• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.59-77
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• 2015

Social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, provide abundant social comparison opportunities. Given the widespread use of SNSs, the purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of exposure to social media-based social comparison on user's negative emotions and discontinuous use intention on SNS. We present evidence that under the use of SNS, social comparison activities diverge into three patterns, with explicit self-evaluation desire made against similar target (lateral comparison), self-defense desire made against less fortunate target (downward comparison), and self-enhancement desire made with more fortunate target (upward comparison). Such social comparison processes frequently arise, as people are increasingly using on SNSs, the downward contacts ameliorating self-esteem with positive emotions, but the upward contacts and standard contacts with lateral status enabling a person to compare his or her situation with others and simultaneously increase negative emotions due to its differences with others. In other words, as people increasingly relying on SNSs for a variety of everyday tasks, they risk overexposure to upward or standard social comparison information that may have a cumulative detrimental impact on future intention on SNS use. This study with survey with 209 SNS users found that these negative emotions lead to negative fatigue (attitude) and then discontinuous use intention (behavior) on SNS. Our findings are among the first to explicitly examine discontinuous use intention on SNS using social comparison theory and our results are consistent with those of past research showing that upward social comparisons can be detrimental.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.24-34
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• 2021

The popularity of social networking sites (SNS) has facilitated communication between users. The usage of SNS helps users in their daily life in various ways such as sharing of opinions, keeping in touch with old friends, making new friends, and getting information. However, some users misuse SNS to belittle or hurt others using profanities, which is typical in cyberbullying incidents. Thus, in this study, we aim to identify profane words from the ASKfm corpus to analyze the profane word distribution across four different roles involved in cyberbullying based on lexicon dictionary. These four roles are: harasser, victim, bystander that assists the bully, and bystander that defends the victim. Evaluation in this study focused on occurrences of the profane word for each role from the corpus. The top 10 common words used in the corpus are also identified and represented in a graph. Results from the analysis show that these four roles used profane words in their conversation with different weightage and distribution, even though the profane words used are mostly similar. The harasser is the first ranked that used profane words in the conversation compared to other roles. The results can be further explored and considered as a potential feature in a cyberbullying detection model using a machine learning approach. Results in this work will contribute to formulate the suitable representation. It is also useful in modeling a cyberbullying detection model based on the identification of profane word distribution across different cyberbullying roles in social networks for future works.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.105-125
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• 2017

Although the relationship between social networking sites (SNS) use and performance has been widely studied, most of these studies have focused on comparing the SNS users' overall performance with that of non-SNS users instead of examining how using SNS midway of a task affects one's task performance. To address this research gap, an experiment was conducted to examine SNS use during a task and its influence on the performance of that task. In this experiment, the role of SNS in various situations was examined by reviewing the literature on break and performance as well as the types of breaks and tasks. Owing to its exploratory nature, this study used various types of data, such as electroencephalography interpretation data generated from a brain-computer interface, self-reported data, and data recorded by a computer. Those participants who used SNS showed an improved performance compared with those who took a short break while doing a simple task. Further analysis showed that the degree of SNS usage and engagement with SNS had positive effects on the participants' simple task performance, while social presence and reassurance of self-worth had negative and positive effects on the participants' complex task performance, respectively.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.251-263
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• 2018

As mobile shopping has increased in the new media age, fashion consumers' decision making and product consumption processes have changed. The volume of consumer-driven information has expanded since media and social networking sites have enabled consumers to share information they obtain. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors affecting information searching strategies and information sharing about fashion products. An online survey collected data from 466 respondents, relating to the influence of product price level and consumer SNS commitment level on information search and information sharing. Experimental design of three product price level and two consumer SNS commitment level was used. Analysis of the data identified factors in fashion information searching as ongoing searching, prepurchase web portal information search, and prepurchase marketing information search. For low-price fashion products, prepurchase product-detail influenced intention to share information. For mid-priced products, ongoing search significantly affected intention to share information. Both ongoing search and prepurchase marketing information search showed significant effects for high-price products. Consumers who are more committed to SNS engaged in significantly more searching in all aspects of information search factors. Significant interaction effect was detected for consumer SNS commitment level and product price level. When consumers with low consumer SNS commitment search for information on lower-priced fashion products, they are less likely do a prepurchase web portal information search.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.88-103
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• 2017

The rapid growth in the popularity of social media sites has meant that social media has become an important communication channel for brands. Brands create brand pages on social media to cultivate positive and strong relationships with consumers. This study seeks to enhance our understanding of how fashion brand pages in social media foster consumer-brand relationships by exploring the factors that affect the development of consumer-brand relationships. Drawing on the parasocial interaction theory, this study proposes parasocial interaction as a key factor of this process. Specifically, this study proposes four antecedents (vividness, interactivity, social presence, and focused attention) of consumers' parasocial interaction with brand pages, which further affects consumer responses in terms of affective engagement and brand loyalty. An online survey was administered with consumers who have followed and visited at least one fashion brand page via a social networking site (SNS). Structural equation modeling revealed that consumers' perceptions of vividness, interactivity, social presence, and focused attention on a fashion brand page positively affected their feelings towards parasocial interaction with the brand page, which in turn led to their affective engagement with the brand page and consequent brand loyalty. These findings suggest that consumers build relationships of varying degrees with brand pages in a similar manner to that with people, which leads to their development of a positive relationship with the brand. This study concludes with discussions and practical implications.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.73-89
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• 2014

