We want drama! The effect of online conflict on social capital in online communities of consumption

Online communities (OC) are an expanding social phenomenon gaining increasing interest from marketing practitioners. Community managers thus aim to increase OCs’ social capital. Diversity of individuals interacting in OCs provokes a lot of conflict. However, the influence of online conflict on OCs’ social capital is not clear as research indicates both positive and negative effects. The research aims to explain these contradictory effects by conceptualizing conflict as drama and developing a typology of online conflict. Based on netnographic investigations of a forum, four types of conflicts are thus distinguished depending on valence of emotions and the type of members involved. The research contributes to literature on OC dynamics and is of particular interest for community managers working in any company or organization.

Keyboard warriors in cyberfights:conflict in online communities of consumption and its effects on community resources

Conflicts are very common in Online Consumption Communities (OCC) and numerous expressions have developed to describe them. Prior research indicates contradictory effects on community resources, namely social capital and culture. One stream finds that online conflict dissolves social capital and community culture (cf. De Valck 2007) while another stream finds it enhances them (cf. Ewing, Wagstaff, and Power 2013). Therefore, the effect of OCC conflict on community resources is unclear. In this paper, we (1) investigate conflict in OCC to develop a typology, and (2) delineate how each type of OCC conflict impacts community resources. This research contributes to our understanding of OCC conflicts and to the literature on value formation in OCC.

Keyboard warriors in cyberfights:conflict in online communities of consumption

Nowadays, with the use of social media generalizing, increasingly more people gather online to share their passion for specific consumption activities. Despite this shared passion, conflicts frequently erupt in online communities of consumption (OCC). A systematic review of the literature revealed that a lot of knowledge has developed on OCC conflict. Different types of conflicts unfolding in an OCC context have been distinguished, various drivers of conflict identified and various consequences outlined at the individual level (experiential value) and the community level (collective engagement and community culture). However the specificity of conflicts unfolding in an OCC context has not been conceptualized. Past research is also inconclusive as to where and when does OCC conflict create or destroy value in communities. This research provides a theory of OCC conflict and its impact on value formation by conceptualizing OCC conflict as performances. The theory was developed by conducting a netnography of a clubbing forum. Close to 20,000 forum posts and 250 pages of interview transcript and field notes were collected over 27 months and analysed following the principles of grounded theory. Four different types of conflict performances are distinguished (personal, played, reality show and trolling conflict) based on the clarity of the performance. Each type of conflict performance is positioned with regard to its roots and consequences for value formation. This research develops knowledge on disharmonious interactions in OCCs contributing to the development of a less utopian perspective of OCCs. It indicates how conflict is not only a byproduct of consumption but it is also a phenomenon consumed. It also introduces the concept of performance clarity to the literature on performance consumption. This research provides guidelines to community managers on how to manage conflict and raises ethical issues regarding the management of conflict on social media.

Group consensus in social influence:type of consensus information as a moderator of majority and minority influence

Three experiments investigated the effect of consensus information on majority and minority influence. Experiment 1 examined the effect of consensus expressed by descriptive adjectives (large vs. small) on social influence. A large source resulted in more influence than a small source, irrespective of source status (majority vs. minority). Experiment 2 showed that large sources affected attitudes heuristically, whereas only a small minority instigated systematic processing of the message. Experiment 3 manipulated the type of consensus information, either in terms of descriptive adjectives (large, small) or percentages (82%, 18%, 52%, 48%). When consensus was expressed in terms of descriptive adjectives, the findings of Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated (large sources were more influential than small sources), but when consensus was expressed in terms of percentages, the majority was more influential than the minority, irrespective of group consensus.

Anger and perceived legitimacy of aggression in male Hong Kong Chinese athletes: Effects of type of sport and level of competition

Problem: The vast majority of research examining the interplay between aggressive emotions, beliefs, behaviors, cognitions, and situational contingencies in competitive athletes has focused on Western populations and only select sports (e.g., ice hockey). Research involving Eastern, particularly Chinese, athletes is surprisingly sparse given the sheer size of these populations. Thus, this study examines the aggressive emotions, beliefs, behaviors, and cognitions, of competitive Chinese athletes. Method: Several measures related to aggression were distributed to a large sample (N ¼ 471) of male athletes, representing four sports (basketball, rugby union, association football/soccer, and squash). Results: Higher levels of anger and aggression tended to be associated with higher levels of play for rugby and low levels of play for contact (e.g., football, basketball) and individual sports (e.g., squash). Conclusions: The results suggest that the experience of angry emotions and aggressive behaviors of Chinese athletes are similar to Western populations, but that sport psychology practitioners should be aware of some potentially important differences, such as the general tendency of Chinese athletes to disapprove of aggressive behavior.

Dementia with Lewy bodies: a 'new' type of dementia with visual symptoms

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) (also known as Lewy body dementia or diffuse Lewy body disease) is now recognised as the second most common type of dementia after Alzheimer's disease and may account for up to a quarter of all cases in elderly perople. This article decsribes the general symptoms of DLB and the visual symptoms that have been reported in the disorder.

