Search results

This study is dedicated to universities' strategic social media communication and focuses on the fan engagement triggered by Facebook postings. The study contributes to a growing body of knowledge that addresses the strategic communication of universities that have thus far hardly dealt with questions of resonance and evaluation of their social media messages.

Using the Facebook Graph API, the authors collected posts from the official Facebook fan pages of the universities listed on Shanghai Ranking's Top 50 of 2015. Specifically, the authors retrieved all posts in a three-year range from October 2012 to September 2015. After downloading the Facebook posts, the authors used tools for automated content analysis to investigate the features of the post messages.

Overall, the median number of likes per 10,000 fans was 4.6, while the number of comments (MD = 0.12) and shares (MD = 0.40) were considerably lower. The average Facebook Like Ratio of universities per 10,000 fans was 17.93%, the average Comment Ratio (CR) was 0.56% and the average Share Ratio (SR) was 2.82%. If we compare the average Like Ratios (17.93%) and Share Ratios (2.82%) of the universities with the respective Like Ratios (5.90%) and Share Ratios (0.45%) of global brands per 10,000 fans, we may find that universities are three times (likes) and six times (shares) as successful as are global brands in triggering engagement among their fan bases.

The content analysis was solely based on the publicly observable Facebook communication of the Top 50 Shanghai Ranking universities. Furthermore, the content analysis was limited to universities listed on the Shanghai Ranking's Top 50. Also, the Facebook posts have been sampled between 2012 and September 2015. Moreover, the authors solely focused on one social media channel (i.e., Facebook), which might restrict the generalizability of the study findings. The limitations notwithstanding, university communicators are invited to take advantage of the study's insights to become more successful in generating fan engagement.

First, posts published on the weekend generate significantly more engagement than those published on workdays. Second, the findings suggest that posts published in the evening generate more engagement than those published during other times of day. Third, research-related posts trigger a certain number of shares, but at the same time these posts tend to lower engagement with regard to liking and commenting.

To the authors’ best knowledge, the automated content analysis of 72,044 Facebook posts of universities listed in the Top 50 of the Shanghai Ranking is the first large scale longitudinal investigation of a social media channel of higher education institutions.

Research on science communication in organizational contexts is scarce – even though many cases can be found where organizations from science and beyond communicate about science-related issues, or where organizational contexts have an impact on the communication of individual scientists and scientific organizations. Therefore, it is time for an “organizational turn” in science communication research, and for more scholarly emphasis on the specific cases that science-related communication in, from and about organizations presents. Such an approximation would benefit both science communication research and analyses of strategic and organizational communication.

This special issue of the “Journal of Communication Management” on “Communicating Science in Organizational Contexts” is a step in this direction: It compiles commentaries from leading scholars in the respective fields as well as research articles coming from various disciplines and conceptual as well as methodological paradigms. In the editorial, we assess overlaps between scholarship on science communication and strategic communication, respectively, based on a meta-analysis of journals in the field(s), develop a guiding heuristic for analyzing science communication in organizational settings, and introduce the contributions to the special issue.

The meta-analysis shows that overlaps between science communication research and scholarship on strategic communication are scarce. While organizations and their communication appear occasionally, and increasingly often, in science communication research, scholars of strategic communication only rarely analyze science communication.

The meta-analysis is limited to the publications of five scholarly journals over ten years. It still demonstrates the lack of research in the intersection of scholarship on science communication and strategic communication.

Scientific organizations are rapidly extending and professionalizing their strategic communication, and an increasing number of organizations beyond science communicate on science or science-related issues. Understanding science communication in organizational settings, therefore, is crucial for practitioners in both areas.

Analyzing science communication in organizational settings is of increasing importance – yet few studies exist that have done it, and the respective research fields devote not much attention to one another. The special issue is a first foray into this new, intersectional field.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has attracted much attention from both methodological and applied researchers in various disciplines – also in hospitality management research. As PLS-SEM is relatively new compared to other multivariate analysis techniques, there are still numerous open questions and uncertainties in its application. This study aims to address this important issue by offering guidance regarding its use in contexts with which researchers struggle.

The authors examine the most prominent questions and answers posed in a well-known PLS-SEM discussion forum. The authors do so by using a text analysis technique to identify the most salient topics.

The data analysis identifies three salient PLS-SEM topics (i.e. bootstrapping and significance testing, higher-order constructs and moderation).

The results allow us to address the PLS-SEM community’s main methodological issues. The authors discuss each area separately and provide explanations and guidelines.

