Developing a Framework for Electronic Engagement at Work

Several electronic-engagement-related questions arise at work due to the beginning of a new era of social distancing, lockdowns, quarantining, and sanitization. These terms were not so common before. What challenges do employees face while working from home? Why do they face those challenges? How are they overcoming these challenges? In summary, in a work-from-home setting, what are the issues and solutions in engaging remote workers electronically? To answer these questions, 23 Information Technology (IT) employees in India and four in the United Kingdom were interviewed, and data were analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). Few Information Technology employees from the United Kingdom were also interviewed to ensure the transferability of the results. Along with a few suggestions, six challenges emerged. These may help employers formulate their electronic engagement strategies for employees in a better manner.

Attitudes towards Global Warming on Twitter

Public opinion surveys over the past thirty years show that public opinion is split on the issue of global warming. One of the problems with “solicited” opinion polls is that the findings may be selectively interpreted in favour of the political goals of a particular interest group. To gain a better understanding of the general public’s unsolicited responses to climate change news, the current study examined Twitter messages containing the words “global warming” spanning 16 months. Using a framework combining a sentiment analysis technique, Hedonometer from the perspective of natural language processing, and Appraisal Theory from a discourse analysis perspective, the study shows that the demonstrated happiness level in tweets containing the words “global warming” is consistently lower than the general level on Twitter, due to increased use of negative words and decreased use of positive words. The Appraisal analysis shows that Appreciation is used most frequently and Affect least.

Does Social Media and e-WOM Influence M-Government Services? A Citizen's Perspective from India

In Web-4 technologies, Social media (SM) has emerged as a prominent tool for the government to interact and engage with citizens. It is also an effective channel for providing government services. However, for effective implementation and its success, it is critical to understand the citizens' perceptions towards the government's use of SM and its impact on mobile government (MG) adoption. Consequently, the study focuses on assessing the impact of SM influence and electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) on MG service parameters such as MG Awareness, MG Transparency, and MG Trust. The results of structural equation modelling revealed the significance of e-WOM on improving MG awareness and trust and SM Influence. Further, SM Influence had a direct impact only on MG Transparency. However, results revealed the importance of SM Influence and MG Transparency as a mediator for MG Trust. Besides, gender and age as moderators are investigated and discussed in detail.

Effects of Internet Use on Well-Being in Rural China

Given the rapid development of internet and dramatic change it has brought to human life, this study examines the effect of internet use on well-being in rural China. Findings indicate that the act of engaging with internet and the increase in its usage frequency both have significant positive effects on well-being in rural China, whereas the effect attenuates with the increase of usage frequency. These results imply that internet use features diminishing marginal returns. In the sub-groups divided by education and age, the higher educated and the younger groups use internet more frequently. However, internet use significantly promotes well-being of the lower educated, the middle-aged and the elderly groups, and its effect on the higher educated and the younger groups is insignificant. A further analysis uncovers that internet use increase well-being through relieving loneliness. This study affirms the benefits of internet in rural China, but obsessive internet use could offset the benefits. Thus, the implication of using internet appropriately are highlighted.

Exploring Customer Engagement on Social Networking Sites

The growth in popularity of social media and its perfunctory use by individuals throughout the day has sprouted the need to study Customer Engagement (CE) on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) from the consumer’s lens. To understand user behaviour, it is thus imperative to explore CE from their perspective. This study examines customer engagement and its antecedents and consequences on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in an emerging economy. Data from 21 semi-structured focus group discussions (FGDs) and 42 in-depth interviews (IDIs) were analysed through a grounded theory approach using Nvivo coding. The results highlight the usage patterns and conditions faced by users on SNSs and establish the presence of information overload faced by users. The study also shows various parameters related to post and individual that lead to passive and active engagement on these platforms. Our study has direct implications for marketing managers across industries as it unravels various levers necessary to succeed on SNSs.

