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This study aims to elucidate institutional analysis as an effective approach to investigating and designing the multilevel policymaking system of online social networks (OSN) for achieving a participatory model.

The institutional mapping approach has been used to analyze Iran’s OSN multilevel policymaking system. A combination of two matrices, including institutions-institutions and institutions-functions, was used to perform the institutional mapping. Two main steps were taken to draw the mentioned matrices. First, a review of related studies in Iran’s OSN policymaking system was conducted and the policy functions mentioned in these studies were identified and categorized using the meta-synthesis. Second, based on analyzing two policy documents of Iran’s OSN, institutions and their interactions were identified and policy functions were allocated to institutions.

Based on the results, the most important policy functions in the current OSN policymaking system in Iran are support, regulatory, monitoring and evaluation, business environment development, culture building and promotion, organizing licenses and permissions, policymaking and legislation. Also, the results show that there are shortcomings in this system, some of the most important of which are lack of transparency in regulatory, little work in culture building and promotion, neglect of the training of specialized human resources and research and development, slow development of the business environment and neglecting the role of nongovernmental organizations in policymaking.

By examining and analyzing how different institutions operate within a multilevel policymaking system, the policymaking process and its overall effectiveness can be enhanced. This analysis helps identify any inconsistencies, overlaps or conflicts in the roles and policies of these institutions, leading to a better understanding of how a multilevel policymaking system is organized.

This study was conducted to achieve the following objectives: (1) determine the differences and reasons for using outgroup OSNs by gender, age and student groups (Mainland and Hong Kong [HK] students); (2) uncover the impact of online social networks (OSNs) on the development of Mainland–HK friendships and (3) determine the roles of different OSNs (social networking sites [SNSs] and instant messaging platforms [IMPs]) in the development of intercultural friendships in the real world.

To explore how OSNs facilitate (or inhibit) intercultural interactions, 198 students completed a questionnaire and 24 students participated in follow-up semi-structured interviews examining the role of OSNs in intercultural friendship development.

Results revealed that demographic and motivational preferences for using outgroup-OSNs differed among students. Both IMPs and SNSs helped students maintain friendships using little effort, whereas it tended to strengthen their existing social networks, rather than helping to start new friendships. IMPs helped develop a sense of “presence awareness”, strengthening pre-existing friendships and solidifying offline connections. SNSs also assisted students in exploring their shared interests while revealing their values and cultural differences.

The authors’ findings offered empirical evidence on social exchange theory and anxiety-uncertainty management theory regarding the perceived benefit of OSNs on students' friendship development.

The study sheds light on the differences between Mainland Chinese and HK students, including participants' perceptions of different friendship stages.

This study is interested in the roles of different SNSs and IMPs in intercultural friendship development, especially their strengths and weaknesses as perceived by students. Also, the authors are curious about how students select and use IMPs and SNSs differently according to their individual preferences and needs. To the authors’ knowledge, the dynamic link between online communication and intercultural friendship development has not been thoroughly examined in the field of intercultural communication.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of perceived enjoyment in advertising response in online social networks (OSN). The authors propose and test a structural model explaining response to OSN advertisements embracing perceived enjoyment, social influence and advertising-related variables.

Data were gathered through the application of a structured questionnaire to a sample of 126 students of the same scientific area (marketing and communication studies).

The results validate the proposed model and support nine out of ten hypotheses. The study supports the role of perceived enjoyment as a predictor of both social identity and group norms. Furthermore, social identity and group intention have a positive impact on perceived advertisement relevance. Finally, group intention towards advertisements and perceived advertisement relevance have a positive impact on perceived advertisement value, which in turn impacts positively on response to OSN advertisements.

The main limitation relates to the fact that the study mainly covered a population aged between 18-35 years old. Despite its relevance as a segment of OSN users, some caution needs to be taken in generalizing findings to a broader population.

These results provide important indications for firms aiming at fully exploiting the computer-mediated communication of OSNs. Specifically, we confirm the role of perceived enjoyment in reinforcing group dynamics and shaping group intentions towards advertising.

The main contribution of this study lies in the focus on perceived enjoyment as a predicting variable of social influence and advertising variables, thus impacting response to OSN advertisements.

