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This study examines the effect of social media marketing on voting intention applying a combination of fuzzy logic methodology and a multidimensional panel data model.

The study adopts a multidimensional panel data method that includes several fixed effects. The dependent variable is a multifaceted construct that measures the participants’ intention to vote. The independent variables are electronic word of mouth (eWOM), customisation (CUS), entertainment (ENT), interaction (INT), trendiness (TRD), candidate’s perceived image (CPI), religious beliefs (RB), gender and age. The grouping variables that signify fixed effects are employment status, level of education, mostly used social media and religion. First, the significance of said fixed effects was tested through an ANOVA process. Then, the main model was estimated, including the significant grouping variables as fixed effects.

Employment status and level of education were significant fixed effects. Also, eWOM, ENT, INT, CPI, RB and gender significantly affected participants’ voting intention.

Being based on a questionnaire that asked participants about how they perceive different aspects of social media, the present study is limited to their perceptions. Therefore, further studies covering the voters’ behaviour in action could be efficient complements to the present study.

The findings could guide the political parties into prioritizing the aspects of social media in forming an effective campaign resulting in being elected.

The findings have the potential to help the public in making better informed decisions when voting. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate applications for social media which are beyond leisure time fillers.

Fuzzy logic and multidimensional panel data estimates are this study’s novelty and originality. Structural equation modelling and crisp linguistic values have been used in previous studies on social media’s effect on voting intent. The former refines the data gathered from a questionnaire, and the latter considers the possibility of including different grouping factors to achieve a more efficient and less biased estimation.

This study aims to examine the role of institutional investors (using proxy voting and voice) in influencing the decisions and governance landscape of their investee firms.

The authors use exploratory research design due to the underdevelopment of the problem phenomena, especially in the context of emerging economies. Using asset management companies (AMC) as a proxy for institutional investors, the authors use a multiple case study design. This design was relevant in the setting as it assured triangulation by studying the same phenomenon across firms with distinct characteristics. The authors sourced the data for the multiple cases from primary sources (such as semi-structured interviews) and secondary sources (such as official Webpages and social media pages of AMC and examination of archival documents). Finally, the authors used qualitative content analysis to analyse the data.

The findings suggest that shareholder activism by institutional investors has grown in India over the period, particularly in matters related to corporate governance, related party transactions, remuneration and compensation. These AMC in India use proxy voting services for advising on voting resolutions in their investee companies. However, voting by AMC does not generally affect resolution results. This is particularly true in the presence of a high concentration of promoter holdings in investee companies.

The study is a novel attempt in an emerging market context to explore the role of institutional investors in influencing firm decisions and improving the governance landscape of the company using proxy voting and voice. This is especially important as the institutional framework in emerging markets is not as strong as in developed markets.

Measuring and understanding the dynamics of democracy as well as democratic attitudes of people have become a big challenge for every democratic state. The study proposes the investigation of middle-class peoples’ attitudes towards democracy in Pakistan.

The study employs a deductive approach based on cross-sectional data from Pakistan’s middle-class people. The researchers use a survey questionnaire through a convenience sampling technique. Finally, the study utilizes 1854 samples to conclude the findings.

The evidence confirms that trust in public institutions and political engagement positively and significantly impact peoples’ democratic attitudes. In addition, the investigation witnessed the preference for democracy also supports understanding middle-class peoples’ democratic attitudes.

The study would provide an endorsement for politicians of Pakistan to perceive the inclination of middle-class people towards democracy. The study would guide the researchers and policymakers and intellectualize the middle-class peoples’ opinions and attitudes. Moreover the study would support reflecting the public confidence in decision making and ability to deliver. Finally the study findings would contribute to the literature of political science and democracy to understand democratic attitudes mainly focusing on middle-class populations.

This study empirically confirms the Pakistani middle-class peoples’ attitudes towards democracy.

With the rapid development of social media, many organizations have begun to attach importance to social media platforms. This research studies the management and the use of social media in academic music libraries, taking the Center for Chinese Music Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CCMS) as a case study.

