Individual characteristics influencing the sharing of knowledge on social networking services: online identity,self-efficacy,and knowledge sharing intentions

ABSTRACT

Social media have become an important place for individuals with similar interests to exchange opinions and share resources. Ubiquitous collaborative learning environments in SNS have great educational and organisational potential and offer a platform for sharing knowledge. Rising interest in personal factors in knowledge management research calls for a better understanding of how knowledge is shared in SNS-based collaborative learning. Grounded on the theories of planned behaviour and social identity, this study investigates individual characteristics that affect the sharing of knowledge in SNS learning communities. The study also examines whether intent to share knowledge mediates those personal characteristics and sharing of knowledge. Eighty individuals from five active Facebook groups participated in this study. The findings indicate that individual characteristics, such as online personal identity, web-specific self-efficacy, and knowledge-creation self-efficacy significantly predict sharing of knowledge. In addition, intent to share knowledge mediates between the sharing of knowledge and online identity, web-specific self-efficacy, or knowledge-creation self-efficacy. The results reveal a need for customised support and environmental design focusing on online personal identity, web-specific self-efficacy, knowledge-creation self-efficacy, and intent to share knowledge in a knowledge-sharing community on SNS. Implications for the SNS communities and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Persuasive social features that promote knowledge sharing among tertiary students on social networking sites: An empirical study

Persuasive system features have been widely adopted to encourage attitude and behaviour change. Recently, most social networking sites (SNS) adopt some form of persuasive system features that leverage social influence to deliberately induce prescribed behaviours in their users. However, studies on how these features can be used to promote knowledge sharing are inadequate; particularly, regarding how SNS that have been developed solely for academic purposes can adopt these features to promote knowledge sharing. To address this knowledge gap, this study integrates constructs from the social capital theory and persuasive systems design model to investigate the impact of persuasive social features on knowledge sharing among students of tertiary institutions on academic social networking sites. Data are quantitatively gathered from 218 respondents from tertiary institutions and statistically analyzed. The results suggest that perceived dialogue support and perceived social support have strong influences on knowledge sharing behaviour.     

Information sharing on social media sites

This study reports on an exploratory survey conducted to investigate the use of social media technologies for sharing information. This paper explores the issue of credibility of the information shared in the context of computer-mediated communication. Four categories of information were explored: sensitive, sensational, political and casual information, across five popular social media technologies: social networking sites, micro-blogging sites, wikis, online forums, and online blogs. One hundred and fourteen active users of social media technologies participated in the study. The exploratory analysis conducted in this study revealed that information producers use different cues to indicate credibility of the information they share on different social media sites. Organizations can leverage findings from this study to improve targeted engagement with their customers. The operationalization of how information credibility is codified by information producers contributes to knowledge in social media research.     

Queer identity online: Informal learning and teaching experiences of LGBTQ individuals on social media

In this study, we explored how social media, particularly social networking sites, serve as informal learning environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and otherwise-identified (LGBTQ) individuals during formative stages of their evolving LGBTQ identity. We conducted semi-structured interviews (N = 33) probing LGBTQ individuals’ use of social media and identified three educational uses tied to online information seeking: traditional learning (e.g., information seeking about LGBTQ-related issues), social learning (e.g., observing role models or other LGBTQ individuals’ behavior and experiences), and experiential learning (e.g., experimenting with online dating sites and dating apps). These experiences were especially common during the coming out process. Participants also reported a fourth educational function, teaching (e.g., sharing information with others about their experiences as an LGBTQ individual). Teaching was more common among individuals who were out and those with less common identities (e.g., asexual and transgender). Several affordances of social media, including visibility, association, persistence, anonymity, and interactivity enabled these learning experiences.     