The guidelines on the most important PLS-SEM topics provide decision-making and application aids. In this way, the authors make a decisive contribution to clarifying ambiguities when applying the PLS-SEM method in hospitality management research and other disciplines.

There has as yet been no systematic analysis of this kind in the field of PLS-SEM; the authors, therefore, present the first research results. The findings and recommendations provide guidance for PLS-SEM applications in hospitality research and practice.

Although affective accounts of organizational justice theory have been offered, suggesting a role played by trait affectivity dimensions – trait positive affectivity (TPA) and trait negative affectivity (TNA) - in shaping applicant reactions to selection procedures, research in this area relies on cognitive information processing accounts of justice perceptions. Thus, the role played by TPA and TNA in shaping applicant reactions is an underexplored area. This study explicates and tests the role of TPA and TNA in shaping reactions.

The authors carried out a three-wave field study of police job applicants, measuring TPA and TNA before testing and applicant justice perceptions and recommendation intentions pre-feedback and post-feedback.

TPA, but not TNA, was positively associated with justice perceptions and recommendation intentions. Mediation analyses suggested that the TPA-recommendation intentions relationship was mediated through justice perceptions.

Recruiting high TPA applicants can benefit future applicant pools due to enhanced recommendation intentions. High TPA applicants react more favorably to positive features; thus, procedures should conform to procedural justice rules so that favorable aspects exist for high TPA applicants to respond favorably towards.

The authors’ work is the first to integrate affective accounts of the justice perception formation process into applicant reactions research. Their work supports a role served by affect in shaping applicant fairness perceptions and provides novel and important insights for both theory and practice.

Drawing from the theory of how relevant items are processed in memory when making judgements, this study aims to test for recency effects between CSR advertising and related, negative news on how a company is perceived and the explanatory roles of environmentalism, attribution and both feelings and attitudes towards the advertising itself.

This study uses between-subjects experimental design with pretests.

Order effects exist, which, when ads and news are similarly influential, evidence a recency effect. The process is explained by both the mediating influence of attribution of blame and the moderation of this influence by attitude towards the environment. Differences between the effectiveness of ads are explained by the mediating influence of attitudes towards and feelings about the ad together with the moderation of this influence by involvement in the ad context.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) ads should be pretested in the context of related but negative news, and not just on their own, to ensure they can buffer such news. CSR ads can be more effective when following rather than preceding such news and should not be withdrawn if such a crisis occurs.

The research first attempts to explain recency effects theoretically from the influence of CSR ads on negative CSR-related news. It also shows the determining factors in how such effects influence consumers by considering attribution, environmentalism, attitude to the context and attitude and feelings towards CSR ads.

Inaccurate capturing and processing of customer requirements result in negative economic and ecological effects. Digital twins of customer demands promise to remedy these issues. However, successful implementation necessitates users' technology acceptance. This study contrasts three hierarchical digital twin levels with different degrees of user integration and examines determinants for their respective acceptance.

A structural equation model is applied in a comparative manner, considering different levels of digital twin radicalness. A multidimensional approach is used to measure attitudes towards usage. Data are collected in the context of organisational supply management.

Results show harmonious effects across digital twin levels. This indicates that technological radicality plays only a subordinate role when assessing acceptance determinants such as user perception on ease of use, usefulness, trust and risk.

Rather than focussing solely on technological factors, findings suggest that users prioritise the actual outcome and efficiency of the system. This perspective offers practical implications for organisations seeking to implement advanced systems and emphasises the significance of user perceptions beyond technological features.

The societal impact of this research are an appreciation of customer roles in the supply chain where an enhanced detection of customer needs and preferences aligns businesses with the dynamic and evolving demands of a diverse and a continuously environmentally-conscious consumer base.

This study applies a measurement model for technology acceptance in a unique and multidimensional manner. Thereby, a comparative analysis of user perceptions across different digital twin levels sheds more light on a nascent, promising and underexplored technological method. This interdisciplinary research combined knowledge from the supply chain management and management information systems fields by highlighting key factors for the adoption of complex technological methods.

Several studies have described health-seeking behaviour within the context of various diseases, the health status and age group. However, knowledge on patient health-seeking behaviour in the use of public and private hospitals and socio-demographic characteristics in developing countries is still scarce. This paper examines the influence of socio-demographic behavioural variables on health-seeking behaviour and the use of public and private health facilities in Ghana.

