Netnography: A Method Specifically Designed to Study Cultures and Communities Online

Academic procrastination in university students of social and health sciences was compared according to socio-academic variables, such as: age, gender, occupation, area and year of study. The research was descriptive-comparative, quantitative, non-experimental; 1000 university social and health sciences students intentionally selected according to quotas participated. The information was collected with a duly validated instrument about academic procrastination. It was observed that: the majority of students perceive high academic procrastination (62%), low academic self-regulation (41%) and high procrastination of activities (74%). Concluding that the trend of academic procrastination is mostly present in students of social sciences, in male students, in the first years or academic cycles and in those who are studying while working. Therefore, most students who procrastinate avoid prioritizing the development of academic activities for others that are of particular interest such as: excessive use of technology, social networks, dependence on cell phones and work.

Aim. This descriptive study was conducted to determine and compare the emotional intelligence levels of senior students receiving education in different fields of Ataturk University.Methods. The population of the study consisted of senior students receiving education in different fields of Atatürk University. The sample group of study consisted of 305 senior students receiving education in different fields (health, social, and natural) and they were selected by using the simple random sampling method. Three faculties from three different fields were selected. Data of the study were obtained by using the personal information form, which was prepared by researchers in the light of the literature and involved sociodemographic characteristics and the “Emotional Intelligence Evaluation Scale.”Results. It was determined that while natural science students had the lowest total mean score of emotional intelligence scale, students of social sciences had the highest total mean score according to departments. Examining the difference between the mean scores of three different educational fields, it was determined that this difference was statistically significant.Conclusion. Consequently, the emotional intelligence level was determined to be lower in natural science students and moderate in students of health and social sciences.

Virtual friend recommendations in virtual worlds

Social Desirability in Virtual Communities

The rapid development and expansion of the Internet and the social–based services comprised by the common Web 2.0 idea provokes the creation of the new area of research interests, i.e. social networks on the Internet called also virtual or online communities. Social networks can be either maintained and presented by social networking sites like MySpace, LinkedIn or indirectly extracted from the data about user interaction, activities or achievements such as emails, chats, blogs, homepages connected by hyperlinks, commented photos in multimedia sharing system, etc. A social network is the set of human beings or rather their digital representations that refer to the registered users who are linked by relationships extracted from the data about their activities, common communication or direct links gathered in the internet–based systems. Both digital representations named in the paper internet identities as well as their relationships can be characterized in many different ways. Such diversity yields for building a comprehensive and coherent view onto the concept of internet–based social networks. This survey provides in–depth analysis and classification of social networks existing on the Internet together with studies on selected examples of different virtual communities.

The aim of this study is to reveal Open Education related social media usage in Turkey through social network analyses. To this end, the most widely used social media network in Turkey, Facebook, was chosen. All the pages and groups created on Facebook related to Open Education were found. A total of 207 groups and 521 pages were accessed and entered into the social network analysis. Within the scope of this study, the density and centrality features of the network were analyzed for groups whereas the density, centrality, and degrees features of the network were analyzed for pages. The study's results revealed that while pages and groups related to programs emphasizing current job opportunities and student support services were more actively used, commercial accounts attempted to exploit students' exam anxiety instead of generating actual content. The findings also revealed that well structured institutional pages appeal to students and have the potential to reach high levels of popular in short periods of time.

In the last ten years, the online world has changed dramatically. Social media sites continue to grow in popularity. Every day, many people are spending countless hours immersed in social media. Many researchers have been diving into a considerable amount of research on social media influences. In this paper are presented and analyzed the results from surveyed data collected from one year experience with social network online community www.emama.mk. In order to discover the users' preferences of the system and to make a list of priorities for the future, we performed this quantitative study. In this regard, it was important to pay attention to users' opinion in order to obtain some witty conclusions. For this purpose a survey with closed questions about the system efficiency was performed. The survey results revealed a number of notable findings and future developments.

Online blogging is the act of creating and maintaining content such as ideas, opinions, essays, images, videos, etc. for a blog that is personally uploaded and shared to a website. In education, it is viewed as a novel and innovative teaching strategy to use for augmenting the writing skills of the students. To ascertain such contention, this study explores the effectiveness of online blogging in enhancing the writing skills of Senior High School’ Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS) students. The researcher employed quasi-experimental research design to examine the effectiveness of online blogging as compared to traditional writing. Grade 11 HUMSS students of Balite National High School (n=13 for experimental group, and n=13 for control group) for the 2nd semester of school year 2021-2022, comprised the respondents for this study.To collect the data, the researcher used an Assessment Writing Test in essay form as an instrument. There was a pre-test that was held before the researcher gave treatment to the experimental class and a post-test, which was held afterward. To make the data analysis, the researcher analyzed the data by using mean and independent t-test. The findings indicated that there was significant difference in the level of writing competencies as to focus and details, voice, and grammar and mechanics of the students but in other writing competencies such as organization and word choice there wasno significant difference in their pretest and posttest performance. Generally, the integration of online blogging was found better and more effective than the traditional method. Results suggested that the participants have positive perception and attitude towards online blogging, viewed this as a tool in improving their writing skills, and kept them motivated. Finally, this study recommends that online blogging should be part of the writing classes and be incorporated in lesson planning and designing curricula in senior high school.

