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During the digital media era with an explosion of messages, the prevalence of what is known as “message fatigue” has grown. However, there is a lack of understanding toward message fatigue in using instant messengers. Based on the stressor-strain-outcome framework, this study provides a theoretical model to explore possible predictors and consequences of instant messaging fatigue.

The hypothesized model includes communication overload, social overload, instant messaging fatigue, technology and behavioral intention to use instant messaging. Three hundred and eleven responses are collected using an online survey. The authors conduct structural equation modeling to evaluate the hypothesized model and test the hypotheses.

This study reveals that (1) communication overload and social overload are positively associated with instant messaging fatigue and technostress; (2) higher levels of instant messaging fatigue and technostress are also related to a higher level of intention to discontinue usage; (3) technostress significantly mediates the relationship between instant messaging fatigue and intention to discontinue usage of instant messaging.

This study is limited to collect data from one university in the United States with a cross-sectional design. Future research should include other countries, different age groups and longitudinal methods to examine instant messaging fatigue.

This study extends existing findings on fatigue in using mobile communication by applying the stressor-strain-outcome framework to IM fatigue and improves the understanding of the potential negative aspects of instant messaging.

Instant messaging and e‐mail are popular communication methods on college campuses. However, students' perceptions of the two technologies vary greatly. This study seeks to investigate the differences between instant messaging and e‐mail.

A survey was given to 545 college students.

Instant messaging is perceived as offering many advantages over e‐mail including conveying emotions, building relationships and ease of use (EU). Users are more likely to use symbols with their instant messages to help communicate. College students find both technologies to be easy to use, but show a preference for the EU of instant messaging. However, despite its perceived functional benefits, instant messaging is only the favored form of communication for personal and social relationships.

This paper builds on existing research by discussing information richness, EU, the use of emotions, multimedia, playfulness, flow, cognitive fit theory, bounded rationality, perceived commitment, and user satisfaction in the course of the study.

This study aims to empirically examine the factors that affect mobile loyalty (m-loyalty) and its influence on customer reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging services. This study identified measurement items to assess the business users and individual users reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging services and test the relationship in the conceptual model. This study bridges a literature gap focusing on m-loyalty and its impact on customer reuse intention, which has not received attention previously.

To evaluate the influence of the factors, this study identified and extracted the items from past literature to develop the survey instrument. This study surveyed 600 respondents including business users and individual users from the Delhi-National Capital Region of India and applied the structural equation modelling to test the conceptual model.

The results revealed that satisfaction and m-loyalty have a direct effect on the business users and individual users’ reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services. This study found that satisfaction, usability, perceived value, commitment, trust and m-loyalty influence on business users reuse intention. This study indicate that enjoyment has an insignificant relationship on m-loyalty for business users followed by usability and enjoyment has an insignificant relationship on m-loyalty for individual users. Further, female gender does not moderate the relationship between satisfaction and business users reuse intention. The cognitive absorption and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) theories supported evaluating the association between the factors in the context of business and individual users reuse intention of mobile instant messaging service.

The empirical findings imply that all the factors except enjoyment have directly influenced the business users reuse intention of mobile instant messaging. The significant influence of usability factor on the business users reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging is the major variation between the validated models of business and individual samples. The results of influencing factors of m-loyalty and its impact on customer reuse intention are associated with cognitive absorption and the UTAUT theories.

Focus on these factors can be beneficial for the business users, managers, mobile instant messaging service providers and application developers to increase customer loyalty and reuse intention for the mobile instant messaging services. This research will facilitate mobile instant messaging service providers to keep their services market relevant and focus on user satisfaction in building applications for loyalty.

This research identified measurement items from earlier literature to identify, analyze and verify the relevance of these factors in m-loyalty and customer reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services and fill the gap in customer reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services literature.

With the growth of digital education, students increasingly interact in a variety of ways. The potential effects of these interactions on their learning process are not fully understood and the outcomes may depend on the tool used. This study explores the communication patterns and learning effectiveness developed by students using two basic synchronous and asynchronous communication tools in e-learning environments, specifically business simulation games.

