A Social Networking Strategy for Improving Knowledge Management and Communication in the Travel Industry

In today’s technology-driven marketplace, the adoption and management of corporate and customer-facing Social Networking Sites (SNs) is often viewed as a key success factor for Travel Industry (TI) organisations. Knowledge management and the sharing of expertise and experiences through communication between internal and external stakeholders via social networks is an activity which TI organisations are aiming to exploit in order to improve the open sharing, retrieval, organisation and leveraging of knowledge. Through a study of currently-available literature relating to social networking adoption within the TI and a case study analysis of corporate social networking practices at three multi-national TI organisations (British Airways, Thomas Cook and Marriott Hotels), it may be observed that correlations exist between the development of social networking and the processes TI organisations now use to manage knowledge. We explore how these companies are currently utilizing SNs to improve knowledge management practices inside and outside of their organisational boundaries. From our analysis, lessons may emerge as to how TI companies are gaining competitive advantage through the use of social networking; a proposed strategy is identified to determine how TI organisations may make best use of social networks.

The importance of relationship closeness expectations in brand-page communication in social networking sites

While there is extensive research regarding the way users in social networking sites (SNSs) connect and communicate with each other, literature on consumer-brand relationships in SNSs is scarce. This paper hypothesizes and tests the impact of varying the source of communication in Facebook brand pages on key characteristics of brand equity, examining whether this impact is conditioned by relationship closeness expectations. More specifically, two experiments assess how relationship closeness expectations vary according to brand category and brand affiliation and how the use of a spokes-character as the source of communication in brand pages versus communicating institutionally affects consumer’s attitudes towards two real-world brands. To measure these variables, structured questionnaires were conducted with three groups of undergraduate students. The results suggest that the appropriateness of opting for a more “informal” source of communication in brand pages such as a spokes-character varies depending on whether this is in(congruent) with existing relationship closeness expectations. Implications for researchers, brand and social media managers are presented.

From emerging adults' unmet psychosocial needs to their problematic use of social networking sites: the mediating role of Fear of Missing Out

Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) is a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. Consequently, individuals experiencing FoMO wish to stay constantly in contact with what others are doing and engage with social networking sites for this purpose. In recent times, FoMO has received increased attention from psychological research, as a minority of users experiencing high levels of FoMO - particularly young people - might develop a problematic social networking site use, defined as the maladaptive and excessive use of social networking sites, resulting in symptoms associated with other addictions. According to the theoretical framework of the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition- Execution (I-PACE) model, FoMO and certain motives for use may foster problematic use in individuals who display unmet psychosocial needs. However, to date, the I-PACE model has only conceptualized the general higher-order mechanisms related to the development of problematic use. Consistently, the overall purpose of this dissertation was to deepen the understanding of the mediating role of FoMO between specific predisposing variables and problematic social networking sites use. Adopting a psychological approach, two empirical and exploratory cross-sectional studies, conceived as independent research, were conducted through path analysis.

Social capital, social participation and life satisfaction among Chilean older adults

OBJECTIVE To examine factors associated with social participation and their relationship with self-perceived well-being in older adults. METHODS This study was based on data obtained from the National Socioeconomic Characterization (CASEN) Survey conducted in Chile, in 2011, on a probability sample of households. We examined information of 31,428 older adults living in these households. Descriptive and explanatory analyses were performed using linear and multivariate logistic regression models. We assessed the respondents’ participation in different types of associations: egotropic, sociotropic, and religious. RESULTS Social participation increased with advancing age and then declined after the age of 80. The main finding of this study was that family social capital is a major determinant of social participation of older adults. Their involvement was associated with high levels of self-perceived subjective well-being. We identified four settings as sources of social participation: home-based; rural community-based; social policy programs; and religious. Older adults were significantly more likely to participate when other members of the household were also involved in social activities evidencing an intergenerational transmission of social participation. Rural communities, especially territorial associations, were the most favorable setting for participation. There has been a steady increase in the rates of involvement of older adults in social groups in Chile, especially after retirement. Religiosity remains a major determinant of associativism. The proportion of participation was higher among older women than men but these proportions equaled after the age of 80. CONCLUSIONS Self-perceived subjective well-being is not only dependent upon objective factors such as health and income, but is also dependent upon active participation in social life, measured as participation in associations, though its effects are moderate.

Terminology as a sensemaking social tool

Since the middle of the first decade of this century, several authors have announced the dawn of a new Age, following the Information/ Knowledge Age (1970-2005?). We are certainly living in a Shift Age (Houle, 2007), but no standard designation has been broadly adopted so far, and others, such as Conceptual Age (Pink, 2005) or Social Age (Azua, 2009), are only some of the proposals to name current times. Due to the amount of information available nowadays, meaning making and understanding seem to be common features of this new age of change; change related to (i) how individuals and organizations engage with each other, to (ii) the way we deal with technology, to (iii) how we engage and communicate within communities to create meaning, i.e., also social networking-driven changes. The Web 2.0 and the social networks have strongly altered the way we learn, live, work and, of course, communicate. Within all the possible dimensions we could address this change, we chose to focus on language – a taken-for-granted communication tool, used, translated and recreated in personal and geographical variants, by the many users and authors of the social networks and other online communities and platforms. In this paper, we discuss how the Web 2.0, and specifically social networks, have contributed to changes in the communication process and, in bi- or multilingual environments, to the evolution and freeware use of the so called “international language”: English. Next, we discuss some of the impacts and challenges of this language diversity in international communication in the shift age of understanding and social networking, focusing on specialized networks. Then we point out some skills and strategies to avoid babelization and to build meaningful and effective content in mono or multilingual networks, through the use of common and shared concepts and designations in social network environments. For this purpose, we propose a social and collaborative approach to terminology management, as a shared, strategic and sense making tool for specialized communication in Web 2.0 environments.

