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Social networking sites (SNSs) have become an essential part of our lives. The purpose of this paper is to explore how demographic variables, SNS importance, social and informational usage, and personality traits (extroversion/introversion, openness, neuroticism, internal and external locus of control) can explain participation frequency of the four biggest SNSs in Israel: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter.

The research was conducted in Israel during the Fall semester of the 2017–2018 academic year and encompassed 244 students. Researchers used six questionnaires to gather data: a demographic questionnaire, a participation frequency questionnaire on four different SNSs, four SNSs importance questionnaire, social and informational usage on four different SNSs questionnaire, personality questionnaire (extroversion, openness and neuroticism) and the locus of control questionnaire.

The findings revealed that different social network sites play distinct roles for various individuals. WhatsApp, the most frequently used platform, is used more by women and people with internal locus of control. Facebook is more frequently used by open people and Instagram is more frequently used by women, younger adults and neurotic people. Twitter is more frequently used by men. In addition, for all SNSs, the higher the social and informational usage is, the more important the SNSs are to the users, which significantly explains participation frequency.

The differences between social networks can be evidence that each social network serves a different group and does not compete with other SNSs. This may well explain why many people make use of several social networks and have a tendency to move from one to another.

Social networks (SNs) play a significant role as environments supporting teacher professional development. The purpose of this to analyze the motivation and participation roles that Spanish teachers have when participating in SNs for their professional development in three professional stages: preservice teachers, beginning teachers and experienced teachers.

The study uses a mixed-method approach, combining two validated surveys, one applied to 217 preservice teachers and other to 68 beginning teachers and 384 experienced teachers, with 15 interviews. A qualitative exploratory sequential strategy has been followed along with an ex post facto quantitative survey-type study of a descriptive and inferential nature.

Preservice and beginning teachers use SNs to access materials and resources with which to learn, presenting an observer and passive role in their interaction on SNs. Experienced teachers log in to learn about experiences but begin to participate more actively in SNs for searching for specific resources, establishing contacts with other teachers, contributing with their own educational materials and helping other teachers with their doubts or even forming their own communities.

These findings help understand how the evolution in teacher expertise accompanies the level of involvement in their social network interactions. The results allow us to better understand how different levels of teaching experience influence the way Spanish teachers access and participate in SNs, in some cases consuming and in others producing digital content.

This paper aims to better comprehend the psychological elements that drive the adoption of social networking sites (SNS). The paper attempts to explain the reasons why people sustainably use social networking websites in the workplace and how this happens.

Using a survey to collect data that was analyzed using structural equation modeling by applying the partial least squares technique.

The results indicated that SNS use continuance was due more to habit rather than established perceived and normative beliefs such as satisfaction and social norms.

The authors recommend that the model in the study be tested in other technology environments to evaluate the external validity of the research study. The research was based on an unspecific platform, but each SNS may have its singularity that should merit further consideration.

Peers or coworker influences were noticeable in shaping one’s normative beliefs to continue using SNS in the organization. In this regard, it will be interesting to identify the mechanisms that raise the awareness of SNS in the employees’ social networks in the organization. Specifically, it will be an advantage to reach out to peers in promoting SNS use in the organization because they speak the same language as their fellow employees.

Despite several benefits related to SNS use in organizations, studies showed that most of these technologies are boycotted in the workplace. Although extensive studies are dedicated to understanding information and communication technology use continuance in general, this paper aims to inform both academicians interested in the use of enterprise SNS for business purposes and business actors concerned with growing SNS usage and retaining its users in their organizations. The paper will contribute to information systems continuance literature by integrating and extending two major theoretical frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to study factors affecting the acceptance of social networking sites (SNS), analyze users' practices and behavior in these environments and assess the degree of acceptance of SNS in The Netherlands.

An extended technology acceptance model (TAM) was used to analyze the factors influencing the level of acceptance and use of SNS applying a structural equation modeling technique. Data were collected by means of an online national survey among Dutch SNS users.

Results support all hypotheses with positive relationships and influence between analyzed constructs; the only exception was the hypothesis on the relation between perceived risk and perceived usefulness.

The survey was conducted in The Netherlands. This research can be considered as the basis for a more extensive research, covering other geographical areas, that will produce results allowing more specific and accurate predictions regarding the acceptance of SNS as marketing management tools.