Community building among deaf and hard of hearing people by using written language on social networking sites

Since D/deaf and hard-of-hearing users of social networking sites (SNSs) may have communication specificities in comparison to hearing people, we proposed a model for understanding what factors affect building online communities. The model includes written language skills, the frequency of written communication, online Deaf and hearing identity, and the tendency for community building. One-hundred-and-sixty-two German D/deaf and hard-of-hearing users completed an online questionnaire in German sign and written language. Evaluation of the model with structural equation modelling revealed three main findings. Firstly, identification with the hearing online world has a positive effect on written language skills, the frequency of written communication on SNSs and indirectly on the tendency to build online communities. Secondly, the frequency of written communication has a positive effect on the tendency to build community. Thirdly, a positive effect of online Deaf identity on the frequency of written communication was found. Our findings may aid in understanding that, despite possible technological constraints, both D/deaf and hard-of-hearing people communicate on SNSs in written language more frequently due to their identification either with the Deaf or hearing online world which results in an increased tendency to build online communities.     

The roles of media capabilities of smartphone-based SNS in developing social capital

Smartphone-based social networking service (SNS) is widely used as a key social platform that promotes users to build and maintain interpersonal relationships. However, little is known about the main characteristics of smartphone-based SNS that strengthen social relationships. By combining studies of mediated-communication namely, media richness and social presence with the social capital theory, this study proposes that the advanced media capabilities of smartphone-based SNS enable users to develop bridging and bonding social capital. Moreover, the study suggests that advanced media richness increases social presence referring to the feeling of being connected with others in virtual environments. As a key outcome of social capital in the context of smartphone-based SNS use, user satisfaction is considered. The results indicate that first, media richness and social presence, which represent media capabilities of smartphone-based SNS, greatly increase bridging and bonding social capital. Second, media richness enhances social presence in the context of smartphone-based SNS use. Finally, bridging and bonding social capital are key determinants of user satisfaction with smartphone-based SNS. Discussion and implications on the results are presented.     

Utopian social media

Inspired by the work on utopia of Ruth Levitas, and drawing on narrative inquiry and arts-based research methods, this paper presents the result of a series of social media utopia-making workshops where regular users of social media were invited to discuss the things that bother them and propose alternatives to the visions of control and manipulation that fill our reality and the research horizon. The paper is a combination of academic/methodological discourse and creative writing fuelled by the workshop results.     

Consuming,sharing, and creating content: How young students use new social media in and outside school

This survey study investigated 186 secondary 2–5 school students from two schools to understand how and why they used new social media both in and outside of school to consume, share, and create content. It found that whereas students tend to consume and share more social media content outside of school they create more in school. Perceived importance of sharing content with peers or others is the most significant predictor having positive impact on all social media activities, both in and outside school. However, the negative impact of self-regulation ability on outside school social media activities implies the conscientiousness of their social media engagement, which calls for a further investigation on the quality of the social media content.     

Examining the impact of social media advertising using ANOVA analysis

Social media has become a significant part of daily life and nowadays it has started to turn out to be common practice for consumers and companies to employ social media to form, establish, and connect relationships. In addition, social media is based on web and mobile-based technologies for creating highly interactive paradigms by which communities and individuals co-create, share, modify and discuss user-generated content. However, it is never easy for businesses to create social media advertising that attracts people and encourages them to buy their products. This article intends to present a statistical analysis that focuses on social media marketing among people of different ages. Six categories—personal profile, usage, assessment, higher-order data, trustworthiness, and elements of social media ads—are included in the analysis of social media marketing. The initial phase focuses on questionnaire preparation depending on social media advertising. Subsequently, the planned questionnaire is collected from diverse respondents at various educational levels utilizing a Google form. Then, these respondents' responses are collected for examination. To determine whether the outcomes of the experiment are meaningful, the evaluation in this piece of study is based on an ANOVA analysis.     

Demographic and psychosocial variables associated with good and bad perceptions of social media use

Social Exchange Theory suggests that adults evaluate good and bad consequences of social relationships they experience, so the present study expected them to also report good and bad perceptions of social media, with perceptions varying according to demographic and psychosocial characteristics. Study participants included 201 working adults (74.6% women; 90.0% Caucasian; mean age = 44.8 years) who completed online surveys to report demographics (gender, age, children, work hours, health problems), psychosocial variables (anger, self-esteem, job satisfaction, family support, friend support), and perceptions of good and bad consequences of using social media. ANCOVAs to examine demographic variables revealed that good perceptions of social media were most reported by younger individuals, and bad perceptions of social media were reported most by younger individuals and those with health problems. Multiple regression analyses to examine psychosocial variables revealed that good perceptions of social media were reported most by angry individuals with strong friend support, and bad perceptions of social media were reported most by angry individuals with low self-esteem. One interpretation of present results is that individuals use social media as a coping behavior to release anger and gather social support, although it may also produce social criticism, feeling left out, and reduced self-esteem.     