Everyone has a voice and can broadcast it to the world. We hear about the old maxim of media do not tell people what to think but what to think about. Under this theory or approach, a key function of political communication is to make the public think about an issue in a way that is favorable to the sender of the message. In a democracy, political communication is seen as crucial for the building of a society where the state and its people feel they are connected. Thus, this is a study on how social media (e.g., Facebook, blogs, and YouTube) were used in the domain of Malaysian politics during the 13th general election campaigning period in order to set the agenda to form public opinion. The study found that Facebook was the most popular social media tool that political parties actively engaged with during the 13th general election campaign period. Apart from that, issues pertaining to the election were significantly highlighted by the political parties in social media, especially Facebook. However, other issues that were also important to the people such as the economy, crime, and education were not sufficiently highlighted during the election campaign period. This indicates that the political parties influence the public on what to think about using social media.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.701-711
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• 2017

This research aimed to understand selfie behavior in social networking sites (SNSs). The research was conducted on the basis of the functional theories of attitude, verified self-presentation attitude, and self-expression attitude that affect selfie behaviors (i.e., taking selfies, posting selfies, and taking selfies for fashion product exposure). The moderating effect of satisfaction toward one's appearance was identified. The participants of the study were SNS users aged 20-30 years who had posted selfies in the past month. A survey was performed using an online panel of an international survey firm. The data were analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis on SPSS 22.0. Results corroborated that self-expression attitude affected the number of selfies taken but not the number of selfies posted and those uploaded for fashion product exposure. Self-presentation attitude exerted a significant effect on the number of selfies posted and those uploaded for fashion product exposure. When satisfaction toward one's appearance was high, self-presentation attitude increased the influence of the behaviors of posting selfies and uploading selfies for fashion product exposure. Self-expression attitude also significantly influenced the number of selfies taken due to the moderating effect of satisfaction toward one's appearance. This research was made meaningful by its quantitative analysis of selfie behavior in SNSs. The results confirmed the different functions of attitudes affecting selfie behavior. With the improved understanding of selfie behavior obtained from this research, Social Media marketing may be carried out in various industrial fields in the future.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.108 no.1
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• pp.97-108
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• 2019

In a situation where production of short-term income forestry products has been stagnant or decreased in recent years, the government or related agencies are trying to promote consumption of short-term income forest products. While consumer sentiment studies on short-term income forestry are being conducted as part of efforts to encourage consumption, most of the studies rely solely on a survey-based method. In the information age, consumer sentiment toward consumer goods is reflected mostly on social networking sites due to the spread of the Internet. It is necessary to avoid relying solely on a survey-based method in existing research and directly analyze social networking sites that reflect consumers' wishes. In response, this study identified consumer preferences for major short-term income forest products through social big data analyses and used the results to establish strategies for promoting the sale of short-term income forest products. This paper is different from previous research using only a survey-based method, and it uses SNS to understand consumer preferences. The results of this study are expected to directly help the government or related agencies promote consumption of short-term income forest products and, ultimately, help improve forest-related income and promote healthy forest condition.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.165-170
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to explore the differences in sentiment on social networking sites among six languages (English, German, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Dutch). A total of 204 million tweets were collected using Streaming API. Subjective/objective ratio, sentiment strength, positive/negative ratio, number of retweets and boundary impermeability were analyzed with SentiStrength to estimate the trends of emotional expression via Twitter. The results showed that subjective/objective ratio and the positive/negative ratio of tweets were significantly different by languages (p<0.001). And, there were significant effects of language on sentiment strength, boundary impermeability and the number of retweets (p<0.001). The results also indicate that the cross-cultural, language differences should be taken into account in sentiment analysis on SNS.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.493-511
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• 2011

This study investigate the impacts of Chinese consumers' cultural dispositions on the WOM behaviors in SNS. Specifically, cultural dispositions in the individual-level, collectivism and uncertainty avoidance, were examined as potential predictors of eWOM behaviors in SNSs. Hypotheses are tested with a sample of 164 university students in Shanghai, China. The results of the structural equation analysis reveal that chinese consumers' collectivism in the individual-level positively affects the opinion seeking behavior. And chinese consumers' uncertainty avoidance in the individual-level positively affects the opinion seeking behavior and negatively affects the opinion giving behavior. Lastly, the opinion giving behavior positively affects the pass along behavior. Theoretical and managerial implications for Internet marketers in China were presented and discussed.