social media usage among organizations is growing tremendously. Organizations are now building and maintaining social media public pages to improve their social network salience, enhance interest in their organizations, and build relationships with the online public. The majority of the studies on social media usage are based on the individual perspective while some are from the organizational perspective. However, not many studies have investigated the actual impact of social media usage on organizational performance. Therefore, using the qualitative approach, this study investigates the various purposes of social media usage and its impact on organizational performance. This study however, focuses only on the social media managers’ views. The senior managers of six organizations that are using social media are interviewed from which we find that social media is used for various purposes in organizations, such as advertising and promotion, branding, information search, building customer relations and many more. The results also show that social media has a greater impact on the performance of organizations in terms of enhancement in customer relations and customer service activities, improvement in information accessibility and cost reduction in terms of marketing and customer service.     

Beyond touchdown: College students’ sports participation,social media use,college attachment,and psychological well-being

This study investigated how college students’ sports participation and social media use relate to college attachment and their psychological well-being. An online survey was administered to 580 undergraduate students. Findings revealed that sports participation was positively related with social media use and college attachment, which in turn increases individuals’ psychological well-being. This study offers empirical evidence of the mediating role social media use plays in the relationship among sport participation, college attachment, and well-being. The findings contribute to further understanding about the mechanisms by which sports participation leads to psychological well-being through social media use.     

A meta-analytic review of the relationship between social media use and employee outcomes

Employees’ social media use and its relationships with work-related outcomes have received significant research attention in recent years. Extant research, however, has provided neither consistent findings regarding the extent and direction of such relationships nor consensus on potential moderators involved. To provide robust conclusions about the association between social media use and employee outcomes which could inform research and practice, a systematic culmination of findings from 29 empirical works published in peer-reviewed journals from 2009 to 2018 was conducted. The meta-analytic review assessed the relationships between employees’ social media use and employee outcomes (job performance, job satisfaction, work engagement, emotional exhaustion, and work-life conflict) and their moderators (types of social media, purposes of use, and background variables). The results of the random-effects model suggest that social media use, in general, had significant, small, positive relationships with job performance, job satisfaction, work engagement, and work-life conflict. Its relationship with emotional exhaustion, however, was significant but negligible. The sub-group and meta-regression analyses further identified the moderators among the positive associations found: purpose of social media use moderated the relationships of social media use with job performance and job satisfaction while job position moderated the association between social media use and job satisfaction.     

Social by definition: How users define social platforms and why it matters

Social media platforms are characterized by diverse features and functions, and these facets remain in constant flux over time. This research examines how users define the central purpose of four major platforms in the United States (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat), and how such lay definitions relate to key outcomes previously associated with social media use. In Study 1, we validated self-report measures using a comparative scaling approach to capture what users view as the most defining categories of the four platforms. In Study 2, we investigated whether lay definitions of platforms relate to perceptions of social affordances and social resources. Overall, results provided evidence that defining platforms as social interaction (vs. other categories) is associated with amplified social affordances and resources. Together, the studies contribute to our understanding of how users navigate a dynamic online ecosystem, as well as how lay definitions may anchor the experiences and effects of social media.     

User-orientated perspective of social media used by campaigns

Campaigns have increasingly resorted to Facebook because it has the highest number of users among social media platforms. The question as to whether Facebook is a more favorable choice of social media than a blog for political purposes must be addressed. In this comparative study, cross-sectional data collected in the 2009 and 2014 Taiwan local elections were used for exploring the differences among voter motivations, perceived credibility, and dependency between the use of political blogs and Facebook. In addition, the impact factors regarding the relationship between blogs and Facebook dependency were analyzed. The findings indicate that voter motivations, perceived credibility, and dependency were higher for political blogs than they were for Facebook, suggesting that in a political context, people prefer blogs to Facebook. The results of regression analyses indicate that the motivation for debating political topics was a significant predictor of the dependency on blogs, whereas motivations for general information and entertainment were related to Facebook use. The perceived credibility was not related to blog use; however, accuracy and information depth were significant factors for the use of Facebook. The reasons for the differences between peoples’ use of political blogs and Facebook are discussed in this paper. This study advances our understanding on the variations in people’s use of different social media platforms in a political context, and few studies have investigated this topic from a user-oriented perspective.     