Generating timeline summaries with social media attention

Timeline generation is an important research task which can help users to have a quick understanding of the overall evolution of one given topic. Previous methods simply split the time span into fixed, equal time intervals without studying the role of the evolutionary patterns of the underlying topic in timeline generation. In addition, few of these methods take users’ collective interests into considerations to generate timelines.We consider utilizing social media attention to address these two problems due to the facts: 1) social media is an important pool of real users’ collective interests; 2) the information cascades generated in it might be good indicators for boundaries of topic phases. Employing Twitter as a basis, we propose to incorporate topic phases and user’s collective interests which are learnt from social media into a unified timeline generation algorithm.We construct both one informativeness-oriented and three interestingness-oriented evaluation sets over five topics.We demonstrate that it is very effective to generate both informative and interesting timelines. In addition, our idea naturally leads to a novel presentation of timelines, i.e., phase based timelines, which can potentially improve user experience.     

The effect of communication and social motives on E-government services through social media groups

ABSTRACT

E-government on social media has received much attention lately. Despite a recent call for further research into social interaction and communication aspects of e-government on social media, there is still limited empirical evidence regarding why individuals participate in the social aspect of e-government services and how that relates to their expectations and satisfactions. The present work addresses this gap by extending the Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT) to study communication and social interactions in government Facebook groups. The results show that communication quality and responsiveness are two key elements that contribute to the perceived level of usefulness. These two variables together with social interaction had a statistically significant effect on the overall confirmation of expectations. Perceived usefulness and satisfaction predict continuance use intention of e-government social networking services with satisfaction influencing such intention more than perceived usefulness. Further multi-group analyses show that generational difference and usage frequency moderates the relationships of the extended model. Managerial implications are provided.     

Diffusion of knowledge in social media networks: effects of reputation mechanisms and distribution of knowledge roles

Social media platforms serve as important tools for diffusing knowledge within organizations. The factors affecting knowledge diffusion through social media networks (SMNs) need to therefore be better understood. Accordingly, this paper focuses on two SMN‐specific characteristics – reputation mechanisms and the distribution of knowledge roles – which are argued to enhance and enable, respectively, the smooth transfer of knowledge in a SMN. To examine their effects, we distinguish between two types of reputation mechanisms – adaptive and objective – and across three distinct knowledge roles in SMNs: seekers, contributors and brokers. We argue that the extent of knowledge diffusion in the SMN depends on the type of mechanism and the relative distribution of these three roles. Using data collected through an agent‐based simulation, we find that (a) the distribution of knowledge roles affects knowledge diffusion, with distributions consisted of more brokers outperforming others and (b) objective reputation mechanisms outperform adaptive mechanisms. Furthermore, we find that reputation mechanisms and distribution of knowledge roles interact to influence knowledge diffusion. The study's implications for future research and practice are discussed in the light of its limitations. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Branding with social media: User gratifications,usage patterns,and brand message content strategies

The emergence of social media provides a new platform for developing brand–consumer relationships. The aim of the current study is to examine the differences in Chinese users’ gratifications of different social media and the impact of brand content strategies on the quality of brand–consumer communication via social media. In the first study, 209 SNS and 161 microblog users were surveyed. Five dimensions of social media gratifications emerged from the factor analysis. Significant differences in the strengths of gratifications were found between SNS and microblog users. Usage patterns of SNS and microblog are analyzed and compared. In the second study, we examined the impact of users’ gratification and the type of social media on the effectiveness of different brand content strategies through a two-week experiment involving 60 SNS users and 61 microblog users. Implications for developing branding strategies on different social media platforms are discussed.     