Os social media como parte integrante da comunicação empresarial

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ciências da Comunicação (área de especialização Publicidade e Relações Públicas)

La sostenibilidad del sistema sanitario desde una perspectiva de redes sociales: una propuesta para la promoción de hábitos saludables y apoyo social

The search of new health management formulas focused to give wide services is one of the priorities of our present health policies. Those formulas examine the optimization of the links between the main actors involved in public health, ie, users, professionals, local socio-political and corporate agents. This paper is aimed to introduce the Social Network Analysis as a method for analyzing, measuring and interpreting those connections. The knowledge of people's relationships (what is called social networks) in the field of public health is becoming increasingly important at an international level. In fact, countries such as UK, Netherlands, Italy, Australia and U.S. are looking formulas to apply this knowledge to their health departments. With this work we show the utility of the ARS on topics related to sustainability of the health system, particularly those related with health habits and social support, topics included in the 2020 health strategies that underline the importance of the collaborative aspects in networks.

Social media and political change: The case of the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt

Throughout the past decade, social media have come on the scene of various popular revolts. Their role as tools of information and coordination of social movements, from the Iranian Green Movement in 2009 to the Arab uprisings in 2011, has been widely debated. In most cases, online activism through blogs, Facebook, Twitter or other forms of social media has allowed citizens to be part of a social networking exercise and to engage in a public sphere that would have otherwise been unreachable to them due to severe repression. In Tunisia and Egypt, social media helped protests start and expand thanks to their ability to coordinate and disseminate information quickly. The new information and communication tools were an influential factor in accelerating the revolutionary processes across the Arab world, albeit they cannot be seen as neither the spur nor the drivers of any revolution.

Identity formation in social networks websites: facebook and the interaction between young individuals in the cases of Slovenia and Catalonia

This paper lays down some theoretical framework for further research to be made on the subject of how identity of young Slovenian and Catalan users is forming within the social networking website Facebook. The author pursues his interest based on observation of how communicationand thus interaction between users is changing and how this is reflected in everyday practices. In so doing he tries to identify the connections between the individual, society and technology, asthese are more and more interwoven, and we cannot think one without the other in thecontemporary globalised world.

Social network architecture and the maintenance of deleterious cultural traits.

How have changes in communications technology affected the way that misinformation spreads through a population and persists? To what extent do differences in the architecture of social networks affect the spread of misinformation, relative to the rates and rules by which individuals transmit or eliminate different pieces of information (cultural traits)? Here, we use analytical models and individual-based simulations to study how a 'cultural load' of misinformation can be maintained in a population under a balance between social transmission and selective elimination of cultural traits with low intrinsic value. While considerable research has explored how network architecture affects percolation processes, we find that the relative rates at which individuals transmit or eliminate traits can have much more profound impacts on the cultural load than differences in network architecture. In particular, the cultural load is insensitive to correlations between an individual's network degree and rate of elimination when these quantities vary among individuals. Taken together, these results suggest that changes in communications technology may have influenced cultural evolution more strongly through changes in the amount of information flow, rather than the details of who is connected to whom.

Post-industrial 2.0 – Social Web as the second coming of the post-industrial society

This study presents a review of theories of the so-called post-industrial society, and proposes that the concept of post-industrial society can be used to understand the recent developments of the World Wide Web, often described as Web 2.0 or social Web. The study combines theories ranging from post-war management science and cultural studies to software development, and tries to build a holistic view of the development of the post-industrial society, and especially the Internet. The discourse on the emergence of a post-industrial society after the World Wars has addressed the ways in which the growing importance of information, and innovations in digital communications technology, are changing our society. It is furthermore deeply connected with the discourse on the postmodern society, which emphasizes cultural fragmentation, intertextuality, and pluralism. The Internet age is characterized by increasing masses of information that are managed through various technologies. While 1990s Internet technologies often used the network as a traditional broadcasting channel with added interactivity, Web 2.0 technologies are specifically designed to utilize the network model by facilitating communication between various services and devices, and analyzing the relationships between users and objects in order to produce intelligent insight. The wide adoption of the Internet, and recently of Internet-enabled mobile devices, is furthermore continuously producing new ways of communicating, consuming, and producing. Applications of the social Web, such as social media or social networking services, are permanently changing our traditional social, cultural, and economic practices. The study first presents an overview of the post-industrial society, the Internet, and the concept of Web 2.0. Then the concept of social Web is described with an analysis of the term social media, the brief histories of the interactive Web and social networking services, and a description of the concept ―long tail‖, used to represent the masses of information available in the Web that do not receive mainstream attention. Finally, methods for retrieving and filtering information, modeling social and cultural relationships, and communicating with customers, are presented.

