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People with developmental disabilities have persistent levels of low employment and employment rates among the working-aged disabled are declining (see Bound & Waidmann, 2002). For example, the average employment rate of those graduating with a four-year degree is just under 90% while employment rates for those graduates with a disability hover around 50% (The Center for an Accessible Society, n.d.). Subsequently, people with disabilities often have a difficult time becoming economically self-sufficient (see National Council on Disability, 2000; Sowers, McLean, & Owens, 2002). The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) is one notable attempt to help provide those with a disability to employment access. While the ADA has been a champion of the cause, people with developmental disabilities still face a host of employment-related barriers (e.g., biases associated with the disability) (see DiLeo, 2007; Luecking & Mooney, 2002). Furthermore, while most people have concerns over retirement (e.g., social isolation) those concerns are exacerbated for people with developmental disabilities (see Hodges & Luken, 2006).

Due to the incredible criticisms by scholars of the excessive use of social media networks, this study aims to explore students’ motivation for social media use (SMU) and its effects on academic performance (AP) in the light of uses and gratification theory.

Using the simple random and snowball sampling techniques, this study has considered 299 responses and critically analyzed them using structural equation modeling through the AMOS version 24. The mediation analysis has been done to explore the effective use of social media networks.

The results reveal that video clip watching and nonacademic learning intentions significantly influence SMU and AP. Besides, socialization through friends and family connections has tremendously fostered SMU intention, while it could not benefit AP. This study found an exceptional result that the entertainment intention of the students did not influence SMU but dramatically impacted their AP. Again, SMU has robust effects on enhancing students’ academic achievement. This study also concluded the results of the mediation analysis.

The learners, professionals, higher education policymakers, etc. may benefit from following this study's guidelines for using social media networks.

This study may tremendously contribute to changing the mindset of youth from addiction to SMU and improving AP.

The prime novelty of this study is to justify the mediation analysis for SMU to explore whether it can truly influence students’ AP and critically examine the deep insight of certain factors associated with SMU.

The purpose of this paper is to seek reasons for some videos going viral over YouTube (a type of social media platform).

Using YouTube APIs (Application Programming Interface) and Webometrics analyst tool, the authors collected data on about 100 all-time-most-viewed YouTube videos and information about the users associated with the videos. The authors constructed and tested an empirical model to understand the relationship among users’ social and non-social capital (e.g. User Age, Gender, View Count, Subscriber, Join Date, Total Videos Posted), video characteristics (Post Date, Duration, and Video Category), external network capital (in-links and hit counts), and Virality (Likes, Dislikes, Favorite Count, View Count, and Comment Count). Partial least square and Webometric analysis was used to explore the association among the constructs.

Among other findings, the results showed that popularity of the videos was not only the function of YouTube system per se, but that network dynamics (e.g. in-links and hits counts) and offline social capital (e.g. fan base and fame) play crucial roles in the viral phenomenon, particularly view count.

The authors for the first time constructed and tested an empirical model to find out the determinants of viral phenomenon over YouTube.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of social media marketing activities on brand loyalty, value consciousness and brand consciousness.

A self-administered questionnaire was developed and administered to a convenience sample of 346 undergraduate students

The findings of this research indicated that social media marketing has a significant effect on brand loyalty; brand consciousness and value consciousness mediate the relationship between social media marketing and brand loyalty.

This study confirms the growing importance of social media marketing. It also provides insights for marketers on envisioning brand loyalty.

This paper aims to develop and evaluate, in “real-life” pilot applications, a framework for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy-making processes to promote public participation and conduct crowdsourcing.

This framework has been developed through cooperation with public sector employees experienced in public policy-making, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques: semi-structured focus group discussions, scenarios development and questionnaire surveys. The evaluation of the framework has been conducted through semi-structured focus group discussions with public sector employees involved in the pilot applications.

A framework has been developed for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies, which is based on the automated posting of policy-related content to multiple social media, and then retrieval and processing of citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes, comments and retweets), using the application programming interfaces (API) of these social media. Furthermore, a supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure and an application process model for it were developed. Its evaluation, based on “real-life” pilot applications, leads to useful insights concerning its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.

The proposed framework has been evaluated in a small number of pilot applications, so further evaluation of it is required, in various types of government agencies and for different kinds of policy consultations.

The above framework enables government agencies to communicate with wider and more heterogeneous audiences in a short time and at a low cost, increase public participation in their policy-making processes, collect useful knowledge, ideas and opinions from citizens and, finally, design better, more socially rooted, balanced and realistic policies.

This research contributes to the development of knowledge concerning advanced practices for effective social media exploitation in government (which is currently limited, despite the considerable relevant knowledge developed in this area for the private sector), by developing and evaluating a framework for advanced and highly automated exploitation of multiple social media by government agencies. Furthermore, an evaluation methodology for such practices has been developed, which is based on sound theoretical foundations.

This paper aims to uncover how social media is used, managed, and perceived by sports and entertainment venue (SEV) managers. While there is considerable evidence that social media has been used effectively by Fortune 500 companies, it is not known how social media is administered and perceived among managers of arenas, stadiums, performing art centers, and convention centers.

This paper used survey methodology to capture the perceptions of 383 venue management professionals, all members of the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM).