My mom's on Facebook: an evaluation of information sharing depth in social networking

Information sharing in social networking sites (SNSs) provides users the opportunity to maintain relationships and express themselves. However, users share information with a heterogeneous audience with varied expectations. As a result, various social spheres may influence the information individuals share or their decision to share at all. The current research describes dimensions of information in terms of horizontal and vertical information sharing. Previous research has demonstrated the salience of social spheres with conflicting norms for SNS users. We build on previous research by exploring the effects of social spheres on the depth of information shared by SNS users. Students from a university in the USA and South Korea were interviewed to understand their perceptions of information sharing and the influence social spheres have on the depth of information they provide. We found that conflicting social spheres influence the depth of information provided when a user posts to their SNS and that impression management plays a key role.     

The effects of network sharing on knowledge-sharing activities and job performance in enterprise social media environments

This study examines the influence of the tertius iungens orientation on knowledge-sharing activities and individual job performance within enterprise social media environments. The empirical analysis reveals that knowledge self-efficacy, social interaction ties, and the norm of reciprocity positively influence the tertius iungens orientation and knowledge-sharing activities in social media, while enjoyment of helping does not have a significant influence. In addition, the tertius iungens orientation has a significant impact on knowledge-sharing activities in social media, which in turn influences individual job performance. Based on the results of this analysis, this study discusses the research findings and proposes theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as the research's limitations.     

News sharing in social media: The effect of gratifications and prior experience

Recent events indicate that sharing news in social media has become a phenomenon of increasing social, economic and political importance because individuals can now participate in news production and diffusion in large global virtual communities. Yet, knowledge about factors influencing news sharing in social media remains limited. Drawing from the uses and gratifications (U&G) and social cognitive theories (SCT), this study explored the influences of information seeking, socializing, entertainment, status seeking and prior social media sharing experience on news sharing intention. A survey was designed and administered to 203 students in a large local university. Results from structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that respondents who were driven by gratifications of information seeking, socializing, and status seeking were more likely to share news in social media platforms. Prior experience with social media was also a significant determinant of news sharing intention. Implications and directions for future work are discussed.     

Applying a critical approach to investigate barriers to digital inclusion and online social networking among young people with disabilities

Despite the seeming ubiquity of young people's Internet use, there are still many for whom access to the Internet and online social networking remains inequitable and patterned by disadvantage. The connection between information technology and young people with disabilities is particularly under‐researched. This article contributes to the field of critical information systems research by exposing significant barriers and facilitators to Internet accessibility for young people with disabilities. It uses Bourdieu's critical theory to explore how the unequal distribution of resources shapes processes of digital inclusion for young people with disabilities. It highlights access needs and experiences that are both disability and non‐disability related. The article draws on interviews in South Australia with 18 young people aged 10–18 years with a physical disability (such as cerebral palsy) or acquired brain injury and with 17 of their family members. Interviews evaluated participants' and parents' reflections on the benefits of a home‐based, goal‐oriented intervention to increase the young person's Internet use for social participation purposes. The Bourdieuian analysis demonstrated how varying levels of accrued individual and family offline capital resources are related to digital/online resources and disability‐specific online resources. This revealed how unequal resources of capital can influence technology use and hence digital inclusion for young people with disabilities. Our study demonstrates that young people with particular types of disabilities require intensive, personalised and long‐term support from within and beyond the family to ‘get online’. We conclude that Internet studies need to more frequently adopt critical approaches to investigate the needs of users and barriers to information technology use within sub‐groups, such as young people with disabilities. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Prediction of postpartum depression using machine learning techniques from social media text

Early screening of mental disorders plays a crucial role in diagnosis and treatment. This study explores how data‐driven methods can leverage the information available on social media platforms to predict postpartum depression (PPD). A generalized approach is proposed where linguistic features are extracted from user‐generated textual posts on social media and categorized as general, depressive, and PPD representative using multiple machine learning techniques. We find that techniques used in our study exhibit strong predictive capabilities for PPD content. Holdout validation showed that multilayer perceptron outperformed other techniques such as support vector machine and logistic regression used in this study with 91.7% accuracy for depressive content identification and up to 86.9% accuracy for PPD content prediction. This work adopts a hierarchical approach to predict PPD. Therefore, the reported PPD accuracy represents the performance of the model to correctly classify PPD content from non‐PPD depressive content.