Virtual Reality-driven serious communication: Through VR-Dialogue towards VR-Participation

e-Participation depends on a community of users-citizens who constructively engage and collaborate with governments and decision-makers on key democratic and social matters. Effective serious communication requires meaningful social interactions supported by relevant community-building efforts. We argue that achieving that is more visible by engaging dialogue with a constructive shared viewpoint rather than thorough discussions or argumentation. The emerging social Immersive Virtual Reality technologies supply a novel mode of digital communication that brings an opportunity to overcome some of the challenges hindering e-Participation. In this paper, we present the key concepts and explore the principles of Dialogue in the context of serious communication. We link those principles with specific Immersive VR affordances and propose a Framework for Virtual-Reality-Mediated Serious Communication – VR-Dialogue. Finally, we discuss the implications of employing that framework to support e-Participation through an additional component: VR-Participation.

Benefits of Open Government Data Initiatives in Saudi Arabia and Barriers to Their Implementation

Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives can deliver many cultural and institutional benefits. This is why many governments are trying to establish an OGD ecosystem. However, although many countries have made good progress in doing so, some face significant challenges. In such cases, country-specific studies can prove valuable in understanding not only the current situation, but also in defining the obstacles to progress. As far as the authors of this paper can determine, this study is the first to examine the benefits of, and barriers to, implementation of the OGD initiative Saudi Arabia. The study conducts and analyses interviews with Saudi Arabian government officials in both leadership and technical positions, in order to obtain an informed view of the OGD initiative in Saudi. The study contributes to the existing knowledge base by identifying the main benefits of the Saudi Arabian Open Government Initiative and the barriers to its implementation.

Analyzing Social Media Research: A Data Quality and Research Reproducibility Perspective

Social media platforms have become very popular these days among individuals and organizations. On the one hand, organizations use social media as a potential tool to create awareness of their products among consumers, and on the other hand, social media data is useful to predict the national crisis, election polls, stock prediction, etc. However, nowadays, a debate is going on about the quality of data generated on social media platforms, whether it is relevant for prediction and generalization. The article discusses the relevance and quality of data obtained from social media in the context of research and development. Social media data quality issues may impact the generalizability and reproducibility of the results of the study. The paper explores possible reasons for quality issues in the data generated over social media platforms along with the suggestive measures to minimize them using the proposed social media data quality framework.

Influence of political leaders on sustainable development goals – insights from twitter

Purpose

The importance and criticality of sustainable development goals is witnessed by 195 member countries. For its full-fledged adoption and implementation, it needs to be understood by masses and political leaders are critical agents those engage diverse communities through social media such as twitter. Therefore, in this study focuses on how political leaders can influence the sustainable development goals through Twitter.

Design/methodology/approach

This study examines the social media conversations of political leaders on Twitter. Social media analytics methods such as sentiment mining, topic modelling and content analysis-based methods have been used.

Findings

The findings indicate that most political leaders are primarily discussing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) “partnership for goals” and “peace, justice and strong institutions”. Many other goals such as “clean water and sanitation”, “life below water”, “zero hunger”, “no poverty” and “educational quality” are not being focused on.

Research limitations/implications

This study offers implications in terms of collective decision making and the role of policy makers towards the goals of promoting SDGs. The authors highlight how political leaders need to involve key stakeholders in this journey.

Originality/value

This study scores and provides a cohort-specific prioritization of the leadership within these countries with regard to SDGs, which could be beneficial to the society.

Manipulating Temporal Cues and Message Concreteness for Deal Communication

Online merchants often use social media to communicate deal messages to directed consumers, but they face the fundamental challenge of how to effectively communicate deal messages to these consumers using that medium. This research seeks to address this challenge by building on the construal level theory to theorize that consumers' purchase intentions in response to the products promoted via social media communication are affected by the concreteness of promotion messages and its interaction with message promotional time and deal expiration time. A between-subject experiment was conducted, and the findings suggest that concrete messages lead to higher purchase intentions. Through interacting message concreteness, message promotional time and deal expiration time, we show that the congruency of a concrete message with either, but not both, temporal cue lead to higher purchase intention. This study thus provides theoretically grounded insights on how to better communicate deal information on microblogging sites.