Suchergebnisse

Purpose
Mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications have grown profusely worldwide in recent years in tandem with increased smartphone usage. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among perceived benefits, personality traits, MIM satisfaction, and social capital responses.


Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses partial least squares-SEM to investigate proposed hypotheses based on a sample of 1,519 WhatsApp users.


Findings
The results indicate that perceived benefits of MIM and personality traits have a positive influence on MIM satisfaction; and MIM satisfaction in turn has a positive effect on users' social capital responses. MIM satisfaction partially mediates the relationships between perceived benefits, traits, and social capital. Additionally, the results indicate positive significant effect of Gen X and Y on social capital among other control variables.


Research limitations/implications
This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on MIM. The results also provide important implications for MIM application developers and instigate future research in the MIM platform.


Originality/value
This study is the first attempt in integrating perceived benefits, personality traits, and social capital in MIM literature.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Information, Communication and Society on 07 Aug 2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1350730 ; Mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) are emerging as important digital environments in citizens' everyday lives. We explore the use of MIMS for talking about politics with unique survey data on samples representative of Internet users in Germany, Italy, and the UK. First, we show that robust percentages of our respondents who use MIMS employ them for posting political messages and discussing politics. Second, we demonstrate that political talk on MIMS is positively associated with users' tendency to censor themselves politically on social networking sites (SNS) and, to a lesser extent, with ideological extremism. Third, we find that the association between self-censorship on SNS and the likelihood of publishing political contents on MIMS is stronger for individuals living in former East Germany where, due to historical reasons, large segments of the population are reluctant to talk about politics in public. Our findings suggest that MIMS make a distinctive contribution to contemporary repertoires of political talk, with important implications for the quality and inclusiveness of interpersonal political discussion.

Doing leadership in the virtual realm has now become a routine part of many leaders' daily work, yet our understanding of how leadership is enacted in mediated contexts—especially in text-only channels—is very limited. By applying micro-level analysis to naturally occurring instant message conversations, this article exposes the strategies leaders employ to achieve a range of complex communication goals: to get the work done while fostering informality and collegiality and creating the sense of a real—and not virtual—collaboration between team members. The findings further our understanding in two domains: They provide empirical grounding for e-leadership theories by exposing practices from real-life interactions, and they contribute to discursive leadership literature by addressing nonverbal communication practices. The findings of the article could form the basis for management and leadership training by drawing attention to the linguistic and semiotic resources digital leaders have at their disposal in virtual work environments.

There is no shortage of knowledge waiting to be mined on the Web. But there is a difference between mining to the depths of the Web and examining what is occurring on its surface. In this article, the authors argue that the search for actionable knowledge should start as close as possible to the user, which, in today's technological environment, means tapping into Instant Messages. They present a System for the Analysis of Instant Messages, explain the architectural and operational motivation, and show how instant messages can be mined to produce a new source of Web-based knowledge.

An online survey of 884 deaf and hard of hearing adults asked about their current and past use of communication technologies, notably TTY, telecommunications relay services, email, and instant messaging (IM). Results showed that respondents were using e-mail and IM far more than TTY and relay services. The study participants virtually all had e-mail and IM at home. In fact, about one quarter had a high-speed ("broadband") connection at home. While the vast majority also had and used e-mail at work, just 1 in 3 had IM at his or her place of employment. The findings have several implications. Most important for educators is that strong reading and writing skills are essential if adults who are deaf or hard of hearing are to take advantage of today's communications technologies. Another conclusion is that some workers who are deaf or hard of hearing appear to face discrimination in employment because office policies forbid the use of a highly effective reasonable accommodation, instant messaging.

This article explores key determinants of the intention to work from home (WFH) among U.S. adults in the early phase of the pandemic. Leveraging nationally representative survey data collected in the initial stages of the pandemic, it explores the role of modalities of communication alongside the more frequently studied behavioral, occupational, and sociodemographic factors in shaping WFH intentions as reported by survey respondents. Venturing beyond prior studies of remote work and remote work intentions, the study finds that the frequency of text messaging platform (e.g., Slack) usage and the frequency of videoconferencing (e.g., Zoom) exhibit diametrically opposed effects on the intentions to WFH in the future. Whereas a higher frequency of text messaging platform usage is linked to a preference for more intensive future WFH, a higher frequency of videoconferencing platform usage is associated with the opposite preference. Additionally, the effect of the intensity of respondents' engagement with these two communication modalities on their intentions is mediated by pre-pandemic WFH experience as well as the intensity of interruptions in their WFH environment. Intensive videoconferencers (Zoomers) who work in high-interruption environments are particularly averse to future WFH. Conversely, intensive messagers (Slackers) who work from home substantially prior to the pandemic report express a preference for more frequent WFH in the future.