The authors conduct a quasi-experiment research with 478 online business students, 267 of whom used online discussion forums and 211 interacted via an instant messaging app. The application of learning analytics and text mining on natural language processing allows us to explore the student communication patterns with each of tools and their effectiveness in terms of learning.

The results confirm the complementarity of the communication tools, asynchronous tools being especially the suitable for task-related communication and synchronous ones for speeding up and facilitating student social interactions.

The main value of this research lies in the use of data analytics and text mining to access and analyse the content of student interactions to assess the learning process in greater depth, comparing synchronous and asynchronous learning modes, considering that little is known about the impact of online synchronous interaction or instant messaging, and even less about the different features, content and performance that emerge when these two learner interaction modalities are compared.

The purpose of this study is to examine the dark side of instant messaging from the technological and societal perspectives.

With the help of literature review and different theories, a model has been developed conceptually. Later the model has been validated using statistical method. The authors have used 304 responses from the survey method, and this sample has been used to statistically validate the conceptual model.

This paper has been able to explicitly investigate and identify how different instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat in the form of electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) are contributing toward increase of mob lynching cases. The paper also highlights the important to have effective and enforceable regulation to regulate instant messaging services to the citizens.

The findings cannot be generalized as the data is collected from India only. Moreover, the study is cross-sectional in nature. To get the comprehensive results, a longitudinal study needs to be conducted. This study considered seven constructs with one moderator. Having more predictors with other boundary conditions might have increased the explanative power of the model.

Instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat and so on are disseminating quick unverified information to the common people. This information sometimes is disseminated in inappropriate and exaggerated forms. This makes the instant messaging (WhatsApp) users' sentiment readily heated in some cases. They take such an action as mob lynching. This study determines the predictors of mob lynching along with the moderator impact of instant messaging in the society.

There are only a few studies those have explored the dark side of instant messaging. The proposed theoretical model is a unique model, which shows the predictors of mob lynching along with the negative consequences of the instant messaging (WhatsApp) in the society. From this perspective, this study can be considered as a unique study.

Although religiosity and advertising messages have been extensively examined in the existing literature separately, studies which correlatively examine both these aspects are very limited. This paper aims to reveal the influence of the widely used religious messages on consumer attitudes and of purchase intentions on subjects with different levels of religiosity.

In this study, four different printed advertising messages with and without religious messages were developed for two different products. In this respect, the consumer attitudes toward advertisements and the degree to which purchase intention changed were measured.

The attitude and purchase intention toward the advertisements with religious messages was found to have a higher mean value compared to the advertisements without religious messages, and a statistically significant difference was found between the two. The highly religious participants’ attitudes and purchasing intention toward the advertisements with religious messages differed as compared to the participants with low levels of religiosity.

Indeed, it was observed that the attitude toward different advertising messages and purchase intention differed regarding the level of religiosity. In the last section of the study, the influence of the level of religiosity on purchasing intention and consumer attitudes has been discussed with academic and practical results.

This study has also extended the practical implications of social judgment theory, which suggests that the further the consumers’ initial position to the new message the less is the acceptance of that message, and it contributes to its methodological and theoretical development. Whether a religious advertisement message is considered more or less acceptable depends on the level of religiosity and the positioning strategy adopted in the advertisement. In the present study, it is observed that as the level of religiosity increases, purchase intention and the attitude towards the advertisement with religious message increase in permissible(halal) goods. However, when prohibited (haram) services are considered, an increase in the subjects' level of religiosity brings about a decrease in the purchase intention and the attitude towards the advertisement with religious message. Therefore, this study validates social judgment theory.

A significant implication for the marketing practitioners is that religiosity could be one of the criteria in segmenting market. A religiously prohibited product might gradually feel more irritating as the intensity of religious message increases in an advertisement. Thus, it is an important consideration for an organization offering faith-based products in mono-religious societies. Clearly, marketers need to be very careful when they use religious symbols in the secular marketplace, which raises the question – What factors underlie a positive response to religious message use in advertisement?