The findings reveal a number of issues that are important for companies eager to explore the potential of the SNS as a strategic tool and as a means of improvement of their managerial processes in the area of marketing strategy.

SNS are considered of great importance, both for individuals and businesses, since they support and expand existing social or business networks and allow the creation of new ones. The study underlines the importance of these networks as a communications and customer engagement channels.

The traditional TAM has been widely studied to analyze the adoption of new technologies. However, the adoption of SNS has been so far very little studied. The study provides new insights in this adoption process. Alongside this, the study added two personal variables of SNS users (i.e. trust and perceived risk), improving the traditional TAM approach.

The purpose of this paper is to asses the role of social networking sites (SNSs) in the 25 January 2011 Egyptian Revolution, also known as the “Arab Spring”.

The research methods used were an adaptive form of snowball sampling of a heterogeneous demographic group of participants in the Revolution, used to select focus groups to explore a range of relevant issues.

SNSs are shown to have played a central and pivotal role in the events known collectively as the Arab Spring. Their importance as a source of non‐governmental information and as a means of informing the external and internal community of internal events is highlighted by all participants.

The paper outlines research into contemporary events of global significance.

The purpose of this study is to explore the appeal of social networking services (SNS) games from the perspectives of game usability and the functionality that is facilitated by the internet. Why players prefer SNS games to other types of games and what specific characteristics causes them to be addicted to continuous game play are the two critical issues to be probed.

The authors interviewed 11 experts and surveyed 321 gamers using a questionnaire to gather the data about their preferences. The authors believe that a preference‐based study can reveal the underlying reasons for the appeal of SNS games. The collected data were analysed using Quantification Theory Type I.

The semantic structure of appeal, determined from the interviews of experts, shows the hierarchy of the relationship between the types of appeal or appeal factors, the reasons for gamers’ preferences, and the specific characteristics of SNS games. According to the statistical analysis, the three most important appeal factors of SNS games are “easy and convenient”, “friendly and lively” and “social interaction”, and these are affected in varying degrees by particular reasons and characteristics.

Based on the findings, the paper hypothesises that the popularity of Facebook SNS games can be ascribed to the design of game, which targets the psychological preferences of players.

SNS games have become very popular due to some of their appealing characteristics. The findings provide important information for designers and researchers of Facebook SNS games. The study also contributes to the field of human‐computer interaction in cyberspace.

Social networking sites (SNS) are enjoying growing popularity and have triggered new ethical issues including risks of deception, social grooming, cyber-bullying and surveillance. This development along with the growing power of SNS providers calls for an investigation of the CSR engagement of SNS companies. The chapter examines to what extent three prominent providers – Google, Facebook and Twitter – fulfill their responsibilities.

The chapter draws heavily on a politicized concept of CSR, namely ‘corporate citizenship’ (Crane, Matten, & Moon, 2008a; Matten & Crane, 2005) and ‘political CSR’ (Scherer & Palazzo, 2007, 2011) and discusses the role SNS providers play in administering citizenship rights. The chapter takes a qualitative case study approach.

Facebook, Twitter and Google have not only made clear commitments to act responsibly, they actually enhance the citizenship status of their users in many ways, e.g. by offering a platform for democracy activists. Deficiencies and contradictions also become visible, e.g. SNS providers inhibit citizenship by failing to provide sufficient privacy protection.

The chapter is limited by its case study approach, but provides valuable insights to an industry with considerable influence. It contributes to CSR research by applying and testing the politicized concept of CSR in the context of SNS providers.

Although SNS have received appraisal as effective tools of CSR communication, there has been little attention to CSR policy and practice of the companies providing social networks. This is unfortunate since the activities of SNS providers directly impact on millions of users worldwide.

The purpose of this study is to examine how consumer-brand engagement on social networking sites (SNS) is an outcome of the message orientation/vividness.

Message design is proposed to include two components, namely, orientation and vividness. The message orientation is classified as either task/instrumental or socioemotional. The message vividness is measured through content type. The consumer-brand engagement is conceptualized at three levels, namely, cognitive (comment), affective (shares) and conative (likes). A total of 1,000 posts were collected from the official Facebook pages of the 10 most popular travel brands, five each from India and the USA. These two countries were chosen as they are culturally different, with the former representing a largely collectivist culture and greater social connectivity and the latter representing primarily an individualistic culture.