Re-shaping the Resourcing: Recruitment in Social Media

Social media is very current topic in today’s society and organisations. In the times of economic challenges, companies are looking for efficient ways to resource workforce. In addition, there is competition of competent workforce in employment markets. Employer image plays important role in recruitment as people seek to organisations they find interesting and have a reputation as a good employer. This study concerns the discussion on utilising social media in recruitment and employer image in a corporate enterprise. I will find solutions how to utilize social media in recruitment, in which channels and methods that can be done and what these actions require from a company doing social recruitment. I bring up the discussion and challenges that relate to starting to take social media into use in an organization overall and in recruitment. The qualitative material has been gathered with interviews of eighteen persons and the material available about the topic in the enterprise intranet. According to the study, social media is seen both as an opportunity to reach large amount of people quickly and cost-efficiently, but then again it brings news aspects for controlling the employer image and communication towards the audience. Taking social media into use as part of recruiters and managers daily work requires both finding the right channels and attention to the internal communication culture and resourcing. Social recruitment requires a strategy and a proper plan to be able to work in a company. There are several social media channels that enable to reach people, but they don’t do the social recruitment alone.

Forecasting with social media – Using Facebook likes to predict the results of the 2015 Finnish Parliamentary elections

Already one-third of the human population uses social media on a daily basis. The biggest social networking site Facebook has over billion monthly users. As a result, social media services are now recording unprecedented amount of data on human behavior. The phenomenon has certainly caught the attention of scholars, businesses and governments alike. Organizations around the globe are trying to explore new ways to benefit from the massive databases. One emerging field of research is the use of social media in forecasting. The goal is to use data gathered from online services to predict offline phenomena. Predicting the results of elections is a prominent example of forecasting with social media, but regardless of the numerous attempts, no reliable technique has been established. The objective of the research is to analyze how accurately the results of parliament elections can be forecasted using social media. The research examines whether Facebook “likes” can be effectively used for predicting the outcome of the Finnish parliament elections that took place in April 2015. First a tool for gathering data from Facebook was created. Then the data was used to create an electoral forecast. Finally, the forecast was compared with the official results of the elections. The data used in the research was gathered from the Facebook walls of all the candidates that were running for the parliament elections and had a valid Facebook page. The final sample represents 1131 candidates and over 750000 Facebook “likes”. The results indicate that creating a forecast solely based on Facebook “likes” is not accurate. The forecast model predicted very dramatic changes to the Finnish political landscape while the official results of the elections were rather moderate. However, a clear statistical relationship between “likes” and votes was discovered. In conclusion, it is apparent that citizens and other key actors of the society are using social media in an increasing rate. However, the volume of the data does not directly increase the quality of the forecast. In addition, the study faced several other limitations that should be addressed in future research. Nonetheless, discovering the positive correlation between “likes” and votes is valuable information that can be used in future studies. Finally, it is evident that Facebook “likes” are not accurate enough and a meaningful forecast would require additional parameters.

Instagram, Social Media, and the "Like": Exploring Virtual Identity's Role in 21st Century Students' New Socialization Experience

Personal technologies and social media use have changed the socialization experience of our 21st century learners. As learners have a new, embodied, virtual identity that is an omnipresent force within their social interactions, this study sought to examine how virtual identity influences student relationships both within and outside of a school context. This study also explored how personal technologies and social media use have influenced learners’ perceptions of their own 21st century learning. Using a qualitative inquiry, purposeful sampling was employed to recruit 6 participants between the ages of 15 to 19 to examine their social networking site use and education experience. Data were collected from single, one-on-one semi-structured interviews in which participants discussed their experiences using social media. Data were also collected from the teens’ personal Instagram accounts, and a personal reflexive researcher’s journal was kept for triangulation of data. Open and axial coding strategies alongside constant comparative methods were used to analyze data. Participants shared how they and their peers use social media, the pressures and expectations from other users, social media’s influence on peer relationships, and how social media influences their choices in the physical realm. All 6 participants explained that their teachers do not talk to them about their social media use, and even offered critiques of the school system itself and its inability to prepare students for the new realities of a digital world. This study concludes that while social media is very influential on students’ socialization, educators should be more concerned about the lack of guidance and support that students receive in school in terms of appropriate social media use and the navigation of virtual identity.

Social Media- A relevant tool for tourism and hospitality marketing

Tourism is an industry which is heavily dependent on marketing. Mouth to mouth communication has played a major role in shaping a number of destinations.This is particularly true in modern parlance.This is social networking phenomenon which is fast spreading over the internet .Many sites provide visitors a lot of freedom to express their views.Promotion of a destination depends lot on conversation and exchange of information over these social networks.This paper analyses the social networking sites their contribution to marketing tourism and hoapitality .The negetive impacts phenomena are also discussed