A model for understanding new media literacy: Epistemological beliefs and social media use

New media literacy (NML) skills are regarded as crucial for the 21st century. However, there is limited research on the factors affecting NML skills. A robust model was built for exploring the antecedents of NML. The model incorporated epistemological beliefs and social media use purposes. Individuals` purposes of social media use were found to have an effect on beliefs about information. Further, interactional and communicational use of social media makes epistemological beliefs more sophisticated. However, it is more likely to have naïve beliefs with the use of social media for making new friends. Also, the purposes of social media use and epistemological beliefs affect NML skills. Accordingly, interactional use of social media might contribute to justifying information, in turn, increasing NML skills. This study indicates that knowledge of social media use and epistemological beliefs enables us to largely understand the NML skills.     

A critical examination of social media adoption in government: Introducing omnipresence

As government agencies at every level are adopting social media tools, scholarship is emerging that indicates dialogic potentials meant to increase citizen engagement might not be met. With that premise, we take a critical examination of the way social media can increase capacity for engagement rather encourage collaboration, depending upon the way the tools are constructed. To do so, we expand Lippmann's notion of the phantom public to introduce the theoretical constructs of Omnipresent Citizens and Omnipresent Administrators. These people are everywhere but nowhere and embody characteristics of accessibility, desire to participate, and the possibility of remaining anonymous. Each has implications for citizen participation.     

A framework for interpreting social media interactions in the public sector

Social media applications are extending the information and communication technology landscape in the public sector and are used to increase government transparency, participation and collaboration in the U.S. federal government. The success, impact and performance of these new forms of bi-directional and networked interactions can provide insights to understand compliance with the mandate of the Open Government Initiative. Many government agencies are experimenting with the use of social media, however very few actively measure the impact of their digital interactions. This article builds on insights from social media directors in the U.S. federal government highlighting their current lack of measurement practices for social media interactions. Based on their articulated needs for measurement, existing rules regulating the extent of measurement practices and technological features of the main social media platforms, a framework is presented that traces online interactions to mission support and the resulting social media tactics. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Capricious opinions: A study of polarization of social media groups

Experts claim that the world is increasingly polarized by emerging social media platforms. The political actors amplify the polarization through their agents' user-generated content. The extreme political ideologies sway the people sitting on the fence on these social media platforms. Using tweets on a recent policy change on identity in India, the present study seeks to perform a scientific analysis of the polarization of the debates within ordinary citizens' groups from a theoretical lens. We further highlight some of the crucial trends that triggered these polarized discussions in general. Through the lens of Echo chambers and Herd behavior, this study provides valuable insights surrounding the influencers and individuals involved in this discussion where the polarization of preferences is witnessed. Proposing a novel design of a root-level influencer, this study establishes them as polarization actors on a social media platform (Twitter). Through various engagement metrics, we also identify the role of targeted communication (hashtags) and similarity in the users' discussion across the political domain as potential behavioral explanations for opinion polarization on Twitter.     

Fractional counting of citations in research evaluation: A cross- and interdisciplinary assessment of the Tsinghua University in Beijing

In the case of the scientometric evaluation of multi- or interdisciplinary units one risks to compare apples with oranges: each paper has to be assessed in comparison to an appropriate reference set. We suggest that the set of citing papers can be considered as the relevant representation of the field of impact. In order to normalize for differences in citation behavior among fields, citations can be fractionally counted proportionately to the length of the reference lists in the citing papers. This new method enables us to compare among units with different disciplinary affiliations at the paper level and also to assess the statistical significance of differences among sets. Twenty-seven departments of the Tsinghua University in Beijing are thus compared. Among them, the Department of Chinese Language and Linguistics is upgraded from the 19th to the second position in the ranking. The overall impact of 19 of the 27 departments is not significantly different at the 5% level when thus normalized for different citation potentials.     

