Search results

Drawing on insights from social influence theory, the MAIN model of digital media affordances and the literature on the attention economy, this study aims to investigate how social media influencers’ community and content strategy contribute to follower engagement behavior in the presence of competition.

This study used a web-scraped data set of Instagram influencers. It measured community strategy using influencers’ number of followers, number of following and breadth of interest; content strategy using modality type and number of posts; competition using number of influencers operating in the same primary domain of interest; and follower engagement behavior using number of likes and comments. A negative binomial regression model was estimated to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal that elements of influencers’ community and content strategies, such as number of followers, modality type and number of posts, influence follower engagement behavior. Similarly, competition significantly influences follower engagement behavior both independently and by interacting with influencers’ community and content strategy.

The findings offer insight for brands to identify suitable influencers for partnerships. For instance, brands can judge influencers’ suitability for partnership based on how many followers they have, how many posts they share and how many competitors they have. Further, the findings offer insight for influencers on how they can drive follower engagement behavior by managing their social media community and content.

This study develops an integrated model of factors that determine follower engagement behavior for social media influencers. The findings emphasize influencers’ strategy as the primary driver of follower engagement behavior. Extant studies focus on followers’ motivation and perception to explain follower engagement behavior while the role of influencers’ strategy is underplayed.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of political advertising on voter attitude and the processes of decision-making in the specific context of the inaugural democratic experience of post-revolutionary Tunisia.

The study was conducted in Tunisia, where the target respondents included Tunisian’s eligible to vote during the presidential campaign of October 2014. The study uses questionnaires for data collection using a convenience sampling technique.

The major findings of the study are that the persuasion power of advertising has a direct impact on voter involvement, trust and attitude towards voting. Specifically, involvement significantly influences a voter’s attitude. The hypothesis on the impact of trust on attitude, and the hypothesis related to the mediating role of trust and involvement were rejected.

The study recommends specialists in political advertising and politicians themselves give consideration to the trust and involvement considerations of the Tunisian voter, to enhance and optimize the quality and credibility of political advertising in the future.

The research offers some interesting findings for professionals in political advertising, for companies operating in political research, or advertising agencies. In this context, advertising agencies need to give prescient consideration to the trust of the voter by developing a credible and believable discourse.

In the context of a nascent democracy, it is very important to educate people so they become familiarized with the practices of democracy, and to give them the ability to make the right choice. The study recommends specialists in political advertising and also politicians give consideration to the trust and involvement considerations of the Tunisian voter, to enhance and optimize the quality and credibility of political advertising.

This research paper related to political advertising can be used to formulate appropriate political advertising strategies and to ameliorate and optimize the advertising discourse in the context of a nascent democracy.

The purpose of this study is to develop an empirically informed framework to analyze women empowerment and entrepreneurship, contextualized within a collective society.

The authors conducted 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs located in the United Arab Emirates to understand their entrepreneurial experiences and how they were empowered.

Findings suggest that the three aspects of power characterized as “positive” from within Rowlands’ distinctions (“power to”, “power with” and “power within”) dominate, as opposed to those emphasized in the literature (“power to” and “power over”). Findings include empowerment of the “me” (individual) also synergistically contributes to empowerment of the “we” (society), when considering empowerment within a collective society.

A psychology model was used as a basis to develop a Collective Empowerment Process Framework. This framework provides a fresh look at empowerment, allowing for explanations of how women in specific contexts experience empowerment and social change.

This study examines what social ties within collectivist settings mean for women's venturing and how these ties support women in gaining empowerment through their ventures.

Thirteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were conducted to examine the influence of social ties in their ventures.

The findings reveal that women in this context, contrary to most reported findings in the extant literature, both rely more on and find strong ties more conducive than weak ties in most of their entrepreneurial behaviours and activities. Results also show how the UAE's collectivist cultural norms shape social networks and inform individual decision-making, resource acquisition, well-being and self-efficacy as well as enhance women's empowerment through entrepreneurship. The women entrepreneurs were found to leverage their social ties for both power and action throughout their entrepreneurial journey consistent with their culture.

