The Effects of Asymmetric Social Ties, Structural Embeddedness and Tie Strength on Online Content Contribution Behavior

Authors: Rishika Rishika and Jui Ramaprasad

Publication: Management Science, Forthcoming

Abstract:

For a social media community to thrive and grow, it is critical that users of the site interact with each other and contribute content to the site. We study the role of social ties in motivating user preference expression, a form of user content contribution, in an online social media community. We examine the role of three types of ties, reciprocated, follower and followee ties, and assess whether the structural and relational properties of a user’s social network moderate the social influence effect in user contribution. A unique disaggregate level panel dataset of users’ contributions and social tie formation activities from an online music platform is employed to study the impact of social ties. To address identification issues, we adopt a quasi-experimental approach based on dynamic propensity score matching. The results provide strong evidence of the influence of online network ties in online contribution behavior. We find that the influence of reciprocated ties is the greatest, followed by influence from followee ties and then follower ties. Additional analysis reveals that reciprocated and followee ties have even greater influence when they contribute new information for a focal user. Structural embeddedness and tie strength among network ties are found to amplify the effect of social contagion in online contribution. We conduct several sensitivity and robustness checks that lend credible support to our findings. The results add to the greater understanding of social influence in online contribution and provide valuable managerial insights into designs of online communities to enable greater user participation.

Love Unshackled: Identifying the Effect of Mobile App Adoption in Online Dating

Authors: JaeHwuen Jung, Ravi Bapna, Jui Ramaprasad and Akhmed Umyarov

Publication: MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming

Abstract:

The proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices has led to numerous companies investing significant resources in developing mobile applications, in every imaginable domain. As apps proliferate, understanding the impact of app adoption on key outcomes of interest and linking this understanding to the the underlying mechanisms that drive these results is imperative. In this paper, we explore the changes in user behavior induced by adoption of a mobile application, in terms of engagement and matching outcomes in the online dating context. We also identify three mechanisms that are somewhat unique to the mobile environment, but are hitherto unestablished in the literature, that drive this shift in behavior – ubiquity, impulsivity and disinhibition. Our main identification strategy uses propensity score matching combined with difference-in-differences, coupled with a rigorous falsification test to confirm the validity of our identification strategy. Our results demonstrate that mobile app adoption induces users to become more socially engaged as measured by key engagement metrics such as visiting significantly more profiles, sending significantly more messages, and importantly, achieving more matches. We also discover various mechanisms facilitating this increased engagement: ubiquity of mobile use – users login more, and login across wider range of hours in the day. We find that men act more impulsively, in that they are less likely to check the profile of a user who messaged them before replying to them. This effect is not visible for women who continue to be deliberate in their checking before replying even after adoption of the mobile app. Finally, we find that both men and women exhibit disinhibition, in that users initiate actions to a more diverse set of potential partners than they did before on dimensions of race, education and height.

The influence of social media

The Globe and Mail recently featured the research of Desautels Professors Emmanuelle Vaast and Liette Lapointe that explored the power of social media to propel meaningful social movements.

Reinvention is key for businesses in the digital age

With the rise of Information Technologies, leaders of large corporations are forced to reinvent both themselves and their organizations.

Desautels Professor Alain Pinsonneault comments on the broad appeal of digital platforms enabled by new technologies, the threat they pose to traditional businesses and how the later can adapt.

Enhancing security behaviour by supporting the user

Authors: Steven Furnell, Warut Khern-am-nuai, Rawan Esmael, Weining Yang, Ninghui Li

Publication: Computers and Security, Vol. 75, June 2018

Abstract: 

Marketing Campaign: Who's behind Desautels?

Learn more about how Desautels professors are behind some of the most unique research projects in the world.

Warut Khern-am-nuai awarded 2017 SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) introduced a Partnership Engage Grant in 2017 to better address the short-term needs, challenges and opportunities of researchers and institutions.

Congratulations to Warut Khern-am-nuai, Assistant Professor in Information Systems, for his 2017 SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant.

Twitter use during the Gulf oil spill

Social media has become a part of everyday life. We enjoy the contact Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., provide with friends and family, and, indeed, the world.

Sometimes we gripe about the downsides of the technology. People say it’s a time suck. There’s fake news. It’s hard to trust what you see.

Congratulations to Faculty Award recipients

The Desautels Faculty of Management congratulates the following individuals who are the latest to be granted a Faculty Award for the period of September 1, 2017-August 31, 2020. The Faculty Awards recognise demonstrated research achievement and encourage the pursuance of future academic endeavors.

Emmanuelle Vaast awarded ISR Runner-up for Best Paper 2016

Professor Emmanuelle Vaast's paper published in Information Systems Research, "Folding and Unfolding: Balancing Openness and Transparency in Open Source Communities," with Maha Shaikh has been awarded the runner-up for the best paper award for papers published in 2016 at ISR.