Making professional development more social: A systematic review of librarians' professional development through social media

To maintain relevancy with the ever-increasing competencies required of them, librarians on the job have frequently turned to professional development (PD) opportunities. One outlet that could potentially address barriers librarians face when accessing PD is social media, which can help librarians communicate across distances, are used at low to no cost, and can be accessed asynchronously as needed. Drawing from 25 studies conducted in 21 countries, this systematic literature review explored the empirical themes evident in the current research on librarians' adoption of social media for PD purposes. This review found (1) there is considerable potential in adopting social media for PD across contexts; (2) studies focused on the affordances provided by social media in areas where there is limited infrastructure, support, and resources for PD; (3) in congruence with prior research pertaining to the Technology Acceptance Model, librarians who felt more tech-savvy were more likely to adopt social media for PD; and (4) social media was viewed as democratic in creating a platform where diverse voices could participate. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for practitioners and recommendations for future research directions.     

Mining service quality feedback from social media: A computational analytics method

In spite of the growing opportunities and demands for using social media to assist government decision-making, few studies have investigated social media sentiments toward public services due to the large volume and noisy nature of big data. Taking a design science approach, this paper suggests a systematic method to assign tweets into each of the SERVQUAL dimensions to identify sentiments and track perceived service quality of healthcare services for policy makers. The method consists of (1) identifying more reliable topic sets through repeated latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and clustering; and (2) classifying tweets using topics based on an existing theory for service quality. The method is applied to tweets on the quality of NHS of the UK to demonstrate its usability. We measured social perceptions of healthcare service quality and identified keywords for each SERVQUAL dimension. Moreover, a comparison between the social perceptions derived from the tweets and traditional survey result on the same service quality shows the similarity which confirms the usability of the proposed method. The method has a practical value as a complimentary tool for the more expensive national scale surveys as well as academic value as a novel method integrating text mining with theoretically sound quality framework, SERVQUAL.     

Biased into posting: interactions with social media network political posts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election

The 2016 U.S. presidential election saw social media continue to play an important role in citizens’ political engagement. This study examines the effect of seeing social media political post sharing on individuals’ own political post sharing. Results from a two-wave survey suggest the interplay within the network is important. Seeing others share political posts and perceiving posts were biased towards a candidate predicted sharing political posts.     

Innovation through social media in the public sector: Information and interactions

This paper conducts a content analysis on the performance of information and interactions in selected Chinese government microblog accounts as innovations in the public sector. In specific, the study examines the quantity, content, stakeholders related, government levels related, timeliness, forms, language styles, sources of message, the use of push, and responses in government accounts. The study finds that a majority of messages in government microblog accounts were posted for self-promotion rather than service delivery. The forms, languages and timeliness of information posted tend to be monotonous, rigid and formal, and the interactions between governments and the public in government microblog accounts were mostly insufficient and preliminary. Furthermore, a longitudinal comparison between data in two sequential years also indicates that government use of microblogs is improved over time. Based on the findings, the paper provides relevant recommendations to governments.     

A moderated mediation model of political collective action in Hong Kong: examining the roles of social media consumption and social identity

Adopting a communication mediation approach, this study explores the role of overall social networking service (SNS) use in facilitating people’s participation in collective political action through the mediation of online and offline political discussions. The study also underscores the moderating effect on the mediation process of both social identity and geographical origin. Moderated mediation analyses reveal that the positive impact of overall SNS use on participation mediated by offline discussion is stronger for people with higher Hong Kong identity and for people from Hong Kong. This moderated mediation model specifies the socio-psychological mechanism of participation in collective political action in an immigrant society such as Hong Kong.     

Examining e-government enterprise architecture research in China: A systematic approach and research agenda

With the further advancement of China's e-government, enterprise architecture has become one of major topics in the e-government field. This paper attempts to examine the status and progress of e-government enterprise architecture research in China in a systematic approach and frame a research agenda. This paper conducts quantitative and qualitative analyses of research articles on this topic published in Chinese journals over the last six years. For each paper the study examines author's institutional association and department, published journal names and issues, paper length, research themes, research methods, level of analysis, and geographical focus in order to take a multi-faceted perspective. Findings suggest that EA are receiving more and more attention by Chinese scholars over time with the continuing development of e-government in China. However, the research themes covered by a paper in EA are found to be unbalanced and unfocused, most studies on EA in China focus on architecture frameworks and methodologies, advocate of EA and multi-themes. In terms of research methods, papers in the research field lack academic rigorousness in general.     

