How social is Twitter use? Affiliative tendency and communication competence as predictors

Abstract

a b s t r a c tAn online survey (N = 461) investigated how individuals' interpersonal need and ability affect their motivations of Twitter use and how different motivations predict specific usage behavior. Based on the two competing views concerning the antecedents and consequences of online communication (social enhancement vs. social compensation), the joint effect of affiliative tendency and communication competence was hypothesized. For those high on affiliative tendency, communication competence positively predicted Twitter use for network expansion and negatively predicted more self-focused, intrapersonal Twitter use, but no such effect was found for less affiliative individuals. Those using Twitter for surveillance spent more time on Twitter and maintained a larger Twitter network, while those using Twitter for network expansion posted tweets and retweeted others' posts more frequently.

Incorporating microblogging (“tweeting”) in higher education: Lessons learnt in a knowledge management course

“…Studies conducted by Lee and Kim (2014), Ebner et al (2010), Dunlap and Lowenthal (2009) and Java, Song, Finin, and Tseng (2007), have put emphasis on the communication enhancing benefits of microblogging which enables learners to share and seek information as well as nurturing relationships with their peers. From a constructivist learning perspective, Web 2.0 applications such as tweeting are suitable means to empower learners within the confines of the respective course objectives to take the initiative for self-directed learning.…”

“…One promising approach would be to leverage natural language processing tools (in combination with knowledge management approaches) such as sentiment analyses to explore the possible emotional effect of students' tweets on others in a learning group (Gurevych & Kim, 2013;Hellmann & Auer, 2013;Lytras, Sakkopoulos, & Ordóñez de Pablos, 2009) An alternative way to find evidence for learning effectiveness triggered through Twitter would be to conduct social network analyses of tweeted words and components to shed light on affiliative trends amongst learners and to establish whether they predict positive learning outcomes (Lee & Kim, 2014). This could also entail identifying 'central figures' amongst students in a class who manage to nurture 'real' synergetic e-learning communities defined as ''two or more discrete learning agents acting together (that) will create a learning result greater than that obtained by acting individual'' (Dascalua et al, 2014:362).…”

“…In terms of future research, the usefulness of pedagogical analytics needs to be further established. Interesting approaches include Twitter's potential for collaborative wisdom extraction via e-learning communities (Dascalua et al, 2014), the utilization of natural language processing tools such as sentiment analyses to explore the possible emotional effect of students' tweets on others in a learning group (Gurevych & Kim eds., 2013;Hellmann, 2013), social network analyses of tweets based on word clouds to examine the effect of affiliative trends amongst learners on positive learning outcomes (Lee & Kim, 2014) or best practice research. Another promising research angle would be to study how students' personality dispositions such as open-mindedness or anxiety promote or hinder the development of interpersonal, collaborative learning networks on Twitter (Correra, Hinsley, & de Zúñiga, 2010;Davenport, Bergman, Bergman, & Fearrington, 2014).…”

Literacy and training in digital research: Researchers’ views in five social science and humanities disciplines

“…Social media and their attributes, as well as the motivations and patterns of their use, are examples of this (e.g., Kwon et al, 2014;Lee and Kim, 2014). For instance, Kwon et al (2014) studied user acceptance of Facebook and Twitter and motivational factors in the use of social networking services.…”

Youths’ Social Media Adoption: Theoretical Model and Empirical Evidence

“…Basically social media has devised a whole new set of rules and completely different mechanism for exchange of information among the individuals (Alikilic & Atabek, 2012). Although a comprehensive literature on social media acceptance and adoption (Cheung, Chiu, & Lee, 2011;Cheung et al, 2011;Gruzd, Staves, & Wilk, 2012;Hrastinski & Aghaee, 2011;Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010a;Kwon, Park, & Kim, 2014;Lee & Kim, 2014;Li & Tsai, 2015;Michikyan, Subrahmanyam, & Dennis, 2015;D. Shin, 2010;Zolkepli & Kamarulzaman, 2015) is quite extensive yet most of the studies are conducted in the advanced countries.…”