Quantitative research approach uses the modified SERVQUAL dimension as a data collection tool. Descriptive statistics with Pearson's chi-square test were conducted to determine the relationship between socio-demographic behavioural variables and health-seeking behaviour of patients using public and private hospitals.

The results showed that there is a significant relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics (sex, marital status, education, level of income) and the health-seeking behaviour of patients in regard to the utilisation of public and private health facilities (p < 0.000).

There is a significant relationship between patients' socio-demographic variables and their choice and utilisation of public and private healthcare services. This information is of value to policy makers so that they have an idea on the socio-demographic behavioural variables that influence patients' health-seeking behaviour.

The rapid adoption of social media has resulted in a fundamental shift in the way communication and collaboration take place. While social media is recognized as an important marketing communication tool, it has become overlooked how social media marketing activities (user-generated and firm-generated content) influence brand equity creation in the higher education sector. Drawing from social identity theory, this study identifies how higher education institutions develop customer-based brand equity using social media marketing and social brand engagement, taking cross-comparison between high and low subjective norms.

A survey was used to collect data from a sample of 936 undergraduates of private higher education institutions in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. These data were gathered using purposive sampling, and in testing the hypothesis and structure among the variables, structural equation modeling was used to determine the relationship between the study variables.

For the conceptual framework, the authors found that the structural equation model complies with the empirical data. The structural equation model shows that social brand engagement mediates the relationship between user-generated content, firm-generated content and brand equity. Further, the subjective norms were found to moderate the relationship between user-generated content, firm-generated content and social brand engagement, highlighting that the lower the subjective norms the higher the influence on social brand engagement as students receive low pressure and influence from external parties.

The study was conducted at private higher education institutes in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Future research could benefit from the perceptions of undergraduates in public higher education institutes. Future researchers could widen the diversity of service settings in the sample and replicate this investigation to discover if the results are consistent across the whole services sector.

The current research contributes to the services marketing and branding literature in the higher education context. The paper presents the crucial elements in building brand equity for higher education institutes to fill the existing gaps in higher education branding literature. The findings of the current study provide strategies to improve the higher education sector.

The purpose of this paper is to describe theoretical background, concepts and materials for MEDIA PROTECT, a new elementary-school parent counselling programme to reduce problematic and, in the long term, addictive use of screen media via slowing the increase in screen equipment in children's bedrooms and promoting screen-free leisure activities. The aim of the pilot phase of MEDIA PROTECT was the implementation at a project school with a process evaluation by parents as well as teachers as a basis for improvements prior to a subsequent randomised controlled trial phase.

At t1 and t2, questionnaires were handed out to all 220 families to record media use routines and media-related parenting styles. Advice on media education, information on media effects, plus hands-on technical support for installing protection software were offered to meet the support needs of different parental target groups recorded at t1 (pre-intervention). At t2, parents and teachers assessed MEDIA PROTECT regarding organisation, facilitators, content and duration/length.

In the pilot phase, 60 per cent of families attended the 45-minute face-to-face input, for which high overall satisfaction (53 per cent ‘very high’, 45 per cent ‘high’) was reported. The written material was also rated ‘good’ (59 per cent) or ‘very good’ (33 per cent). Parents reported moderate positive changes in media-related parenting style. Teachers voted for the inclusion of a mandatory half-day teacher training session in the programme.

The primary prevention of problematic media use is a neglected issue. This is despite the fact that ever younger age groups spend increasing portions of their time with screen media, which impairs physical, socio-emotional and cognitive development of children, especially those who are already vulnerable and disadvantaged.

This paper contrasts the determinants of online disclosures about self and others in social media.

Data from 216 respondents were collected through an online survey. The formal research model was tested with covariance based structural equation modeling.

The determinants of online disclosures vary whether the subject is self or others. Social networking site (SNS) users who self-disclose are also more likely to share information about others. Furthermore, there are significant gender effects in the influences of disclosure as revealed by multi-group SEM.

Future research models should incorporate the construct of disclosure about others and examine the intertwining of different types of disclosure on SNS. Future work should include behavioral measures, as this study relied on self-report measures.

The current understanding of information sharing does not accommodate different forms of disclosure. Employers or systems administrators concerned about data sharing may need to tailor interventions to the subject of the disclosure. Furthermore, the significant gender differences in determinants of disclosure suggest that this should be considered in practical applications.

Disclosure about others has not been examined in prior work. This study contributes by offering empirical data on the contrasting determinants of disclosure as well as gender differences. It improves the understanding of online information sharing, a topic of particular relevance in today's information oriented society.