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Rating features on social media platforms affect visibility algorithms and act as symbolic markers of evaluation. This paper addresses the social effects of content ratings through a case study of ...

To this date, research on crisis informatics has focused on the detection of trust in Twitter data through the use of message structure, sentiment, propagation and author. Little research has examined the usefulness of these messages in the crisis response domain. In this paper, we characterize tweets, which are perceived useful or trustworthy, and determine their main features as one possible dimension to identify useful messages in case of crisis. In addition, we examine perceived emotions of these messages and how the different emotions affect the perceived usefulness and trustworthiness. Our analysis is carried out on two datasets gathered from Twitter concerning Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the Boston Bombings in 2013. The results indicate that there is a high correlation between trustworthiness and usefulness, and, interestingly, that there is a significant difference in the perceived emotions that contribute to each of these. Our findings are poised to impact how messages from social media d...

Inspired by the recent wave of global protests, this paper seeks to empirically investigate the role and interaction of a burgeoning young population and the penetration of information and communications technology (ICT) in explaining the onset and diffusion of anti-government demonstrations. Employing a cross-national global analysis between the years 1995 and 2011, we find that youth bulges and ICT affect protest activities in a more complicated and nuanced manner than the conventional wisdom suggests. The proliferation of anti-government protests is multiplicatively heightened when the enhanced technological means of protest are fused with the structural and opportunity-based conditions often witnessed in countries with large youth bulges. In contrast, we do not find that either of our variables of interest affects the probability of the outbreak of protests, which is rather explained by more contextual factors. A nuance in our results pertaining to the prevalence of protests suggests that it is the pr...

Blogs have been used extensively to self-document the intimate and often intensive experiences of living with serious illness, charting their author's health and treatment often over many years, connecting with others and drawing attention and concern along the way. This paper analyses a selection of typical ‘cancer blogs’ with the aim of understanding the kinds of personal investment, or labour, involved in the process of forming and maintaining them over a sustained period. Where previous research has investigated what is often seen as the ‘empowering’ role of these blogs, we attempt to qualify these claims. Our qualitative, case study analysis draws on and expands the theory and debates around the nature of immaterial and affective labour. We highlight the value of cancer blogging as personal, in the form of identity and affect management, network-enabling in generating online spaces for shared experience and support, and social in what is recouped in the forms of non-institutional management of seriou...

This paper reports on a study designed to explore individual differences in uncertainty-reducing behavior regarding new and existing friends via online information seeking (OIS). Personality traits and social context were measured by surveying a sample of 377 Facebook users. Global uncertainty had a positive relationship with active information seeking about new friends, whereas communication apprehension was associated with seeking information about existing friends. The geographic proximity of close friends and family did not affect information-seeking behavior, but those with larger strong tie networks spent more time seeking information online and were happier. These results suggest that psychological traits served as strong motives for uncertainty-reducing behavior like active OIS.

This paper builds on past studies of virtual community by illuminating the effect of offline gatherings (‘meetups’) on physically dispersed virtual communities. Although research to date has examined the way in which online interaction affects offline community, the question of how offline interaction affects online community has largely been ignored. On the one hand, these offline gatherings may provide individual benefits for members as the development of relationships strengthens social ties, leading to the creation of bonding social capital. However, these gatherings do not necessarily benefit the community at large as the resources found in weak ties may be sacrificed as attendees favour interaction with one another to the detriment of those that do not attend meetups. Non-obtrusive analysis of over eight years of user activity from a large, active online community suggests that the development of multiplex relationships – relationships maintained both online and offline – enhances attendees’ engagem...

The number of ways that people communicate with their social networks has changed dramatically in the last 50 years. Traditionally, the local community was the basis for people's social interactions; most of people's closest friends resided locally and face-to-face communication was the predominant mode of communication. Yet, today face-to-face meetings are no longer the primary way to communicate as one can use a landline telephone or any number of the computer mediated communications such as email. This paper explores the modes of communication rural individuals use most often with their three closest friends and how these modes of communication vary by three factors: (1) social tie locality, (2) frequency of communication, and (3) degree of Internet usage. Using a 2005 random sample mail survey of 1,315 residents in an isolated region of the Western United States, the results show that people actively use email to maintain core social networks, particularly when alters live at a distance. However, cont...

Decisions about distance education are made too often without adequately considering the broader institutional context. This paper explores how a better understanding of 'macro' contexts can lead t...