Earticle

Social media is increasingly being used as a source of information during crises, such as natural disasters and civil unrests. However, the quality and truthfulness of user-generated information on social media have been a cause of concern. Many users find distinguishing between true and false information on social media difficult. Basing on the elaboration likelihood model and the motivation, opportunity, and ability framework, this study proposes and empirically tests a model that identifies the information processing routes through which users develop trust, as well as the factors that influence the use of these routes. The findings from a survey of Twitter users seeking information about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis indicate that individuals evaluate information quality more when the crisis information has strong personal relevance or when individuals have low anxiety about the crisis. By contrast, they rely on majority influence more when the crisis information has less personal relevance or when these individuals have high anxiety about the crisis. Prior knowledge does not have significant moderating effects on the use of information quality and majority influence in forming trust. This study extends the theorization of trust in user-generated information by focusing on the process through which users form trust. The findings also highlight the need to alleviate anxiety and manage non-victims in controlling the spread of false information on social media during crises.

Political activities through social networking service (SNS) are common in the political communication environment. The main aim of this study is to present logical and empirical evidence on the effects of politicians’ SNS activities. To achieve this goal, this research analyzed the relationship between the SNS activities of politicians and the political efficacy and political participation of citizens through a survey of 644 people. The results of the survey analysis showed that politicians’ SNS activities have a positive effect on both the internal and external efficacies of citizens and that these efficacies positively influence political participation. This finding means that the SNS activities of politicians promote political participation by increasing the political efficacy of citizens and states. The results also suggest that SNS, with its characteristics of communication and interaction, plays a crucial role as a political communication medium. Therefore, with SNS, a variety of information sources on politics can be offered, suggestions from citizens can be embraced, and such suggestions can be revealed to politicians as a means of promoting political efficacy and participation.

What prevails in the today’s research on social media is a functional view of technology. Technology is regarded as a set of technical devices used to conduct specific social functions, such as personal communication, social networking, public posting, and corporate advertising, among others. This paper proposes that such a functional view of technology renders social media research unduly limited and constrained in its scope, level, and direction of inquiry. Problematizing on some representative social media research efforts in the field of IS, this paper provides an alternative perspective, that is, to view social media as a technology-for- being that exerts a deeper level of influence on our existence, molding and shaping the nature and mode of being itself. Such a technology- for-being perspective has been rarely explored or subscribed to in the present IS social media research. Building upon the new conception of social media as a technology-for-being, this essay explores the quality of being in the context of social media. Five such qualities are discussed, including virtuality, materiality, externality, liquidity, and hybridity. The essay also explores the deep structural problems of research to guide future social media research. Six of such problems include Problematize-the-Natural, Follow- the-Actor, Welcomethe- Frankenstein, Weber-meets-Frankenstein, Freud-meets-Frankenstein, and Marx- meets-Frankenstein. The essay concludes with discussions on the implications of the essay, its limitations, and suggestions for future work.

The availability of detailed data on customers’ online behaviors and advances in big data analysis techniques enable us to predict consumer behaviors. In the past, researchers have built purchase prediction models by analyzing clickstream data; however, these clickstream-based prediction models have had several limitations. In this study, we propose a new method for purchase prediction that combines information theory with machine learning techniques. Clickstreams from 5,000 panel members and data on their purchases of electronics, fashion, and cosmetics products were analyzed. Clickstreams were summarized using the ‘entropy’ concept from information theory, while ‘random forests’ method was applied to build prediction models. The results show that prediction accuracy of this new method ranges from 0.56 to 0.83, which is a significant improvement over values for clickstream-based prediction models presented in the past. The results indicate further that consumers’ information search behaviors differ significantly across product categories.

