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The current study seeks to investigate, why and how faculty members of Indian central universities are using academic social networking sites (ASNs) for research communication and information dissemination, as well as validate and update the results of previous scholarship in this area. To achieve this, the paper uses structural equation model (SEM).

A simple random sampling method was adopted. Online survey was conducted using a well-designed questionnaire circulated via email id among 3384 faculty members of Indian Central Universities. A SEM was designed and tested with International Business Machines (IBM) Amos. Apart from this, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 22 and Microsoft Excel 2010 were also used for data screening and analysis.

The study explores that most of the respondents are in favour of using the ASNs/tools for their professional activities. The study also found that a large chunk of the respondents used ASNs tools during day time. Apart from it, more number of faculty members used ASNs in research work than general purpose. No significant differences were found among the disciplines in use behaviour of ASNs in scholarly communication. Three hypotheses have been accepted while two were rejected in this study.

The study was confined to the twelve central universities, and only 312 valid responses were taken into consideration in this study.

The paper demonstrates the faculty members’ use behaviour of ASNs in their research communication. The study also contributes new knowledge to methodological discussions as it is the first known study to employ SEM to interpret scholarly use of ASNs by faculty members of Indian central universities.

Based on a lexical analysis of publications on 529 Facebook pages, published between 2013 and 2017, this research explores how Brazilian left-wing activist groups participate on Facebook to coordinate their opposition and engage in social struggles. This chapter shows how activist groups set up two main digital network repertoires of action when mobilizing on Facebook. First, in direct connection with major political events, the platform is used as a media arena to challenge governments’ political actions and second, it is employed as a tool to coordinate mobilization, whether these mobilizations are demonstrations on the street or at cultural events, such as at a music concert. These repertoires of action exemplify ways in which contemporary Brazilian activism is carried out at the intersection of online and offline engagements. While participants engage through these two repertoires, this network of activists is held together over time through a more mundane type of event, pertaining to the repertoire of action allowing the organization of mobilization. Stepping aside from opposition and struggles brought to the streets, the organization of cultural activities, such as concerts and exhibitions, punctuates the everyday exchanges in activists’ communications. Talk about cultural events and their related social agendas structures activist networks on a medium-term basis and creates the conditions for the coordination of (future) social movements, in that they offer the opportunities to stay in contact, in addition to taking part in occasional gatherings, between more highly visible social protests.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an increase in online traffic, with many assuming that this technology would facilitate coping through active social connections. This study aims to interrogate the nature of this traffic-engagement relationship by distinguishing between passive (e.g. browsing) and active (e.g. reacting, commenting and sharing) engagement, and examining behavioral shifts across platforms.

Three field studies assessed changes in social media engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies included social media engagement with the most followed accounts (Twitter), discussion board commenting (Reddit) and news content sharing (Facebook).

Even though people spent more time online during the pandemic, the current research finds people were actively engaging less. Users were reacting less to popular social media accounts, commenting less on discussion boards and even sharing less news content.

While the current work provides a systematic observation of engagement during a global crisis, it does not claim causality based on its correlational nature. Future research should test potential mechanisms (e.g. anxiety, threat and privacy) to draw causal inference and identify possible interventions.

The pandemic shed light on a complex systemic issue: the misunderstanding and oversimplification of how online platforms facilitate social cohesion. It encourages thoughtful consideration of online social dynamics, emphasizing that not all engagement is equal and that the benefits of connection may not always be realized as expected.

This research provides a postmortem on the traffic-engagement relationship, highlighting that increased online presence does not necessarily translate to active social connection, which might help explain the rise in mental health issues that emerged from the pandemic.

Teachers are an adaptive group of professionals and in this chapter, we explore the ways that teachers can develop themselves as leaders, even in the absence of strong support or leadership. We explore the manner that these skill sets and strengths can be cultivated, providing lived examples of how the authors have developed themselves. The ways that teachers can follow in the footsteps of the authors is outlined in clearly defined steps. By drawing on previous literature, we provide seven strong claims of developing middle leadership knowledge and skill sets beyond your school. Much of this development and community development work that develops and sharpens leadership skills can be explored through online fora and social media tools. These tools allow skill development, professional learning, and exposure to a broad range of education stakeholders and groups; for future pathways in school leadership roles and leading beyond school gate.

The article attempts to shed light on the social aspects of research that deal with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and sustainable cities. The aim is to offer a global view of these facets' evolution and to provide information on people-centered smart cities.

The research is qualitative. A systematic bibliometric approach is a framework for the research. The unit of analysis is publications on SDGs and Smart Cities (SCs) indexed in Scopus. The authors used VOSviewer text mining functionality to construct co-occurrence networks of socially related critical terms extracted from textual data. The co-occurrence of keywords presents a valuable method and process for attaining in-depth analysis and fast comprehension of trends and linkages in articles from a holistic approach.

Social media, social sustainability and social capital are the three multifaceted social keywords that co-occur in SDGs and SCs. The paper provides a brief compendium of resources and frameworks to build a socially sustainable smart city.

The retrieval date was on 15 August 2019. The authors used the same search query for new papers released in 2019 and afterwards to update their findings. The authors collected 657 documents on SCs, compared to 2,975 documents about SDGs demonstrating that their findings are still trending in the same direction, emphasizing the importance of the research topic. SCs' social aspects are still chartered areas that require the attention to future research.