This study looked at the relationship between local and online forms of community engagement for a small group of older people in the South of England. Interviews and a focus group were used to establish understandings of online community and social networking sites (SNS) within the context of existing relationships in local communities. Historical understandings of community influenced expectations for online community with four catalysts being identified which motivated engagement with community resources both online and locally. These were: ‘spaces and places', family, roles and loss. There was a clear preference for meeting people face to face with online communities and SNS being used predominantly as tools for achieving this aim. Exploration of the catalysts offers ways that greater community involvement might be further facilitated through design initiatives. Suggestions include private ‘family rooms', anonymous ‘sharing spaces' and a focus on hyperlocal initiatives to connect local and online communities.

Due to the chaos and confusion caused by the sudden transition from face-to-face teaching to online and remote teaching in early 2020, numerous language teachers had no choice but to rely on online communities on social networking sites. The current study therefore examined how some language teachers were utilising online communities on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a mixed-methods approach, data were mainly collected through: (1) an eight-month observation of a technology-focused language teacher community on Facebook to identify different types of posts generated by its members before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 340); (2) a questionnaire to understand the community members’ backgrounds and experiences of being in the community (n = 51); (3) semi-structured interviews with some of the questionnaire participants (n = 13); and (4) a post-interview questionnaire (n = 12) to get a better understanding of their responses. A content analysis of online posts and community members’ responses suggest that language teacher communities on Facebook were supporting teachers during the stressful periods of the pandemic professionally and emotionally. The main findings are discussed in terms of the benefits and drawbacks of using online language teacher communities for professional purposes. The overall goal of the study is to offer much-needed answers on how pre-existing communities can be used to assist language teachers in times of a crisis.

Relationship between the level of intimacy and lurking in online social network services

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for more than two years in Indonesia. The pandemic has turned many things digital, including e-WOM/Electronic Word of Mouth. e-WOM research has been widely conducted and has proven to be very influential in improving customer purchasing decisions. However, e-WOM also has negative impacts such as inaccurate understanding and challenging to control impacts. This study aims to see the impact of e-WOM, Online Communities, and Online advertisements from people who have social media accounts that are e-WOM facilities and see their effect on Brand Loyalty and Buying Behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Special conditions during a pandemic have a different impact from general conditions. The SEM-PLS technique uses to conduct this quantitative study, and 137 respondents participate in the study. The study found that several factors influence brand loyalty and intention to buy. First, e-WOM does not influence purchase intention. Second, online communities do not influence intention to buy and brand loyalty. The results of this research will significantly help the industry develop e-WOM/electronic Word of Mouth, Online advertisements, and communities online.

This paper reports early findings of an ethnographically‐inspired research project focused on individuals who are actively engaged in the creation and online distribution of original media — on blogs, vlogs, and social networking sites — and on the collectives that form around “user‐generated content.” In this paper, we profile a small number of creative individuals producing original content in four very different cultural contexts: a children's book author in Los Angeles, a pair of video bloggers in New York, an ex‐pat journalist and social commentator in Dubai, and a cosmetics expert sharing advice with an online community in Seoul, South Korea. We explore what motivates each “lead user” to create; we examine how they imagine themselves as authors and artists, and how they imagine (and interact with) their readers and viewers. In addition, we explain how the insights they provide into an emerging form of online authorship are relevant to Intel Corporation's Digital Home Group.

This research aims to investigate the attitude of natural science and social science students toward their English class, as well as the evaluative language employed in expressing their opinions toward English class. The study employs Martin & White's (2005) appraisal framework to analyze the language used. The participants in the study consist of 60 high school students, with 30 students from the Natural Science major and 30 students from the Social Sciences major, who were selected using the purposive sampling method. The students were requested to write a narrative text outlining their experiences and perceptions of the English class they attended for one semester. The analysis result show that both science and social science students tend to give positive evaluations towards the English class they attend. However, science students are more inclined to give positive evaluations compared to social science students.

Differences in behavior, engagement and environmental knowledge on waste management for science and social students through the campus program