We conducted a sentiment analysis of posts on Facebook’s public page to analyze the reaction to the posts with some exploratory analysis, including the communication trend and relevant factors that affect user interaction.

Our results show that the Facebook channel for the library has a good publicity effect and active interaction, but the number of posts and interactions has a downward trend. Therefore, the library needs to pay more attention to the management of the Facebook channel and take adequate measures to improve the quality of posts to increase interaction.

Few studies have analyzed existing data directly collected from social media by programming based on sentiment analysis and natural language processing technology to explore potential methods to promote music libraries, especially in East Asia, and about traditional music.

Social media (SM) platforms tempt individuals to communicate their perspectives in real-time, rousing engaging discussions on countless topics. People, besides using these platforms to put up their problems and solutions, also share activist content (AC). This study aims to understand why people participate in activist AC sharing on SM by investigating factors related to planned and unplanned human behaviour.

The study adopted a quantitative approach and administered a close-ended structured questionnaire to gather data from 431 respondents who shared AC on Facebook. The data was analysed using hierarchical regression in SPSS.

The study found a significant influence of both planned (perceived social gains (PSGs) , altruism and perceived knowledge (PK)) and unplanned (extraversion and impulsiveness) human behaviour on activist content-sharing behaviour on SM. The moderating effect of enculturation and general public opinion (GPO) was also examined.

Sharing AC on SM is not like sharing other forms of content such as holiday recommendations – the former can provoke consequences (sometimes undesirable) in some regions. Such content can easily leverage the firehose of deception, maximising the vulnerability of those involved. This work, by relating human behaviour to AC sharing on SM, offers significant insights to enable individuals to manage their shared content and waning probable consequences.

This work combined two opposite constructs of human behaviour: planned and unplanned to explain individual behaviour in a specific context of AC sharing on SM.

Female managers have numerous vulnerabilities related to their reputation and career progression in addition to social, sexual and discriminatory vulnerabilities. In organizational settings, antagonized subordinates, peers or superiors can exploit their vulnerabilities through negative use of social media. For optimal performance and inclusion in organizational activities, it is essential to protect female managers against exploitation. Social media can be used for this purpose and dictates an investigation into it as an agent to reduce vulnerabilities and enhance inclusion of female managers.

Qualitative data collected through 25 in-depth semi-structured interviews from respondents belonging to five different organizations has been used in this exploratory study. Thematic analysis was done to reach the underlying structures of subjective responses of female managers.

This study finds that positive use of social media is effective in reducing vulnerabilities and female managers feel more included and protected against exploitation in inclusive organizations. The study presents a holistic view of vulnerabilities of female managers, various forms taken by negative use of social media, mechanics of positive use of social media and pathways to inclusive organization through reduction of vulnerabilities.

Availability of limited time, resources and a single cultural context were few limitations. The study highlights an important area for further research indicating psychological trauma of victimized female managers forcing them to feel excluded from the organization.

This study will enhance understanding of practitioners about vulnerabilities of female managers and its likely accentuation through negative use of social media. In addition, they can learn the use of social media for reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing inclusion of female managers. This study also shed light on methodology to handle the situation in the face of all forms of negative use of social media.

Female managers are highly vulnerable to exploitation through use of social media by antagonized groups and individuals who can easily attack their reputation and image. This study is an effort to reduce vulnerabilities of business women. Additionally, it is also aimed at enhancing inclusion of females in organizational activities to counter their isolation and discrimination on the basis of gender.

The issue of negative use of social media has not received attention of scholars. Being a research gap, exploratory study based on qualitative responses has been conducted to explore different facets of the issue. In-depth interviews have been conducted to collect primary data.

This study investigates the factors that influence citizens trust in public leaders [i.e. presidents, members of parliament (MPs) and local government leaders (LGs)] in 34 countries in Africa between 2019 and 2021.

Individual-level data with a sample size of 48,084 was obtained from the Afro-Barometer round 8 survey only and analyzed using multivariate binary logistic regression.