Mobile phones have a rapidly growing language teaching and learning potential due to various technologies and applications including instant messaging. However, the related literature mostly documents studies aiming at investigating their role for teaching vocabulary, pronunciation, and content, and thus there are calls to focus on other skills, including writing. Responding to these calls to solve the problem of research scarcity on other skills, I opted for a qualitative research design to investigate the pedagogical potential of WhatsApp©, perceive my students' experiences, and evaluate the process with all strengths and weaknesses. I attempted to make contributions to the existing knowledge on the role of WhatsApp© as one of the most commonly utilised mobile instant messaging applications for language teaching. At the end of a 4-month-period, I gathered my detailed qualitative data from 44 preparatory programme English majoring students at a large-size public university in the northeast of Turkey via a self-devised open-ended questionnaire and conducted a thematic content analysis. My findings highlighted the potential of WhatsApp© as an educational tool to enhance language skills and allow practice chance, offer entertainment and increase interest, decrease anxiety and increase motivation, encourage participation, offer a better communication between the teacher and the students, and help self-improvement. However, no classroom implementation is without limitations, and WhatsApp©-geared interaction was no exception as the implementation had some challenges such as student inconvenience, emotion-related issues, technical problems, content-related and language issues. Based on my dual role, that is, both an academician and practitioner (pracademic), I offered some pedagogical implications for those who want to utilise mobile phones to bring classroom and outside world together to enhance language teaching.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study factors that affect adults' acceptance of instant messaging (IM) for social and entertainment purposes in an Arab countryDesign/methodology/approachAn expanded version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to test the impact of four factors (subjective norms, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived enjoyment) and a new construct, curiosity about other people, on the level of IM usage by 191 adults in Kuwait. Survey questions from prior studies were adopted and customized, and the model analyzing using Structural Equation Model with LISREL.FindingsIM usage is a different type of technology usage than work‐related forms of ICT since it is employed for social and recreational usage. Unlike prior studies that employed TAM in a work‐related setting, perceived usefulness was not a significant antecedent of usage; however, perceived enjoyment, social norms, curiosity about other people, and perceived ease of use were all important antecedents of IM usage.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focused on IM usage outside the workplace for social purposes and was restricted to adults within one country (Kuwait). Additional studies across Arab countries are encouraged as well as comparatives studies about IM usage for different contexts (work‐related use of IM from home and IM usage in the workplace).Practical implicationsThis study is useful for researchers willing to highlight the factors that motivate users' ICT adoption outside the workplace and for social purposes. It also has implications for managers and software vendors seeking to enhance the adoption of communication‐oriented forms of ICT in the Arab worldOriginality/valueThe study highlights motives of ICT usage among Arab adults, which has not been widely studied. It also describes Arab culture and shows how certain aspects of culture affect ICT usage.

The theory of niche proposes that a new medium competes with older, more established media to fulfill users' needs. This study uses niche theory, a macrolevel theory, as well as social information processing theory and the theory of electronic propinquity, both microlevel theories, to examine the niche of instant messaging (IM) in providing general gratifications. Results indicate that IM is characterized by a broad niche, surpassed only by that of the cell phone. IM had substantial niche overlap with e-mail and the cell phone, indicating a degree of substitutability between them; the least overlap was with the landline telephone (LLP). The hierarchy that emerged indicated that the cell phone was superior to IM, which was superior to e-mail, followed by the LLP for providing general gratifications. Finally, displacement tests indicated that IM use displaced e-mail and LLP but not cell phone use. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how firms may be segmented with respect to their attitudes towards the use of mobile instant messaging (MIM) apps (e.g. WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, etc). in their marketing practices to identify the main approaches to the use of MIM in business. Moreover, this paper identifies the key factors which can motivate or hinder the adoption of these digital platforms.


Design/methodology/approach
Firms are segmented on the basis of their attitudes (perceived usefulness and perceived effectiveness of performance) towards the use of MIM apps in the business. Categories for size, age of the firm and the organization's predisposition towards MIMs are explored using data from 311 firms and latent class analysis. Threats, triggers and their real usage are also identified to describe the different approaches towards the application of MIM apps in marketing practices.


Findings
Four clusters are identified – lukewarm, cold, believer and unaffected – along with significant covariates such as the importance of conversation with the client, the use of MIMs in the business, the threats and triggers that can foresee adherence. The results help to understand how to approach the client using social messenger applications. MIM apps can be used for strategic marketing and not only for operative marketing.


Originality/value
This paper offers a more nuanced understanding of how firms engage through MIM apps by focusing on the firms' attitudes towards MIM apps. It extends the knowledge on the firms' reactions to these disruptive technologies and profiles the firms according to their social innovation attitudes, something that has not yet been investigated in the extant marketing literature.

Acknowledging that the way mobile communication is used is shaped by socially negotiated social norms, this study examined the factors that impact instant messaging (IM) communication at the person and situation levels using the experience sampling method (ESM). We measured how the characteristics at the person level (i.e., availability and responsiveness preferences), contextual factors (i.e., location and copresence of others), and message-related attributes (i.e., sender and chat type) impact users' responsiveness in IM communication. The study empirically investigated a sample of 90 smartphone users who completed 820 ESM protocols regarding their use of the messenger service WhatsApp. The results of the multilevel analyses revealed that users' responsiveness in IM communication is affected by person- and situation-level factors, but the latter factors were found to have a much stronger impact. The effect of specific influential factors is discussed in detail.