Manipulation of the surface pegylation in combination with reduced vesicle size of cationic liposomal adjuvants modifies their clearance kinetics from the injection site, and the rate and type of T cell response

The mechanism behind the immunostimulatory effect of the cationic liposomal vaccine adjuvant dimethyldioctadecylammonium and trehalose 6,6′- dibehenate (DDA:TDB) has been linked to the ability of these cationic vesicles to promote a depot after administration, with the liposomal adjuvant and the antigen both being retained at the injection site. This can be attributed to their cationic nature, since reduction in vesicle size does not influence their distribution profile yet neutral or anionic liposomes have more rapid clearance rates. Therefore the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of a combination of reduced vesicle size and surface pegylation on the biodistribution and adjuvanticity of the formulations, in a bid to further manipulate the pharmacokinetic profiles of these adjuvants. From the biodistribution studies, it was found that with small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs), 10% PEGylation of the formulation could influence liposome retention at the injection site after 4 days, whilst higher levels (25 mol%) of PEG blocked the formation of a depot and promote clearance to the draining lymph nodes. Interestingly, whilst the use of 10% PEG in the small unilamellar vesicles did not block the formation of a depot at the site of injection, it did result in earlier antibody response rates and switch the type of T cell responses from a Th1 to a Th2 bias suggesting that the presence of PEG in the formulation not only control the biodistribution of the vaccine, but also results in different types of interactions with innate immune cells. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

Social control in online communities of consumption:a framework for community management

Online communities of consumption (OCCs) represent highly diverse groups of consumers whose interests are not always aligned. Social control in OCCs aims to effectively manage problems arising from this heterogeneity. Extant literature on social control in OCCs is fragmented as some studies focus on the principles of social control, while others focus on the implementation. Moreover, the domain is undertheorized. This article integrates the disparate literature on social control in OCCs providing a first unified conceptualization of the topic. The authors conceptualize social control as a system, or configuration, of moderation practices. Moderation practices are executed during interactions operating under different governance structures (market, hierarchy, and clan) and serving different purposes (interaction initiation, maintenance, and termination). From this conceptualization, important areas of future research emerge and research questions are developed. The framework also serves as a community management tool for OCC managers, enabling the diagnosis of social control problems and the elaboration of strategies and tactics to address them.

Subject identification via ECG fiducial-based systems:influence of the type of QT interval correction

Electrocardiography (ECG) has been recently proposed as biometric trait for identification purposes. Intra-individual variations of ECG might affect identification performance. These variations are mainly due to Heart Rate Variability (HRV). In particular, HRV causes changes in the QT intervals along the ECG waveforms. This work is aimed at analysing the influence of seven QT interval correction methods (based on population models) on the performance of ECG-fiducial-based identification systems. In addition, we have also considered the influence of training set size, classifier, classifier ensemble as well as the number of consecutive heartbeats in a majority voting scheme. The ECG signals used in this study were collected from thirty-nine subjects within the Physionet open access database. Public domain software was used for fiducial points detection. Results suggested that QT correction is indeed required to improve the performance. However, there is no clear choice among the seven explored approaches for QT correction (identification rate between 0.97 and 0.99). MultiLayer Perceptron and Support Vector Machine seemed to have better generalization capabilities, in terms of classification performance, with respect to Decision Tree-based classifiers. No such strong influence of the training-set size and the number of consecutive heartbeats has been observed on the majority voting scheme.

The data type of spatial objects

A spatial object consists of data assigned to points in a space. Spatial objects, such as memory states and three dimensional graphical scenes, are diverse and ubiquitous in computing. We develop a general theory of spatial objects by modelling abstract data types of spatial objects as topological algebras of functions. One useful algebra is that of continuous functions, with operations derived from operations on space and data, and equipped with the compact-open topology. Terms are used as abstract syntax for defining spatial objects and conditional equational specifications are used for reasoning. We pose a completeness problem: Given a selection of operations on spatial objects, do the terms approximate all the spatial objects to arbitrary accuracy? We give some general methods for solving the problem and consider their application to spatial objects with real number attributes. © 2011 British Computer Society.

Study of a novel type of the optical modes in VCSELs

We study novel side-emitting modes in VCSEL microcavities. These modes correspond to π-shaped propagation along the mesa diameter, reflection from angled mesa walls and bottom Bragg reflector. We believe this study of π-modes is important for optimization of VCSEL design for improvement of efficiency.

Impact of severity and type of depression on quality of life in cases identified in the community

BACKGROUND: The impact of different levels of depression severity on quality of life (QoL) is not well studied, particularly regarding ICD-10 criteria. The ICD classification of depressive episodes in three levels of severity is also controversial and the less severe category, mild, has been considered as unnecessary and not clearly distinguishable from non-clinical states. The present work aimed to test the relationship between depression severity according to ICD-10 criteria and several dimensions of functioning as assessed by Medical Outcome Study (MOS) 36-item Short Form general health survey (SF-36) at the population level. METHOD: A sample of 551 participants from the second phase of the Outcome of Depression International Network (ODIN) study (228 controls without depression and 313 persons fulfilling ICD criteria for depressive episode) was selected for a further assessment of several variables, including QoL related to physical and mental health as measured with the SF-36. RESULTS: Statistically significant differences between controls and the depression group were found in both physical and mental markers of health, regardless of the level of depression severity; however, there were very few differences in QoL between levels of depression as defined by ICD-10. Regardless of the presence of depression, disability, widowed status, being a woman and older age were associated with worse QoL in a structural equation analysis with covariates. Likewise, there were no differences according to the type of depression (single-episode versus recurrent). CONCLUSIONS: These results cast doubt on the adequacy of the current ICD classification of depression in three levels of severity.

Types of task, types of audience, types of actor: interactions between mere presence and personality type in a simple mathematical task

Research into social facilitation effects reveals three factors affecting response performance: types of task, types of audience and type of actor. This study attempts to establish a minimal baseline for task and audience type in order to examine difference between personality types in the actors. Results indicate that performance in both extraverts and introverts increases in the minimal conditions of the mere presence of another person whilst carrying out a simple mathematical task. These results are interpreted through an analysis of Zajonc's (1965) drive theory with Eysenck's (1967) personality theory indicating that through further investigation performance curves might be devised for introverts and extraverts performing under a variety of task and audience conditions.