The use of social media in travel information search

When faced with new technology for tourism purposes, travelers often use information searches in the Internet and, in addition, gain valuable travel information from various sources. This paper examines the travel information searches using social media as a new search behavior from a value perspective. By adopting the value-based adoption model (VAM) based on the prospect theory and mental accounting theory from the perspectives of value maximization of benefits versus sacrifices for a new technology, our findings revealed that the traveler’s perception of the value of social media is a primary determinant of the traveler’s social media usage. We test our research model using empirical data collected (n = 695) in a survey and run a structural equation modeling. These results are mediated by perceived value. Thus, the users of new social media, especially for travel information searches, are influenced by both benefits (information reliability, enjoyment) and sacrifices (complexity, perceived effort). However, only enjoyment makes an impact directly on social media usage. Thus, this paper discusses both the theoretical and practical implications of VAM in the context of social media on the subject of tourism.     

Turkish diasporic responses to the Taksim Square protests: Legacy media and social media uses in Belgium,the Netherlands and Germany

Based on an offline and online survey of 967 people of Turkish origin living in these countries, we test how legacy and social media have influenced the participation of the members of the Turkish diaspora in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in the mid-2013 protests in Turkey’s social movement referred to as Gezi Park. This study also investigates how living in Europe can influence the behavior and attitudes of the sampled individuals from the Turkish Diaspora of Germany, Belgium and Netherlands during the period when the Gezi Park demonstration took place. Our results make it clear that social media were used by those who supported the protest movement, while those who opposed the protest movement primarily used or followed traditional sources of media, including Turkish and European television. Furthermore, supporters amongst the diaspora for the Gezi-protests were primarily active in accruing social capital through bonding and social networking among those who belong to the Turkish diaspora under the guise of the Gezi Park protests. Finally, a significant number of the supporters of the protests in the three countries took part in several different means of supporting the movement, including: disseminating awareness about the Gezi protests through social media, engaging in meetings, and in some cases, even severing contact with friends and acquaintances who did not share their support for the protest movement.     

Association between psychosocial well-being and problematic social media use among Finnish young adults: A cross-sectional study

The aim of the study was to identify associations between problematic social media use (PSMU), type of internet activity, various background factors, psychosocial factors (mood, fear of missing out, need to belong, social relationships) and the COVID-19-pandemic’s impacts on social media use among young adults in Finland. Data were collected from 381 young adults aged 18–35 (M = 26.01; SD = 4.55) in Finland through a web-based survey conducted during the autumn of 2020. PSMU was identified using the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale. Nine types of social media platform used were considered. Information about health-related factors was assessed using Beck Depression Inventory scale and a further single question. Social factors were measured using the Fear of Missing Out scale, the Single Item Need to Belong scale, and social engagement scale. 9.8 % of participants were found to exhibit PSMU. Younger people and women were more prone to PSMU. Social networking sites were the most used platform and were more strongly related to PSMU. Social media engagement, depression, fear of missing out and the effects of the pandemic on social media use were all positively and significantly associated with PSMU. These results may facilitate the development of guidelines for healthy social media use, and early detection of PSMU.     

Social comparison as a double-edged sword on social media: The role of envy type and online social identity

Several studies have explored the psychological consequences of social comparison in SNS usage. This paper aims to explore the behavioral outcomes of social comparison through the underlying mechanisms of benign and malicious envy on Facebook. The paper also examines the role of online social identity in predicting benign and malicious envy. Based on multi-wave data collected from 469 Facebook users in Pakistan, we found that Facebook user's social comparison provoked benign and malicious envy; benign envy, in turn, triggered self-improvement intention, and malicious envy triggered negative gossiping. Moreover, user's online social identity moderated the social comparison-envy relationship such that the positive relationship of social comparison and benign envy was stronger, and the positive relationship of social comparison and malicious envy was weaker when the user's online social identity was high. The study contributes to social media literature by examining the behavioral outcomes of social comparison on social media and discusses empirical implications for policymakers, advertisers, SNS providers, SNS designers, educators, and users.     

