As smartphones become more and more popular, uses of social media on mobile devices have grown explosively. Previous studies have investigated usage behaviors of social networks in various ways, but few of them emphasized the activities on smartphones and social applications. In this study, we develop a research framework based on the network externalities and cognitive absorption to explain us...

Digitalization of media is one of the outcomes of technologic relations in the new world. Flourishing contemporary technologies in the society resulted in transferring a large part of traditional face-to-face communication to virtual communication. Therefore, such process breaks down traditional patterns of human connections and developing the size of online relationships. In addition, one of t...

Application of social network analysis to education has revealed how social network positions of K-12 students correlate with their behavior and academic achievements. However, no study has been conducted on how their social network influences their academic progress over time. Here we investigated correlations between high school students' academic progress over one year and the social environ...

Facilitated by the widespread adoption of smartphones, applications (apps) on smartphones such as WeChat and WhatsApp have seen rapid and explosive growth. These apps are generally referred to as second-generation mobile instant messaging (SMIM) services. Unlike first-generation mobile instant messaging (FMIM) services (e.g. Short Message Service), SMIM services typically support multimedia con...

Online social networking has become one of the most popular services on the Web. However, current social networks are like walled gardens in which users do not have full control over their data, are bound to specific usage terms of the social network operator and suffer from a lock-in effect due to the lack of interoperability and standards compliance between social networks. In this paper we p...

Social networks are commonplace tools, accessed everyday by millions of users. However, despite their popularity, we still know relatively little about why they are so appealing and what specifically they are used for what novel needs they meet. This paper presents two studies that extend work on applying Uses and Gratification theory to answer such questions. The first study explores motivatio...

This study proposes and tests a research model which was developed based on the uses-and-gratifications theory. The aim of this study was to investigate if selected factors have differential predicting power on the use of Facebook and Google service in Taiwan. This study employed seven constructs: purposive value, hedonic value, social identity, social support, interpersonal relationship, perso...

Recently, we have observed rapid growth of individual daily technologies such as microblogs, and the technology’s influence on people’s social life. To investigate such self-determined technology usage, we choose an empowerment perspective as our theoretical lens, because the empowerment concept highlights human beings’ proactive nature. We investigate a specific microblog usage, i.e. publicly ...

This study examined the social networking site usage profiles, usage purposes and frequency of activity among university students. Using the survey method the study was conducted among 1818 university students at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. It focused on the use of Facebook as a social networking site. The study established that the frequency with which students visit Facebook, th...

This study found that most corporate personnel are using social media to communicate with colleagues to make the process of working more efficient. Complete satisfaction occurred on the use of security within the University’s computer network. The social network usage for communication, collaboration, entertainment and demonstrating concerns accounted for fifty percent of variance to predict in...