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The study investigated whether undergraduate students adopt a "one‐size‐fits‐all" approach when using social media to meet different goals (entertainment, information‐seeking/learning, personal identity, and social interaction/ integration). Findings suggest the selective use of platforms for different goals. The perceived usefulness of elements in evaluating social media information also differed across goals, particularly for entertainment. Multiple regression analyses revealed the familiarity with social media information quality issues, self‐efficacy, and gender significantly associated with respondents' tendency to give dissimilar usefulness ratings across goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating the notions of public service and intrinsic motivations with usability factors, this study examined the motivational and usability factors influencing intention to help via a community crowdsourcing app. Hierarchical linear regression analysis indicated that creating an engaging and useful app that appeals to needs for commitment, and intrinsic needs to participate in valuable acts motivated users to use the community crowdsourcing app to help others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of social media in formal education has received consistent interest in the recent decade. While most studies have focused on the mandatory use of social media as pedagogical tools, less explored is the context in which students voluntarily choose and use social media to supplement their formal learning. In this study, we employ an affordance approach to exploring the resources in social media that students perceive and use voluntarily for formal learning. Drawing on a qualitative study using focus groups of university students, we identified ten categories of social media affordances for learning in the voluntary context: association, editability, immediacy, interactivity, manageability, modality, persistence, scalability, searchability, and visibility. The affordances mentioned most frequently by students were visibility, persistence, and interactivity. These identified affordances encompass the major resources offered by social media for learning in the voluntary context, and provide insights into understanding, evaluating, and guiding social media adoption in formal education as well as lifelong learning. This paper concludes by presenting limitations and implications for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Social media have been widely adopted by digital natives for learning purposes due to the wealth of educational resources afforded by these platforms. As such, educational researchers and practitioners have been advocating the integration of social media in formal learning. While a majority of research has highlighted the benefits of using social media in formal education, still lacking is research that examines students' learning behaviors and experience with social media. From the perspective of self-regulated learning, we investigate students' learning strategies in social media, as well as the relationship between using these strategies and students' learning satisfaction. Drawing on a survey of 270 undergraduate and graduate students, we found that in the formal learning context, students employed four types of self-regulated learning strategies (i.e., goal setting, environment structuring, performance control and self-evaluation) to achieve effective learning with social media. Among the four strategies, goal setting was most commonly used. Further, a regression analysis revealed that all four types of self-regulated learning strategies were significantly related to students' learning satisfaction with social media, while goal setting was the most prominent strategy. This article concludes by presenting limitations as well as implications for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The increased use of crowdsourcing to support smart city initiatives has been reported in the literature. However, a gap remains in understanding the needs motivating crowdsourcing participation in smart city projects. Integrating perspectives from self-determination theory and public service motivation, this study investigates the motives driving the use of a mobile crowdsourcing platform prototype known as My Smart Mobile City app (i.e., MSMC) that aims to help smart cities manage public engagement with their residents. Data was collected from 100 participants. Factor analysis was conducted and results indicate that the motives driving the use of MSMC fell into three categories: affective, norm-based and rational. Results and implications of our work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more individuals turn to social network sites (SNSs) for information, the spread of misinformation in these sites is becoming a greater concern. Not only can misinformation cause individual users anxiety and harm, but it can also prevent SNSs from realizing their full potential as trustworthy sources of information. This study proposed and tested an intervention‐based strategy that was designed to discourage behavior that promotes the spread of misinformation. Guided by the social cognitive theory (SCT), the intervention sought to modify users' outcome expectations by presenting them with a message that highlighted the negative consequences of misinformation. To investigate the effectiveness of this intervention message, a classical experiment was conducted on‐line with 131 college‐student participants. In the study's experimental group, the ANOVA results showed that the intervention effectively reduced the total number of “Likes” and “Shares” for postings that provided misinformation. Future development and testing of this SCT‐guided, outcome‐expectations‐based intervention is promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by the knowledge gap theory, this study explored possible hypotheses on information-seeking satisfaction gaps. Using a survey of 1,000 Singapore Internet users and an ANOVA test, this research tested whether individuals' satisfaction with everyday information seeking varies by demographics and by the frequency of information sources usage. Interaction effects were also tested. Significant differences were found in the satisfaction level based on the income level and on the frequency of using all four sources tested. Three interactions were significant, two of which suggest lower satisfaction among lower socioeconomic status individuals who used the Internet or social media with moderate frequency. Five propositions were introduced for further testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from the functional approach to volunteerism, the aim of this preliminary study is to investigate the motives driving people's willingness to use a mobile crowdsourcing app to voluntarily help others in a smart city. Data were collected from 125 individuals. Preliminary results indicate that there are three categories of motives (i.e. Values, Protective and Professional) underlying helping behaviors in a smart city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyzed social question and answer (SQA) threads on Stack Overflow to investigate users' interaction patterns within an SQA thread and how these patterns related to the likelihood of receiving an acceptable answer. Robert Bales' Interaction Process Analysis was used to code the data. Analysis of 125 threads (844 posts) showed differences in response time and top interaction sequences. A significant difference was found in IPA.2 (shows tension release), a category in IPA's social‐ emotional area. This suggests that users' interactions on SQA, including their emotion management, are worth investigating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues with inaccurate information on social media have caused a rising concern. In addition to improving students' knowledge and skills in evaluating the quality of social media information, there is also a need to understand potential barriers such as students' lack of attention to information quality. Surveying over 1,800 students, the current study investigated the relationships among students' perceived importance of finding quality information, academic background, purposes of social media use, and evaluative actions taken. A multiple regression analysis revealed that two purposes of use and other academic backgrounds are related to the perceived importance of finding quality information from social media. Further investigation through correspond‐ ence analysis revealed distinctive clusters of evaluative actions when the purpose of use was to get background information from social media – the purpose closely related to the perceived importance of finding quality information. Implications of the findings on information literacy education were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Drawing from coping and uses and gratifications theories, the study investigates how individuals' coping style, purposes and features/elements of social media interact and influence the perceived usefulness of social media elements. Over 1,000 undergraduate students in the United States participated in the study. Data are collected through an online survey. Findings and implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]