Search results

China’s globalizing Internet describes a situation where China is using the Internet as a tool or medium to transmit its voice on the world stage and enhance its influence over the global Internet governance system and the global digitalization process. Several concerns, however, exist regarding China’s globalizing Internet strategies. This paper aims to respond to these concerns and enhance the understanding of China’s globalizing Internet strategies.

This paper will use content analysis to trace the policy development trajectory of China’s globalizing Internet, including policy vision, policy-making agencies and policy tools.

The Chinese government has issued a considerable number of policies to regulate and promote the development of the Internet since 2014. The key trend that emerged from the analysis of China’s globalizing Internet policy is the cooperation among different agencies. Existing policies have comprehensively used the supply-oriented tools, the environment-oriented tools and the demand-oriented tools; and the last two tools have been used more frequently in recent years.

The analysis results contribute to understanding how China uses digital technology to enhance its influence over the global Internet governance system.

The growth of online communities and social media has led to a growing need for methods, concepts, and tools for researching online cultures. Particular attention should be paid to polarizing online discussion cultures and dynamics that increase inequality in online environments. Social media has enormous potential to create good, but in order to unlock its full potential, we also need to examine the mechanisms keeping these spaces monotonous, homogenous, and even hostile toward some groups. With this need in mind, I have developed the concept and theory of othering online discourse (OOD).

This chapter introduces and defines the concept of OOD and explains the key characteristics and different attributes of OOD in relation to other concepts that deal with disruptive and discriminatory behavior in online spaces. The attributes of OOD are demonstrated drawing on examples gathered from the Finnish Suomi24 (Finland24) forum.

This paper brings focus and attention to the aspect of time within health information behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to critically assess and present strengths and weaknesses of utilising the infodemiology approach and metrics as a novel way to examine temporal variations and patterns of online health information behaviour. The approach is shortly exemplified by presenting empirical evidence for temporal patterns of health information behaviour on different time-scales.

A short review of online health information behaviour is presented and methodological barriers to studying the temporal nature of this behaviour are emphasised. To exemplify how the infodemiology approach and metrics can be utilised to examine temporal patterns, and to test the hypothesis of existing rhythmicity of health information behaviour, a brief analysis of longitudinal data from a large discussion forum is analysed.

Clear evidence of robust temporal patterns and variations of online health information behaviour are shown. The paper highlights that focussing on time and the question of when people engage in health information behaviour can have significant consequences.

Studying temporal patterns and trends for health information behaviour can help in creating optimal interventions and health promotion campaigns at optimal times. This can be highly beneficial for positive health outcomes.

A new methodological approach to study online health information behaviour from a temporal perspective, a phenomenon that has previously been neglected, is presented. Providing evidence for rhythmicity can complement existing epidemiological data for a more holistic picture of health and diseases, and their behavioural aspects.

Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences and behaviors can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities to design personalized and high-quality service. This paper aims to review how netnography as a method can help service researchers and practitioners to better use such data.

A systematic review and analysis were conducted on 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.

The systematic review reveals that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.

This paper shows how netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.

Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.

Netnography has seen limited use in service research despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of the method and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.