• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2014

Fashion leadership is divided into visual influence, linguistic influence, and dual leadership. We refer to people exercising such influential power as fashion innovators, fashion opinion leaders, and fashion double leaders, respectively. Scholars and marketers have raised continuous questions on this issue: who are these fashion leaders and what characteristics do they have? In this study, social network analysis is applied to grasp the existence of three types of fashion leaders in college clubs, examine their positions in fashion process networks and investigate their individual and social characteristics. For this study, three college clubs were recruited through convenience sampling and surveyed online. Peer nomination questions for structuring fashion process networks and self-evaluation questions for measuring personal characteristics are included. Two fashion networks, an opinion leadership network and an innovativeness network, embrace four to six leaders and illustrate similar structure patterns in the three groups, which indicates that dual leaders enjoyed the lion's share in college clubs. The number of fashion innovators tends to be fewer compared to that of fashion opinion leaders, and we infer that peer relationship appears to intervene with fashion opinion leadership. Other personal characteristics supporting results from previous studies are also confirmed in this study.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.432-452
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• 2020

This study explored the representation of risks from the controversial Lynas rare earth refining as a risk event by five Malaysian online mainstream and alternative newspapers using qualitative content analysis. The aim is to uncover the role of the news media in the social amplification and attenuation of risks within the literature evidence as those roles are still uncertain. Content analysis is used to explore the online newspapers' roles guided by the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF). The representations typified environmental, financial, health, occupational, property, radioactive, and technological risks and established connections between four risk types (environmental, financial, radioactive, and health risks). Radioactive risk was repeatedly associated with other risks, suggesting that the volume and information flow focused on radioactive risk as a key ingredient for amplification. This connection shows that the nature of the relationship between risks is multidimensional, contradicting the unidirectional type found in previous studies. Alternative online newspapers amplified and attenuated more risks, thus, providing more diverse coverage than mainstream sources. Consequently, this study provides evidence that risk representation from rare earth refining in a digital news environment is multidimensional and intensified or weakened in a multi-layered pattern. The stakeholders are engaged in a contestation by positioning their narratives to oppose or support their interests, which are amplified or attenuated by the online newspapers as social amplification stations.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.393-406
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• 2020

The discourse on the lockdown in Indonesia is getting stronger due to the increasing number of positive cases of the coronavirus and the death rate. As of August 12, 2020, the confirmed number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia reached 130,718. There were 85,798 victims who have recovered and 5,903 who have died. Data show a significant increase in cases of COVID-19 every day. For this reason, there needs to be an evaluation of the government policy of the Republic of Indonesia in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. An evaluation of policies for handling the pandemic must include public opinion to determine any weaknesses of this policy. The development of public opinion about the lockdown policy can be understood through social media. During the COVID-19 pandemic, measuring public opinion through traditional methods (surveys) was difficult. For this reason, we utilized big data on social media as research data. The main purpose of this study is to understand public opinion on the lockdown policy in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. The things observed included: volume of Twitter users, top influencers, top tweets, and communication networks between Twitter users. For the methodological development of future public opinion research, the researchers outline the obstacles faced in researching public opinion based on big data from Twitter. The research results show that the lockdown policy is an interesting issue, as evidenced by the number of active users (79,502) forming 133,209 networks. Posts about the lockdown on Twitter continued to increase after the implementation of the lockdown policy on April 10, 2020. The lockdown policy has caused various reactions, seen from the word analysis showing 14.8% positive sentiment, 17.5% negative, and 67.67% non-categorized words. Sources of information who have played the roles of top influencers regarding the lockdown policy include: Jokowi (the president of the Republic of Indonesia), online media, television media, government departments, and governors. Based on the analysis of the network structure, it shows that Jokowi has a central role in controlling the lockdown policy. Several challenges were found in this study: 1) choosing keywords for downloading data, 2) categorizing words containing public opinion sentiment, and 3) determining the sample size.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.217-231
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• 2014

This study begins with a review of commonly discussed dimensions of public risk perception that may influence public opinion toward risks. Factors that have been revealed by the literature to have substantial impact on risk perception, such as demographic background, trust, and media environment, are also discussed. Meanwhile, we evaluate two well-known research models in the realm of risk analysis: 1) the psychometric paradigm, and 2) the social amplification of risk framework (SARF). Based on a literature review, this study suggests that, besides the psychological and social approach, models of risk perception and risk communication research should shift to a more comprehensive one by considering the interrelations between laypeople and the environment. This study proposes a research model from the perspective of social cognitive theory (SCT) as a potential framework for future studies: 1) in the societal environment, individuals' risk perception and information seeking behavior, which is determined by risk perception will be influenced by trust in regulators and interpersonal trust; 2) in the media environment, individuals' risk perception and information seeking behavior will be influenced by individuals' perceived information characteristics. Knowledge about risk accumulated through information seeking will change risk perception in a longitudinal process.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.127-146
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• 2013

The online social networking services (SNS) have been growing as the means of communication. In this study, we investigated word-of-mouth (WOM) effect under the SNS environment and evaluated the impact of message sender's influence on the WOM effect. Especially, this study focused on the betweenness centrality calculated through the social network analysis (SNA) of SNS network information, and proposed it as the measure of WOM message sender's influence, SNA may provide more accurate and objective measures than subjective self-reporting survey method. Fifty-one Facebook users responded to each of their four Facebook friends, who had been selected based on their betweenness centrality, Statistical analyses were performed using the responses and the betweenness centralities of the Facebook friends. The results showed that the direction (positive vs, negative) of a WOM message in SNS had an impact on the attitude of the message receiver toward the product. Moreover, the betweenness centrality of the message sender as well as his/her opinion leadership had a moderating effect on the WOM effect. Opinion leadership is a measure that has been frequently used for indicating the influence of WOM message sender in the previous studies. Considering the result that the betweenness centrality of the message sender was Significantly correlated to his/her opinion leadership, the betweenness centrality can be used for indicating the influence of WOM message sender.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.197-202
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• 2012