A conceptual model, derived from the results of a qualitative study, illustrating the relationships between women entrepreneurs' use of social ties and the empowering capacities of venturing within a collectivist cultural context is developed. Based on these findings, the authors discuss the implications for policymakers and recommend avenues for future research, and research designs, on women entrepreneurs in collectivist contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of academic staff who are committed to embedding sustainability within tertiary curricula and pedagogy.

The focus of this paper is on a New Zealand university. A survey of staff was undertaken and in-depth interviews conducted with 11 sustainability “champions”. A narrative variant of thematic analysis was used to examine the ways these sustainability “champions” made sense of the work they do. Through an analysis of their metaphors and metaphorical language, a sense of the identities that they held as educators of sustainability was gained.

Three types of identities emerged – the sustainability “saviour”, “nurturer” and “struggler”. These identities reflected the champion’s experiences, disciplinary affiliations and pedagogical approaches. Interdisciplinarity emerged as a key tenet and challenge for such sustainability champions.

This paper provides rare insights into the experiences, identities and teaching approaches of sustainability champions within higher education. It highlights the need for university-wide conversations and cross-discipline support for such academics.

The purpose of this article is to analyse first-generation Chilean students' transition experiences from secondary school to university.

This article presents the analysis results of 12 visual narratives of first-generation Chilean university students, who provided an account of their transition experience from secondary school to university. Participants explored the connections between their most valuable learning experiences during photo-elicitation interviews. The study used Quinn's notion of imagined social capital to understand the transition experience.

The analysis reveals the significance of secondary school experiences in understanding students' attitudes toward the university. In an extremely segregated school system, participants' secondary school experiences demonstrated a strong bond with classmates from their social class and a feeling of distance from institutions and their hierarchical structure. In this context, the university space is symbolically recreated into a learning space consistent with their social background.

The research study highlights the need to increase understandings of school experiences and how these shape university transitions in order to effectively support students during the first years of university. In addition, it draws attention to the need to develop strategies that recognize the complex, collective and contextualized understandings of students' transition.

The research aimed to understand the experience of transition of first generation students from their own narratives and relational perspectives in contrast with the prevailing paradigms which are often individualized and linear.

The “universal” principles of effective communication taught in most management communication courses ‐ directness, simplicity, forcefulness ‐ are, from an inter‐cultural perspective, American and male. Should women students of business be taught to imitate the speech behaviour stereotypically associated with American businessmen? Or is the behaviour stereotypically associated with women equally, or even more, effective in business situations? Because there is little research to support the masculine model of business speech, because coercing women to change their speech produces pedagogically unwarranted stress, and because the feminine stereotype is actually better suited to global business communication, this paper argues that business and management communication should be taught from a gender‐independent postmodern approach.

Eating disorders (EDs) remain a major health concern, and their incidence has further increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the equally increasing demands on treatments and service provision and the high levels of relapse post-treatment, it is important that research explore novel and innovative interventions that can further support recovery for individuals with EDs. There is growing evidence that arts interventions are beneficial for recovery from EDs. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of conducting a stand-up comedy course to support ED recovery.

The study used a qualitative interview study design to evaluate the recovery benefits of participating in stand-up comedy workshops for a pilot group of people in recovery from EDs (n = 10).

The comedy intervention was well-attended and had high acceptability and feasibility. For most individuals, participating in the course had a positive impact, including promoting personal recovery (PR) outcomes across all five elements of the CHIME framework. Unique assets of the course included providing participants with an opportunity to distance themselves from everyday worries of living with an ED; the opportunity to cognitively reframe situations by making them the object of humour; and providing a safe space to (re-)build a positive sense of self.

This is the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that evaluates stand-up comedy workshops for ED recovery and further demonstrates the potential of arts interventions and the relevance of PR frameworks in this field.