Contemporary organizations strive for customer agility through the deployment of digital technologies on customer- focused operations to build enduring customer relationships, with mobile apps being one of its prominent examples. Drawing on prior agility and ECT literature, this study proposes a model to examine customers’ view of a firm’s customer agility. Our empirical test of conceptual model from data collected in a field study from 128 customers demonstrated that the conceptual model offers good explanation for customers’ view of a firm’s customer agility through relationships among customer expectations–customer perceived firm’s responsiveness- satisfaction. Data were analyzed using PLS, polynomial modeling, and response surface methodology to examine the relationships between customers’ digital interactions with the firm, influence of digitized interactions on customer expectations, customers’ evaluation of firm’s responsiveness, and subsequent customer satisfaction.

The success of a crowd-funding project can be attributed to various reasons, among which, backer’s (also known as ‘investor’, or ‘funder’) perception of project credibility may be a salient one. The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which perceived project credibility can affect a backer’s investment decision. We examine the factors that could influence the building of perceived project credibility by testing the proposed research model using survey data. Analysis results indicate that perceived project credibility has a significantly positive effect on backer’s investment intention. Furthermore, information quality and source credibility are two key determinants of perceived project credibility. This study contributes to crowd- funding literature by enriching the list of successful factors for fund-raising with project credibility. The study also has practical implications because it explains why and how a backer’s perception of project credibility can be improved.

Companies operating in social network platforms continue to improve and expand their marketing techniques. This study examines the practice of “gating“, which involves virtual barriers between social network users and company content. Gates demand mandatory user endorsements, in the form of a Facebook ”Likes”, Twitter “retweets” etc., to gain access to company content, such as coupons and rewards,. Gating practices demand a mandatory endorsement before any content consumption takes place. Thus, while user endorsements are assumed to arise voluntarily from trusted known sources, gating practices would appear to violate this assumption. However, whether this violation lessens the effectiveness of gating practices still requires empirical validation. We investigate this question through the use of a unique panel data set that includes data on “like” endorsements obtained from a number of real-world Facebook business pages. Results of the study show that gating practices are effective for endorsement solicitation; however, gates may interfere with more traditional marketing activities.

Social media marketing has gained attention from marketers because of the growing number of social media users. Considering the unique context of each company or organization behind the marketing is necessary when choosing and applying various social media marketing strategies to ensure achievement of better business performance. However, previous studies have focused on context-specific marketing strategies. Accordingly, this study aims to develop context-specific social media marketing strategies. In this study, we first develop a conceptual framework with two items, namely, brand awareness and business orientation of an organization, as criteria, and classify the framework into four contexts. We then propose context- specific social media marketing strategies for each of the contexts. We examine the framework and proposed social media marketing strategies based on multiple case studies. The primary contribution of this study is our context- specific social media marketing strategies.

Compliance with information security policies has been an important managerial concern in organizations. Unlike traditional general deterrent theory, this study proposes whistle-blowing as an alternative approach for reducing internal information security policy violations. We build on the theories of planned behavior and rational choice as well as develop a theoretical model to understand the factors that influence whistle-blowing attitudes and intention at both the organizational and individual levels. Our empirical results reveal that altruistic and egoistic concerns are involved in the development of whistle-blowing attitudes. The results not only extend our understanding of whistle-blowing motivation but also offer directions to managers in promoting internal disclosure of information security breaches.

The current study attempts to expand our understanding of the determinants of energy-saving technology (EST) use by focusing on the individual aspects of environmental behaviors. This study integrates the hedonic, normative, and gain goals to explain the causal relationship between users and EST use. By adopting Goal-Framing Theory, this study proposed three individual goal frames in the environmental context: hedonic (perceived pleasurability), normative (social norms), and gain goals (legislative pressure and economic factor). Partial Least Square (PLS) was used to analyze the data from 104 respondents. Eight of the ten hypotheses were strongly supported. We found that social norms, perceived pleasurability, economic factor, and legislative pressure had positive and significant effects on attitude to EST use. Interestingly, we found that media influence did not have a severe effect on perceived pleasurability, and that the economic factor enforces mainly positive attitude to EST. Important theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.