Most venue managers feel their social media efforts are proficient or at the expert level and most have a defined social media strategy. Others feel much less confident about their social media efforts and have no defined social media strategy. At a statistically significant level, those with a defined social media strategy report increased revenue, while those without a defined social media strategy do not. Venue managers forecast a significant increase in non‐traditional marketing strategies while using traditional marketing efforts over the next three years far less.

While the 383 responders are IAVM active members who are in venue management, they reasonably represent SEV managers in general and these survey results can be generalized to SEV managers with an overall conservative margin of error of ±5.0 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. The survey was conducted online by e‐mail invitation. While using the online media to deliver a survey related to the proliferation of various online activities was, at one time, questionable and, potentially, a source of responder bias, the current level of saturation of e‐mail use by and comfort with online activity of professionals mitigates these likely sources of responder bias and is not a source of additional concern with this study.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the results and a recommendation that venue managers define a social media strategy that includes hiring or reassigning staff to support this important area of social media marketing.

This paper is unique in that examines social media use in the unique context of SEVs.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare open source and proprietary discovery tools and find out how much discovery tools have achieved towards becoming the next generation catalog.

The paper summarizes characteristics of the next generation catalog into a check‐list of 12 features. This list was checked against each of seven open source and ten proprietary discovery tools to determine if those features were present or absent in those tools.

Discovery tools have many next generation catalog features, but only a few can be called real next generation catalogs. Federated searching and relevancy based on circulation statistics are the two areas that both open source and proprietary discovery tools are missing. Open source discovery tools seem to be bolder and more innovative than proprietary tools in embracing advanced features of the next generation catalog. Vendors of discovery tools may need to quicken their steps in catching up.

It is the first evaluation and comparison of open source and proprietary discovery tools on a large scale. It will provide information as to exactly where discovery tools stand in light of the much desired next generation catalog.

Dietary guidelines consistently advocate the reduction of fat in the diet and the food industry has responded by introducing a vast range of reduced fat foods on to the market. However, reduced fat diets are difficult for people to maintain. Nutrition education is at a critical crossroads, such that consumers have received the message to reduce fat in the diet, but are unable or unwilling to comply with this information so that overall health status can be improved. Better understanding of the factors that influence fat intake will help to explain why dietary change is so difficult to sustain. Sensory studies and focus group discussions were conducted with consumers to assess their perceptions, acceptance and preferences for reduced fat products. The results implied that consumers associate reduced fat foods with inferior sensory properties and perceive them with a degree of scepticism and mistrust.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a local orientation and navigation framework based on visual features that provide location recognition, context augmentation, and viewer localization information to a blind or low‐vision user.

The authors consider three types of “visual noun” features: signage, visual‐text, and visual‐icons that are proposed as a low‐cost method for augmenting environments. These are used in combination with an RGB‐D sensor and a simplified SLAM algorithm to develop a framework for navigation assistance suitable for the blind and low‐vision users.

It was found that signage detection cannot only help a blind user to find a location, but can also be used to give accurate orientation and location information to guide the user navigating a complex environment. The combination of visual nouns for orientation and RGB‐D sensing for traversable path finding can be one of the cost‐effective solutions for navigation assistance for blind and low‐vision users.

This is the first step for a new approach in self‐localization and local navigation of a blind user using both signs and 3D data. The approach is meant to be cost‐effective but it only works in man‐made scenes where a lot of signs exist or can be placed and are relatively permanent in their appearances and locations.

Based on 2012 World Health Organization, 285 million people are visually impaired, of which 39 million are blind. This project will have a direct impact on this community.

Signage detection has been widely studied for assisting visually impaired people in finding locations, but this paper provides the first attempt to use visual nouns as visual features to accurately locate and orient a blind user. The combination of visual nouns with 3D data from an RGB‐D sensor is also new.

An infrastructure based on multiple heterogeneous access networks is one of the leading enablers for the emerging paradigm of pervasive computing. The optimal management of diverse networking resources is a challenging problem. This paper aims to present a context‐aware policy mechanism with related end‐to‐end (E2E) evaluation algorithm for adaptive connectivity management in multi‐access wireless networks.

A policy is used to express the criteria for adaptive selection of the best local and remote network interfaces. The best connection can then be used for the establishment of a channel as well as for the maintenance of on‐going data transmission. Rich context information is considered in the policy representation with respect to user profile and preference, application characteristics, device capability, and network quality of service conditions. The decision of the best access networks to be used is made on the basis of an E2E evaluation process. The decision can be made in both master–slave and peer‐to‐peer modes, according to the decision matrixes generated in both ends. The paper focuses on the policy representation and connection evaluation algorithm. A case study is presented to show the usability of the proposed policy mechanism and decision‐making algorithm in the adaptiv management of heterogeneous networking resources.

The proposed policy mechanism is for the adaptive decision of connection selection in channel establishment and vertical handoff between heterogeneous access networks. A policy is represented as a four‐tuple, including the direction and the class of traffic, requirement expression, and concrete evaluation items. Three steps are involved in the evaluation process, namely policy traverse, decision matrix calculation, and decision‐making.

The policy mechanism can be easily extended to include adaptive selection of multiple user devices in addition to multiple connections.