Several important and intriguing observations were made from this analysis: (1) the performance of public leaders influences citizens trust in their leaders; (2) the perceived corruption of public leaders and civil servants and the level of corruption influence citizens trust in public leaders; (3) perceived neighborhood problems (i.e. fear of violence, fear of terrorism and service delivery) influence citizens trust in their public leaders and (4) the socio-demographic characteristics of citizens (i.e. age, religion, education, location, employment and political party affiliation) influence citizens trust in their public leaders.

This study is exceptional in two ways: (1) it examines and compares citizens trust in public leaders across different levels, i.e. presidents, MPs and LGs in Africa and (2) it examines and compares the factors influencing citizens trust in public leaders in Africa comparatively.

We investigate the joint impacts of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of reviews and attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

We performed three studies to test our research model, presenting participants with scenarios involving product reviews and prior users' helpful and unhelpful votes across experimental settings.

A high helpfulness ratio boosts users’ trust and influences behaviors in both positive and negative reviews. This effect is more pronounced in attribute-based reviews than emotion-based ones. Unlike the ratio effect, helpfulness magnitude significantly impacts only negative attribute-based reviews.

Future research should investigate voting systems in various online contexts, such as Facebook post likes, Twitter microblog thumb-ups and up-votes for article comments on platforms like The New York Times.

Our findings have significant implications for voting system-providers implementing information techniques on third-party review platforms, participatory sites emphasizing user-generated content and online retailers prioritizing product awareness and reputation.

This study addresses an identified need; that is, the helpfulness votes as an additional trust cue and the joint effects of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of customers in reviews and their consequential attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the willingness of Saudi Arabian students from four universities in Saudi Arabia, to adopt learning management systems (LMSs). This will be accomplished by using two popular technology acceptance models unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and theory of planned behavior (TPB).

In total, 445 undergraduates from four Saudi educational institutions participate in filling out the study questionnaire. To investigate the correlations between the variables, the study used structural equation modeling for data analysis.

The results of the study show that effort expectancy (EE), subjective norm (SN), attitude toward behavior (ATB) and perceived behavioral control (PBC) are found to be substantially connected with their intentions to use (ITU) LMSs. The findings also show that there is a strong relationship between students’ intentions and their actual use of LMSs.

Like many studies, this research has some limitations. The primary limitation is that the findings of the study cannot be extrapolated to other settings since the report’s analysis and investigation were limited to four Saudi universities. Therefore, to generalize the study’s findings, similar research needs to be conducted in other Gulf and similar cultural universities.

The integrated model identifies key factors that influence the intent of Saudi Arabian students to use LMS, including EEs, social influence, ATB and PBC. This model can help develop solutions for the obstacles that prevent students from using LMS. The findings can be used to provide assistance to increase the likelihood of LMS acceptance as part of the educational experience. The model may also inspire further research on this topic in the Gulf nations, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

As none of the relevant studies conducted previously in Saudi Arabia has integrated the two models to study the students’ ITU LMSs, this study combines two major theories, TPB and UTAUT, in the context of Saudi Arabia, contributing to the field of technology use in education by expanding empirical research and providing a thorough understanding of the challenges associated with the use of LMS in Saudi universities. This study should be viewed as filling a crucial gap in the field. Moreover, this integrated model, using more than one theoretical perspective, brings a thorough comprehension of the barriers that hinder students’ adoption of LMSs in the academic context in Saudi Arabia and thus assists in making effective decisions and reaching viable solutions.

The success of online health communities (OHCs) depends on maintaining long-term relationships with physicians and preventing churn. Even so, the reasons for physician churn are poorly understood. In this study, an empirical model was proposed from a social influence perspective to explore the effects of online social influence and offline social influence on physician churn, as well as the moderating effect of their online returns.

The empirical data of 4,145 physicians from a Chinese OHC, and probit regression models were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The results suggest that physicians' churn intention is influenced by online and offline social influences, and the offline social influence is more powerful. Physicians' reputational and economic returns could weaken the effect of online social influence on churn intention. However, physicians' economic returns could strengthen the effect of offline social influence on churn intention.

This research study is the first attempt to explore physician churn and divides the social influence into online and offline social influences according to the source of social relationship. The findings contribute to the literature on e-Health, user churn and social influence and provide management implications for OHC managers.