The study reveals that greater message vividness, with more interactive/audio-visual content, leads to higher engagement. The task/instrumental message orientation leads to low-/medium-level engagement. Overall, a combination of high-vividness and socioemotional orientation generates maximum engagement. India and the USA depict unique effects of message orientations/vividness on the consumer-brand engagement levels, indicating cultural implications for the brand SNS messages – effectiveness.

The study’s conceptualization of consumer-brand engagement reflected through the consumers – responses to brands – SNS messages, represents new knowledge. The unique effects of message vividness and orientation on consumer-brand engagement and the variations across cultures is also a novel contribution to the extant branding literature.

The brand marketers should not only design their SNS messages with appropriate vividness/orientation but also tweak them across cultures, for maximum consumer engagement.

The study is a novel attempt to deploy the interaction process analysis framework in an SNS setting.

The aim of this study is to explore, identify and understand the impact of technology affordance in the context of social networking sites (SNSs). Moreover, this study incorporates user experience as a moderator, in order to explore behavioral differences between veterans (high-experience users) and newbies (low-experience users).

A research model was developed to examine the influences of three technology affordances: interactivity, information and navigation on user satisfaction and SNS stickiness. Totally 266 data were collected from a famous college in China using an online survey, and structural equation modeling technique was used to examine the proposed research model.

The empirical research findings indicated that the three technology affordance attributes exhibited different degrees of influence on user satisfaction, which in turn facilitated SNS stickiness. Particularly, high-experience users were more likely influenced by interactivity and information affordances, while low-experience users are more susceptible to navigation affordance.

This study can provide guidelines to the platform administrators to design SNSs from the aspects of interactivity, information and navigation attributes and pay attention to the preference differences between high-experience users and low-experience users.

This study uncovers the significant antecedents of SNS stickiness from a technology affordance lens and reveals the moderating effect of user experience on the relationship between three technology affordance attributes and satisfaction.

Although there are a number of studies on the factors affecting the continuance usage intention for social network services (SNS), the studies on the integrated model encompassing SNS qualities (information, system, and service quality, and hedonic value, which are gratifications for SNS usage), flow, relationship quality (which are trust and satisfaction), and continuance intention are almost non-existent. Based on Bagozzi’s self-regulation framework, the IS success model, uses and gratification theory, and flow theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the qualities and hedonic value of SNS, which have an influence on flow experience and relationship quality which are posited to affect the continuance usage intention.

This study used an e-mail survey method to collect 460 questionnaires for the final sample. The sample of the study includes college students or job workers who have experience in using SNS. Various user categories in terms of gender, school degree, occupation, usage years, and daily time of usage were included.

The study results show that system, service quality, and hedonic value have an impact on flow experience, information and service quality, and hedonic value influence the relationship quality of SNS. The flow experience and relationship quality while using SNS affect the continuance usage intention of SNS. This results show that the consideration of various SNS qualities, hedonic value, flow experience, and relationship quality is necessary to actively explore the factors for continuance usage intention for SNS.

IS managers trying to understand reuse intent can use surveys on information, system, and service quality, and hedonic value. Practitioners should constantly incorporate and develop various activities or useful applications to allow people to reach out to each other, to reinforce users’ attention, interaction, and increase social connections, trust, satisfaction, and further intensify users’ intention to use, increasing SNS value. The findings explain a mechanism through which SNS users’ continuance intention is built. Understanding this mechanism provides valuable information for practitioners to understand the qualities driving SNS users’ intention to revisit SNS.

This study sheds light on the existing literature on website usage that focuses on the design qualities as this paper has combined website quality perspective, i.e., information, system, and service quality, and hedonic value, and the flow and relationship perspective to investigate how these constructs would affect users’ intention to continuously use SNS. On the basis of four theories, Bagozzi’s self-regulation framework, IS success model, users and gratification theory, and flow theory, this study extended the previous studies on SNS by adding information, system, and service quality, hedonic value, flow and relationship quality as second-order constructs affecting continuance intention.