Progress and future directions for research on social media addiction: Visualization-based bibliometric analysis

The proliferation of social media has drawn attention to social network addictions. Studies on social media addictions have been emerging across different fields, including psychology, behavioral science, and computer science. To investigate the evolution and development of the research on social media addiction (SMA), this paper constituted a bibliometric analysis of 396 articles published from 2011 to 2021. Through a cluster analysis of keywords, we identified five SMA research focuses: the influences of negative and dark personality traits (the dark triad); adolescents mental and physical health problems caused by fear of missing out; self-control under habit-driven addiction; excessive social media use induced by social anxiety; the health and behaviors in cross-addictions. We also find that the collaborative networks among authors and institutions were concentrated without significantly groupings, indicating the collaborative efficiency in SMA studies while the concentration may lead the research topics to converge. Our results show that researchers have built branches of theories to explain the prefactors of SMA, while most theories tend to pathologize SMA with personal prefactors. In the future, researchers need to find more factors other than personal characteristics in order to increase the connections of SMA research with the other fields. Researchers also need to discuss more user behaviors not motivated by social needs in order to keep up with the diversified developments of social media.     

Social media and expressive citizenship: Understanding the relationships between social and entertainment expression on Facebook and political participation

Substantial research has explored the political significance of social media use in the context of collective actions. Yet much remains unknown about whether common, day-to-day, nonpolitically oriented activities on social media relate to political engagement. Focusing on Facebook, the primary social media platform for most Americans, this study investigates whether and how social and entertainment expression on the site are associated with political participation among a diverse online sample of American adults. Results show that social and entertainment expressive Facebook use are indirectly associated with political participation through political communication in the form of interactive political expression on the site. In addition, findings demonstrate that social expressive use is also conducive to political participation via offline political talk, but entertainment expressive use is not significantly related to political talk in offline settings. Further analysis shows that the interactions between political interest and each of the expressive uses are largely insignificantly related to political communication and participation. Overall, the study’s findings help to clarify the distinctions between the two types of nonpolitical Facebook use and the underlying process by which these uses contribute to political participation.     

Drivers of social media fatigue: A systematic review

With a large amount of time spent on social media platforms, more and more people are suffering from social media fatigue. The concept of social media fatigue refers to a host of negative emotional responses to activities on social networking sites, such as tiredness, burnout, exhaustion, frustration, disinterest toward communication. Since research on social media fatigue is still nascent, the goal of this paper is to provide an empirical landscape of this field through a systematic literature review. A systematic literature search and screening process were considered and a final sample of 40 articles were included. First, this review presents the research contexts of the included studies such as geographical location, sample characteristics, data collection method, and the like. Second, it identifies drivers of social media fatigue and categorizes them into three conceptual levels: individual, relational, and environmental. Results of this systematic review outline several key directions for future research. Also, it contributes to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of how social media fatigue arises. Finally, identifying factors influencing fatigue helps social media service providers and health professionals to propose relevant intervention strategies to mitigate this phenomenon.     

Instagram versus Snapchat: Self-expression and privacy concern on social media

With the increasing popularity of image-based social networking applications (apps), such as Snapchat and Instagram, social media users express multifaceted aspects of their self-concept online, while remaining concerned about privacy issues. This study investigates the determinants behind the choice to use a social networking site (SNS) platform and predicts that the type of self an individual wants to express through the platform and their level of privacy concerns will play an important role in this choice. A total of 547 SNS users completed an online survey. Expression of multiple aspects of the self – true, actual, and ideal self – and online privacy concerns were empirically tested as the key determinants of SNS platform choice. The findings show that the expression of true and actual self are significant determinants for using Snapchat as a primary SNS, whereas the expression of ideal self and greater privacy concerns are associated with active Instagram use. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and recommend future research.     

Social media and internet public events

Contemporary China is experiencing deeper reform and social transformation. The newly born social media have participated in the historical process of China’s reform and social change. Based on the existing literature of social media and internet public events, this article aims to study China’s internet public events through the perspective of social transformation theory, especially theories of the civic society and public sphere. This study has used case study to explore the role that social media play in social change in China through in-depth analysis of 57 typical cases. We found that social media are not only an important information source and means for online civil mobilization, but also provide citizens an open and free space for discussion of internet public events. The impact of social media in promoting social change was reflected in the supervision of governmental, judiciary and other public power; maintenance of justice and protection of disadvantaged groups; attracting the government’s attention, urging governmental information publicity and investigation of the events, and promoting social management innovation and institutional change. Social media are a helpful force in the construction of internet public sphere and civil society of contemporary China. Meanwhile, it is necessary to be cautious that social media is also likely to be a breeding ground for nationalist and populist discourses.