作为叙事的传播：“媒介事件”研究被忽视的线索

当前的媒介事件研究大多聚焦于事件边界概念和社会功能属性的考察,忽视了戴杨、卡茨的理论创建是立足于大众传媒以讲述故事的独特叙事方式对事件的探索。本文以媒介事件研究的“叙事”为核心,围绕这一概念的应有之意、价值意涵等方面展开讨论。研究发现,叙事作为一种符号资源的结构系统,既是媒介事件的建构语境,也是实现社会中心神话权力的关键来源,系统内的诸要素在数字技术驱动下被再度分配,导致事件语义功能的割裂与语用关系的转型。将叙事的概念与媒介事件理论相勾连,不同于当下学者们对事件研究的细分领域,而是基于戴杨、卡茨“媒介事件”研究衍生而来的,重新考察媒介事件这一经典理论的分析视角,在方法论和理论创新层面具有一定意义。     

Social network services for academic libraries: A study based on social capital and social proof

Despite the potential of social networking services (SNS) as a tool for communication between academic libraries and users, many academic libraries are yet to successfully optimize their SNS. As a result, their social proof and social capital of various SNS do not perform well. This research aims to evaluate the SNS effectiveness of the University of Hong Kong Libraries (HKUL) based on social capital and social proof concepts. We hope that our recommendations according to our findings will be applicable to other academic library contexts. We have found that: (i) there are no major differences between undergraduate and postgraduate students in their attitudes and behaviors regarding the SNS of HKUL on various platforms; (ii) low social proof is related to a lack of user interaction and promotion; (iii) low satisfaction with SNS contents may lead to low social capital. As such, understanding user information need, setting goals and metrics for each SNS, and formulating a formal SNS policy are the keys to further develop library SNS.     

Use and evaluation of information from social media: A longitudinal cohort study

This cohort study examined longitudinal changes in undergraduates' use of social media as information sources in academic and everyday-life contexts, covering types of social media used, purposes of use, and evaluation strategies. Web surveys were used, collecting data from 1,355 and 928 undergraduates in 2013 and 2019. The study found that students used most types of social media less in 2019 than 2013 in both contexts. Only media-sharing services bucked this downward pattern. Overall, a majority of social media types underwent changes in the top three purposes of use. The 2019 cohort used most evaluation strategies more frequently in both contexts. However, they favored simplistic strategies relying on superficial physical cues when evaluating information. Based on the findings, this study provided recommendations for information literacy education and interface design, such as covering multimedia information evaluation, leveraging various heuristics to prime careful use of social media and analytical evaluation of information.     

Social media use in the research workflow

The paper reports on a major international survey, covering 2,000 researchers, which investigated the use of social media in the research workflow. The topic is the second to emerge from the Charleston Observatory, the research adjunct of the popular annual Charleston Conference ( http://www.katina.info/conference/ ). The study shows that social media have found serious application at all points of the research lifecycle, from identifying research opportunities to disseminating findings at the end. The three most popular social media tools in a research setting were those for collaborative authoring, conferencing, and scheduling meetings. The most popular brands used tend to be mainstream anchor technologies or ‘household brands‘, such as Twitter. Age is a poor predictor of social media use in a research context, and humanities and social science scholars avail themselves most of social media. Journals, conference proceedings, and edited books remain the core traditional means of disseminating research, with institutional repositories highly valued as well, but social media have become important complementary channels for disseminating and discovering research.     

Ranking journals using social choice theory methods: A novel approach in bibliometrics

We use data on economic, management and political science journals to produce quantitative estimates of (in)consistency of the evaluations based on six popular bibliometric indicators (impact factor, 5-year impact factor, immediacy index, article influence score, SNIP and SJR). We advocate a new approach to the aggregation of journal rankings. Since the rank aggregation is a multicriteria decision problem, ranking methods from social choice theory may solve it. We apply either a direct ranking method based on the majority rule (the Copeland rule, the Markovian method) or a sorting procedure based on a tournament solution, such as the uncovered set and the minimal externally stable set. We demonstrate that the aggregate rankings reduce the number of contradictions and represent the set of the single-indicator-based rankings better than any of the six rankings themselves.