Insights into premium app subscriptions

By popular demand, storytelling app Wattpad has introduced an ad-free option, but it comes with a cost of $5.99/month for users.

Desautels professor Jui Ramaprasad shares her expertise on paid premium versions of online platforms and in what contexts they work.

Popularity or Proximity: Characterizing the Nature of Social Influence in an Online Music Community

Authors: Sanjeev Dewan, Yi-Jen (Ian) Ho and Jui Ramaprasad

Publication: Information Systems Research, Vol. 28, No. 1, March 2017

Abstract:

We study social influence in an online music community. In this community, users can listen to and “favorite” (or like) songs and follow the favoriting behavior of their social network friends—and the community as a whole. From an individual user’s perspective, two types of information on peer consumption are salient for each song: total number of favorites by the community as a whole and favoriting by their social network friends. Correspondingly, we study two types of social influence: popularity influence, driven by the total number of favorites from the community as a whole, and proximity influence, due to the favoriting behavior of immediate social network friends. Our quasi-experimental research design applies a variety of empirical methods to highly granular data from an online music community. Our analysis finds robust evidence of both popularity and proximity influence. Furthermore, popularity influence is more important for narrow-appeal music compared to broad-appeal music. Finally, the two types of influence are substitutes for one another, and proximity influence, when available, dominates the effect of popularity influence. We discuss implications for design and marketing strategies for online communities, such as the one studied in this paper.

Read full article: Information Systems Research

Social Media Affordances or Connective Action: An Examination of Microblogging Use During the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Authors: Emmanuelle Vaast, Hani Safadi, Liette Lapointe, and Bogdan Negoita

Publication: MIS Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2017, pp. 1179-1205

Abstract: This research questions how social media use affords new forms of organizing and collective engagement. The concept of connective action has been introduced to characterize such new forms of collective engagement in which actors coproduce and circulate content based upon an issue of mutual interest. Yet, how the use of social media actually affords connective action still needed to be investigated.

Mixed methods analyses of microblogging use during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill bring insights to this question and reveal, in particular, how multiple actors enacted emerging and interdependent roles with their distinct patterns of feature use. The findings allow us to elaborate upon the concept of connective affordances as collective level affordances actualized by actors in team interdependent roles. Connective affordances extend research on affordances as a relational concept by considering not only the relationships between technology and users but also the interdependence type among users and the effects of this interdependence onto what users can do with the technology. This study contributes to research on social media use by paying close attention to how distinct patterns of feature use enact emerging roles.

Adding to IS scholarship on the collective use of technology, it considers how the patterns of feature use for emerging groups of actors are intricately and mutually related to each other.

Read full article: MIS Quarterly

A Configural Approach to Coordinating Expertise in Software Development Teams

Authors: Srinivas Kuduravalli, Samer Faraj and Steven L. Johnson

Publication: MIS Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1, March 2017

Abstract:

Despite the recognition of how important expertise coordination is to the performance of software development teams, understanding of how expertise is coordinated in practice is limited. We adopt a configural approach to develop a theoretical model of expertise coordination that differentiates between design collaboration and technical collaboration. We propose that neither a strictly centralized, top-down model nor a largely decentralized approach is superior. Our model is tested in a field study of 71 software development teams. We conclude that because design work addresses ill-structured problems with diverse potential solutions, decentralization of design collaboration can lead to greater coordination success and reduced team conflict. Conversely, technical work benefits from centralized collaboration. We find that task knowledge tacitness strengthens these relationships between collaboration configuration and coordination outcomes and that team conflict mediates the relationships. Our findings underline the need to differentiate between technical and design collaboration and point to the importance of certain configurations in reducing team conflict and increasing coordination success in software development teams. This paper opens up new research avenues to explore the collaborative mechanisms underlying knowledge team performance.

Read full article: MIS Quarterly

What Users Do Besides Problem-Focused Coping In the IT Security Context: An Emotion-Focused Coping Perspective

Authors: H. Liang, Y. Xue, Alain Pinsonneault and A. Wu

Publication: MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming

Abstract:

This paper investigates how individuals cope with IT security threats by taking into account both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. While problem-focused coping (PFC) has been extensively studied in the IT security literature, little is known about emotion-focused coping (EFC).

We propose that individuals employ both PFC and EFC to volitionally cope with IT security threats, and conceptually classify EFC into two categories: inward and outward. Our research model is tested by two studies: an experiment with 140 individuals and a survey of 934 respondents.

Our results indicate that both inward EFC and outward EFC are stimulated by perceived threat, but that only inward EFC is reduced by perceived avoidability. Interestingly, inward EFC and outward EFC are found to have opposite effects on PFC. While inward EFC impedes PFC, outward EFC facilitates PFC. By integrating both EFC and PFC in a single model, we provide a more complete understanding of individual behavior under IT security threats.

Moreover, by theorizing two categories of EFC and showing their opposing effects on users’ security behaviors, we further examine the paradoxical relationship between EFC and PFC, thus making an important contribution to IT security research and practice.