The authors’ decision to use two separate data sets for SCs and SDGs data files helps to provide a more comprehensive picture of the research landscape. It may identify areas where research is lacking or needs future research. The authors present an integrative agenda for a smart city to be socially sustainable. Innovative approaches to urban planning are required to empower the place and context and improve the users' satisfaction, where innovative solutions enable smart, sustainable and inclusive societies. Infrastructure governance is a critical keystone. It could guarantee that public investments contribute to sustainable urban development while enhancing city resilience, particularly in facing climate change and inclusive growth challenges.

This exploratory study aims to investigate the use of Facebook as a dialogic accounting tool for promoting citizen engagement in Italian regions.

This study adopts a mixed methodology. Indeed, it first collects some quantitative data to construct an engagement index for the Facebook pages of the Italian regions, and then it performs a content analysis of some posts while also examining the tenor of the related comments and the level of interaction between regions and citizens.

The Italian regions have mainly used their Facebook pages for public communication purposes rather than for public participation. Therefore, they have conceived social pages more as an instrument of self-legitimisation and thus monologic accounting and have rarely considered them as a tool for engaging citizens who, in turn, showed low interest in participating in online debates. Nature and environment, tourism promotion and sport were the most engaging content types. Findings also confirm that posting many messages does not automatically increase engagement.

This study is one of the first to investigate the potential of social media from a dialogic accounting perspective, especially in the public sector. Additionally, it focuses on regions which are understudied in the literature, although they are critical actors in implementing public policies. Last but not least, this study offers a framework that integrates the literature on the use of social media for citizen engagement and research on such platforms as dialogic accounting tools.

For policymakers and participants of financial markets, predictions of trading volumes of financial indices are important issues. This study aims to address such a prediction problem based on the CSI300 nearby futures by using high-frequency data recorded each minute from the launch date of the futures to roughly two years after constituent stocks of the futures all becoming shortable, a time period witnessing significantly increased trading activities.

In order to answer questions as follows, this study adopts the neural network for modeling the irregular trading volume series of the CSI300 nearby futures: are the research able to utilize the lags of the trading volume series to make predictions; if this is the case, how far can the predictions go and how accurate can the predictions be; can this research use predictive information from trading volumes of the CSI300 spot and first distant futures for improving prediction accuracy and what is the corresponding magnitude; how sophisticated is the model; and how robust are its predictions?

The results of this study show that a simple neural network model could be constructed with 10 hidden neurons to robustly predict the trading volume of the CSI300 nearby futures using 1–20 min ahead trading volume data. The model leads to the root mean square error of about 955 contracts. Utilizing additional predictive information from trading volumes of the CSI300 spot and first distant futures could further benefit prediction accuracy and the magnitude of improvements is about 1–2%. This benefit is particularly significant when the trading volume of the CSI300 nearby futures is close to be zero. Another benefit, at the cost of the model becoming slightly more sophisticated with more hidden neurons, is that predictions could be generated through 1–30 min ahead trading volume data.

The results of this study could be used for multiple purposes, including designing financial index trading systems and platforms, monitoring systematic financial risks and building financial index price forecasting.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the use and effectiveness of a bespoke mobile learning resource, Pocket Tutor. This resource responds to a number of teaching and learning challenges within the tertiary education context. These include those related to the number and type of learning activities that can be offered, class pacing, subject-specific content considerations and the availability and quality of off-the-shelf learning resources. Educators have to potentially contend with all of these amidst mounting institutional constraints and external pressures. Yet, a supplemental, from-scratch online learning resource can help mitigate some of these challenges.

This study presents the successes and challenges of introducing a mobile learning resource, Pocket Tutor, to bolster autonomous learning in a supported university learning environment. Pocket Tutor was designed and developed in 2019 and integrated in 2020 and 2021 into a multimedia design class offered at a large university in the Asia-Pacific. The resource’s effectiveness is measured against common technology acceptance factors – including self-efficacy, enthusiasm and enjoyment in relation to contextual purpose and class learning outcomes – through a multi-pronged approach consisting of a class-wide survey, developed specifically for this purpose and analysis of usage data. Deeper context was also provided through a small pool of follow-up interviews.

Evidence from this study’s data suggests that a bespoke, mobile-learning resource can provide greater consistency, more relevance, more flexibility for when and where students learn and more efficiency with limited opportunities for synchronous interaction. At the same time, a bespoke mobile-learning resource represents a significant investment of skill and time to develop and maintain.

This study responds to calls from scholars who argue that more research (especially that is qualitative and discipline-specific) is needed to investigate students’ willingness to use learning apps on their mobile devices. This study pairs such research about student willingness with actual usage data and student reflections to more concretely address the role of mobile learning resources in higher education contexts. This study also, importantly, does not just assess perceptions and attitudes about mobile learning resources in the abstract but assesses attitudes and usage patterns for specific generic and bespoke mobile learning resources available for students in a specific university class (thereby providing discipline-specific insights). This study also provides a unique contribution by including multiple years of data and, thus, offers a longitudinal view on how mobile-learning resources are perceived and used in a particular higher education context.