Religion was a taboo subject in society in the recent past; it has not been comprehensively investigated in marketing literature; moreover, it is evident that this situation continues to exist at present. It can, therefore, be said that the efforts to conceptualize religion’s influence on marketing and consumer behavior have been scarce.

This study aims to investigate how phishers apply persuasion principles and construct deceptive URLs in mobile instant messaging (MIM) phishing.

In total, 67 examples of real-world MIM phishing attacks were collected from various online sources. Each example was coded using established guidelines from the literature to identify the persuasion principles, and the URL construction techniques employed.

The principles of social proof, liking and authority were the most widely used in MIM phishing, followed by scarcity and reciprocity. Most phishing examples use three persuasion principles, often a combination of authority, liking and social proof. In contrast to email phishing but similar to vishing, the social proof principle was the most commonly used in MIM phishing. Phishers implement the social proof principle in different ways, most commonly by claiming that other users have already acted (e.g. crafting messages that indicate the sender has already benefited from the scam). In contrast to email, retail and fintech companies are the most commonly targeted in MIM phishing. Furthermore, phishers created deceptive URLs using multiple URL obfuscation techniques, often using spoofed domains, to make the URL complex by adding random characters and using homoglyphs.

The insights from this study provide a theoretical foundation for future research on the psychological aspects of phishing in MIM apps. The study provides recommendations that software developers should consider when developing automated anti-phishing solutions for MIM apps and proposes a set of MIM phishing awareness training tips.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the use of instant messaging for communications.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes studies carried out regarding the service, staffing, and economic and technological aspects of instant messagingFindings – Instant messaging was found to be a useful tool in helping to find relevant information to enquiries.Originality/value – The paper shows how developments in software and internet connections have made instant messaging a useful tool.

This paper’s objective is to provide a systematic literature review of the contextual factors affecting downward communication from supervisors to subordinates in the audit environment. In addition, this review identifies emerging research themes and directions for future research.

I accomplish this review’s objectives by leveraging communication literature to establish a framework to identify and synthesize contextual factors affecting downward communication in the audit environment. The review identifies 50 published articles in the last 20 years from leading accounting and auditing journals.

This study consolidates research findings on downward communication under two primary contextual factors: (1) message and (2) channel. Findings indicate that empirical research examining communication in audit is fragmented and limited. Studies examining the message focus heavily on its content and treatment in the areas of feedback, nonverbal cues, and fraud brainstorming, and a handful of additional studies examine the effectiveness of the channel in these areas. Additional research is needed to understand a broader set of supervisor–subordinate communication practices, including those that are computer-mediated, and their effect on subordinate auditors’ judgments and behaviors in the contemporary audit environment.

Much of the audit literature examining communication to date is topic-versus construct-based, making it difficult to see how the research findings relate to one another. This review is the first to synthesize the literature to provide academics recommendations for a way forward, and inform practitioners of communication practices whereby supervisors can be trained to improve audit quality.

Web services refer to a specific set of technologies used to implement a Service Oriented Architecture. Thanks to maturing Web‐services standards, and to new mobile devices and application solutions, progress is being made in presenting similar Web‐services offerings in both mobile and fixed networks. To bring that architecture and the solutions it will support to the world of mobility is indeed a significant issue in m‐business applications, because mobile Web services present various advantages: Reduction of the overall cost of development (by reusing existing system components), faster time to market introduction of products (provided by applications’ rapid development and deployment) and remarkable possibilities to emerge new applications with increased functionalities. In addition, the new and forthcoming mobile networks, with native IP connection and high speed transmission capability, allow the development of a variety of modern multimedia services. Multimedia Messaging Services (capable to mix the media types in order to enable more intuitive messaging operation), and Instant Messaging and Presence Services (dedicated for presence, instant messaging, and distribution and sharing of multimedia content in groups of users), provide suitable underlying capabilities to support location‐based and context‐sensitive multimedia services. In this paper we will present the current approaches regarding architectural, functional and security features that allow enterprises to enjoy the benefits of traditional Web services in the mobile multimedia domain.