Suchergebnisse

AbstractCultural content has been examined in consumer adoption of new products, whereas the relationship between enduring cultural beliefs and adoption remains unexplored. In this study, proactive superstitious behaviors (e.g., carrying a lucky charm) and passive superstitious beliefs (e.g., belief in fate) were empirically tested as antecedents of consumer novelty seeking (CNS) and consumer independent judgment making (CIJM). The results suggest that proactive superstitious beliefs positively influence CNS, whereas passive beliefs negatively influence CNS. Only passive superstitious beliefs positively influence CIJM. Results also suggest that previous superstition scales are incomplete and fail to reflect contemporary thinking about superstitious beliefs.Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

During the Russia–Ukraine conflict, social media has become an outlet for public opinion; therefore, besides the hot war, information warfare is also taking place. It was discovered that a large number of new social bot accounts had emerged on Twitter since the outbreak of the conflict. In particular, the Twitter account @UAWeapons has grown its following by hundreds of thousands in fewer than 30 days and has established itself as an influential opinion leader. Through data mining and three different analysis methods, this study investigated how social bots grew to influence public opinion. Specifically, time-series analysis revealed an unusual pattern of "pulsing" changes in the number of tweets posted by @UAWeapons over time. The content analysis illustrated that the account posted biased tweets in favor of Ukraine under the guise of being a neutral messenger, which led to frequent retweets from social bots with similar opinions. Finally, the results of the social network analysis indicated that @UAWeapons' rapid growth might be attributed to a strategy of network clustering implemented by a core group of social bot accounts.

This article introduces an Online Emotional Support Accompany Group (OESAG) which was created in China during the Covid-19 pandemic, and first implemented in February 2020. We outline its background and theory of its design, online working platform, staffing, procedures of operation, and review its application during the pandemic. We include feedback from participants and leaders that indicate that these groups made a contribution to resilience in a time of major social stress.