In modern society, considering the multi-channel of public opinion information (public opinion) propagation and its strong influence on social development, it is necessary to study its propagation law and discuss the intervention strategy in online social networks (OSN).

First, a conceptual model of double-layer OSN was constructed according to their structural characteristics. Then, a cross-network propagation model of public opinion in double-layer OSN was proposed and discussed its spreading characteristics through numerical simulations. Finally, the control strategy of public opinion, especially the timing and intensity of intervention were discussed.

The results show that the double-layer OSN promotes the propagation of public opinion, and the propagation of public opinion in double-layer OSN has the characteristics of that in two single-layer OSN. Compared with the intervention intensity, the regulator should give the priority to the timing of intervention and try to intervene in the early stage of public opinion propagation.

This study may help the regulators to respond to the propagation of public opinion in OSN more actively and reasonably.

This research has a deep comprehension of the cross-network propagation rules of public opinion and manages the propagation of public opinion.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of organizational policy on the relationship between online social networking (OSN) and job performance of IT professionals engaged full‐time in offshore outsourced IT firms in Sri Lanka.

Survey methodology was used and a random sample of 215 respondents who fulfilled the selection criteria set for the study, responded. To examine the hypothesized relationships, factor analysis and multiple regression were used.

It was found that individuals engaged in online social networking while at work enjoy several benefits such as solving work‐related problems collaboratively. However, individuals also suffer from several drawbacks, which could be mainly categorized into two in terms of interference to job tasks and interference to workplace. Further, it was found that online social networking has significant effects on individual job performance; organizational policy moderates the relationship between online social networking and job performance.

Although online social networking has attracted a substantial amount of media attention over the last few years empirical research attempts have not taken off worldwide. Therefore, the influence of online social networking on employee job performance would be of interest to academics and practitioners worldwide. It is expected that the findings of this study will provide insight into benefits, challenges and issues associated with OSN to allow individuals, organizational leaders, and IT decision‐makers to better understand and utilize online social structures for success. Further, it is expected that the findings of this study will be a source of general guidance in stimulating future research in this area.

The paper aims at a multi‐faceted review of scholarly work, analyzing the current state of empirical studies dealing with privacy and online social networking (OSN) as well as the theoretical “puzzle” of privacy approaches related to OSN usage from the background of diverse disciplines. Drawing on a more pragmatic and practical level, aspects of privacy management are presented as well.

Based on individual privacy concerns and also publicly communicated threats, information privacy has become an important topic of public and scholarly discussion. Beside diverse positive aspects of OSN sites for users, their information is for example also being used for data mining and profiling, pre‐recruiting information as well as economic espionage. This review highlights information privacy mainly from an individual point‐of‐view, focusing on the usage of OSN sites (OSNs).

This analysis of scholarly work shows the following findings: first, adults seem to be more concerned about potential privacy threats than younger users; second, policy makers should be alarmed by a large part of users who underestimate risks of their information privacy on OSNs; third, in the case of using OSNs and its services, traditional one‐dimensional privacy approaches fall short. Hence, findings of this paper further highlight the necessity to focus on multidimensional and multidisciplinary frameworks of privacy, for example considering a so‐called “privacy calculus paradigm” and rethinking “fair information practices” from a more and more ubiquitous environment of OSNs.

The results of the work presented in this paper give new opportunities for research as well as suggestions for privacy management issues for OSN providers and users.

Users are the key players in an online social network (OSN), so the behavior of the OSN is strongly related to their behavior. User weight refers to the influence of the users on the OSN. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to identify the user weight based on a new metric for defining the time intervals.

The behavior of an OSN changes over time, thus the user weight in the OSN is different in each time frame. Therefore, a good metric for estimating the user weight in an OSN depends on the accuracy of the metric used to define the time interval. New metric for defining the time intervals is based on the standard deviation and identifies that the user weight is based on a simple exponential smoothing model.

The results show that the proposed method covers the maximum behavioral changes of the OSN and is able to identify the influential users in the OSN more accurately than existing methods.

In event detection, when a terrorist attack occurs as an event, knowing the influential users help us to know the leader of the attack. Knowing the influential user in each time interval based on this study can help us to detect communities which formed around these people. Finally, in marketing, this issue helps us to have a targeted advertising.

User effect is a significant issue in many OSN domain problems, such as community detection, event detection and recommender systems.