This study has been carried out to confirm public opinion on city restoration project, to suggest basic direction of future city restoration, and to suggest improvement polices, and finally, to grow as self-supporting social enterprises rehabilitating local economy to stabilize themselves as a model for job creation. In this study, we reviewed city restoration projects and suggested successive model by collecting various policy data for regional social service linking them with social enterprises, and for social job creation, based on city restoration projects.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.43
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• pp.314-358
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• 2008

This study examined how the meaning of news stories covering the split of national opinion was constructed in the media to represent social conflicts. To clarify the function of the term 'split of national opinion' as an ultimate term, this study examined the meaning of the term in the context of both text and society. Ten newspapers were included in the content analysis. The frequency of words used for the purpose of metaphor and equivalent in describing the split of national opinion was calculated to determine their meaning in the textual context. The frequency of incidents and subjects involved in allegedly causing the split of national opinion was calculated to determine their meaning in the social context. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, the term 'split of national opinion' was coined by the newspapers as a metaphor of disease, disaster, and cost. The attitudes or the ways in which the split of national opinion was dealt with were generally negative and passive. Second, the term 'split of national opinion' was dealt with an equivalent status of such terms as national policy, national loss, societal problems, and ideology. Third, each newspaper reported that the split of national opinion had been caused by certain subjects, which indicates that each newspaper had its own position of viewing who was the key player in splitting the national opinion. The implication was also discussed that the use of the ultimate term would incur the unbalance of power between participants and the existing players, which would make individuals or groups who were involved in the social actions excluded and make the newspapers exercise the rhetorical power as news media.

• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• v.73 no.10
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• pp.1406-1409
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• 2018

We have frequently encountered the rapid changes that prevalent opinion of the social community is toppled by a new and opposite opinion against the pre-exiting one. To understand this interesting process, mean-field model with infinite-interaction range has been mostly considered in previous studies S. A. Marvel et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 118702 (2012). However, the mean-field interaction range is lack of reality in the sense that any individual cannot interact with all of the others in the community. Based on it, in the present work, we consider a simple model of opinion consensus so-called basic model on the low-dimensional lattices (d = 1, 2) with finite interaction range. The model consists of four types of subpopulations with different opinions: A, B, AB, and the zealot of A denoted by $A_c$, following the basic model shown in the work by S. A. Marvel et al.. Comparing with their work, we consider the finite range of the interaction, and particularly reconstruct the lattice structure by adding new links when the two individuals have the distance < ${\sigma}$. We explore how the interaction range ${\sigma}$ affects the opinion consensus process on the reconstructed lattice structure. We find that the critical fraction of population for $A_c$ required for the opinion consensus on A shows different behaviors in the small and large interaction ranges. Especially, the critical fraction for $A_c$ increases with the size of ${\sigma}$ in the region of small interaction range, which is counter-intuitive: When the interaction range is increased, not only the number of nodes affected by $A_c$ but also that affected by B grows, which is believed to cause the increasing behavior of the critical fraction for $A_c$. We also present the difference of dynamic process to the opinion consensus between the regions of small and large interaction ranges.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.90-102
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• 2014

By integrating useful insights from social cognitive theory and social capital theory, we aim to develop a model for better understanding people's behaviors related to the use of social networking sites (SNSs) and formalize the role of social capital in individuals' continuous SNS use. Propositions that emphasize the triadic interactive relationships among environmental, personal, and behavioral factors were highlighted in this study. After reviewing previous studies, in this paper we proposed the following: (1) the causation between SNS use and individuals' perceived social capital might be mutual; social capital may not only be the result of media selectivity, but could also be an essential stimulus initiating the start of using SNSs; (2) the influences of SNSs use on the generation of individuals' online social capital might be conditional upon particular patterns of use; (3) both the level of dependence on SNSs and the differentiated patterns of SNSs use vary according to individuals' perceived offline social capital and their personal characteristics, for instance, personality or self-construal, and social anxiety.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.777-792
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• 2018

As social media has become a part of daily life, new types of online opinion leaders are emerging, and in turn, changes in traditional fashion leaders and leadership are expected. Considering such changes, this study attempted to reexamine fashion leader types and influence characteristics from the perspective of college students as fashion followers. Students were asked to write an essay identifying their fashion leader and how and why they were influenced by him or her. Sixty essays entitled "My Fashion Leader" were collected and content-analyzed. A total of 78 fashion leaders were identified and categorized into four types including celebrities, social media influencers, friends/family/acquaintances, and people seen on the street in order of frequency. Influence characteristics of the identified fashion leaders included superiority, role model, similarity, and familiarity. Similarity was observed across all types of fashion leaders, while superiority and familiarity were identified for celebrities and friends/family/acquaintances, respectively. The results imply that celebrities, mostly those from the TV, movie, and music industries, are still important as fashion leaders in society regardless of their communication style, while friends/family/acquaintances as opinion leaders within a consumer group are important to provide information, advice, and help. However, social media influencers between the two groups are expanding the influence.