Previous studies do not give priority to the recent time intervals in identifying the relative importance of users. Thus, defining a metric to compute a time interval that covers the maximum changes in the network is a major shortcoming of earlier studies. Some experiments were conducted on six different data sets to test the performance of the proposed model in terms of the computed time intervals and user weights.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conference-based online social network (OSN) for academics’ knowledge sharing and collaboration around and beyond a conference, while exploring the entanglement of the social and technical aspects of the system.

Following an exploratory study, an OSN prototype was developed and implemented in ECIS 2014. The usage of the OSN platform was monitored and in-depth interviews were conducted with seven of its active users.

Academic researchers have positive attitudes toward using conference-based OSN. However, there is a gap between academics’ perceptions and their actual behavior. Several barriers for engagement were identified, leading to technical and social recommendations, including the following needs: integrating the OSN platform with other conference information systems; addressing privacy concerns; allowing on-going collaboration; increasing OSN vitality; using the wisdom of the crowd; and promotion and its timing.

The case study highlighted existing benefits, and identified potential future benefits from implementing a conference-based OSN. Future research is required to generalize the findings and evaluate the proposed strategies for enhancing user engagement.

This study revealed the set of considerations that should be taken upon launching a new academic OSN, which are beyond the technical issues per se.

The paper presents the expected benefits from, and existing barriers to using a conference-based OSN, and suggests recommendations for encouraging academics to engage in such OSN, in order to enhance long-term social interactions, knowledge sharing and collaboration among conference participants.

This is a first study to examine a conference-based OSN.

This purpose of this paper is to investigate Iranian manager’s perceptions towards the use of online social networking (OSN) for improving corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication.

The websites and Facebook pages of 23 companies that had won National Excellence Awards for CSR were reviewed in 2011, and 15 managers from across these participated in a survey, to assess the extent these companies used online facilities to develop CSR practices. These interviews raised awareness of the potential of OSN, so company websites and Facebook pages were reviewed again in 2013 to assess changes to CSR and OSN practices.

Despite recognition for their high level of awareness and implementation of CSR practices analysis of the initial surveys indicated that OSN uptake among the respondent companies was poor in 2011. Managers saw little value in using OSN to promote and engage with CSR; however, the level of engagement and uptake had substantially increased by 2013.

This study is one of the first to evaluate the use of OSN to improve CSR in a developing country. The study examines managers’ perceptions of the effect of OSN on CSR. Findings suggest that once management became aware of the value of social networking, they used it to engage with stakeholders from the marketplace, community and workplace to promote their business and for CSR-related issues. This rapid uptake demonstrates how quickly OSN technology can be implemented once its potential is identified.

Given the importance of online social network (OSN) media features, many studies have focused on how different types of OSNs with various media features influence users’ usage and engagement. However, a recent literature review indicates that few empirical studies have considered how different types of OSNs with different information accessibility levels influence users’ beliefs and self-disclosure. By comparing two OSN platforms (OSNs with high-level information accessibility vs OSNs with low-level information accessibility), the purpose of this paper is to address this opportunity by investigating the differential impacts of the two platforms on individuals’ psychological cognition – particularly users’ social exchange beliefs – and explaining how these beliefs translate into OSN self-disclosure.

This study used a factorial design approach in an experimental setting to examine how different levels of information accessibility (high vs low), influence the social exchange beliefs (i.e. perceived social capital bridging, perceived social capital bonding and perceived privacy risks) of OSN users and subsequently influence OSN self-disclosure.

The results show that users on OSNs with high-level information accessibility express significantly higher perceived social capital bridging and perceived privacy risks than users on OSNs with low-level information accessibility. However, users on OSNs with low-level information accessibility express higher social bonding beliefs than users on OSNs with high-level information accessibility, indicating that there are different effect mechanisms toward OSN self-disclosure.

The focus of this research helps unveil the complex relationships between OSN design features (e.g. information accessibility), psychological cognition (e.g. social capital bridging, social capital bonding and privacy risks) and OSN self-disclosure. First, it clarifies the relationship between information accessibility and self-disclosure by examining the mediating effect of three core social exchange beliefs. Second, it uncovers the distinct effects of high-level information-accessible OSNs and low-level information-accessible OSNs on OSN self-disclosure.