Category: INF506 Social Networking for Information Professionals

This online journal is to compare and contrast two organizations. one is BHP, which is a world-leading resource company. Its business involves extracting and processing minerals, oil, and gas (BHP.com). It established its existence on twitter in November 2013.

BHP’s Twitter page

ALIA refers to the Australian Library and Information Association.  It is a peak body for library and information professionals.

ALIA’s Twitter page

The first striking difference is the content.  BHP rarely retweet from a second source, most of the tweets are posted by BHP. Most of the tweets are about news, programs from BHP.  While ALIA’s account, about half of the tweets are retweeted from a secondary source. they are mainly different types of libraries, such as state libraries, university libraries, and city libraries.

The other pronounced difference between the two is that BHP posted a lot of video content. The video content is mainly related to promoting BHP’s corporate value – safety, gender equality, and contribution to the community. These video tweets work much better than the tweeter with only a picture. The number of likes, retweets and replies is significantly higher than that of the tweets without a video.  In contrast, ALIA’s tweets and retweets are mainly picture-based. it rarely posts any video tweets. The average number of likes and retweets are similar. Although BHP has four times more followers than ALIA. This may be caused by the fact that a significant group of BHP’s audience is from a non-English speaking background due to its operations in South America.  A lot of picture tweets from BHP are posted twice with English and Spanish. On average, the number of likes every Spanish tweet attracts is about a third of those from an English tweet.

According to Waters (2011), Twitter mainly serves two functions. First, it allows the organization to share information that redirects to other sites through hyperlinks.  more importantly, cultivating relationships with stakeholders for its ability to facilitate public conversations.   The first relationship is one-way communication.  Walters (2011) suggests that for an organization to foster a strong relationship with its stakeholders through engagement and active interaction. a second method to grow the organization’s presence is through retweeting. on this side, ALIA has done a much better job than BHP – about 50% of its tweets are from other libraries.

It is important for the organization to reply to direct messages and publish the reply promptly to address their concerns. ALIA’s tweets rarely attract any replies. it is impossible to evaluate the organization’s effort on this. But on the BHP’s side, on its video tweets, although it normally has from 20 to 50 replies,  BHP barely reply directly to any concerns shown in the replies.

Overall, both organisations have shown many good practices in their social networking effort. However, the two-way or multiple way communications are still limited on both organisation’s Twitter platform.

Reference: 

Waters, R.D. & Jamal, J.Y. (2011), Tweet, tweet, tweet: A content analysis of nonprofit organizations’ Twitter updates. Public Relations Review, 37 (3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2011.03.002

 

 

 

 

The changes brought by the new technologies are profound.  Particularly, the proliferation of the internet and mobile devices is causing a widespread societal transformation.  Survey shows, in Australia, the internet has a penetration rate of 87%, while mobile subscriptions have reached  130%. the popularity of mobile phones and internet help the growth of social networking technologies, which is the main feature of web 2.0 technologies (techno terms). unlike the web 1.0, which is mainly one-way communication, Web 2.0  encourages two-way or three-way communications. Next-generation of technologies may focus on connecting the online and offline world.

Lupac (2018) points out that Internet has a fundamental impact on our society.  It has to lead to a transformation of society. it revolutionises the way everyone communicates, works, and even thinks.

According to Lupac (2018), the transformation is reflected in three areas, the transformation of mass communication, the transformation of sociability, and the transformation of a civic and social movement.

The internet and social networking change the ways people communicate with each other. Accordingly,   it creates the “sharing economy”, where people do business and sharing information online at a much lower cost and increased convenience, compared with the traditional offline intermediaries(Van Dick,2018). At the same time, it puts pressure on the society balancing the private benefit and public interest. Although it brings many positive changes in a society, it has there are some concerns, especially privacy and unequal access to the internet or “digital divide”. The difference between being connected and unconnected is a social inclusion issue, which is often a telling sign of the difference of the social status. (Lupac, 2018)

For any organization, they need to monitor the changes in the technologies and adjust their business models accordingly.  Failing to adapt to the changes can be alive or die situation for business. the best example of this is Blockbuster or other video rental business, which are replaced by video streaming services (Adner, 2016).

photo credit: Jeff1186 Blockbuster via flickr (license)

On the other hand, new technology will generate needs and demand that never existed before. A business which can identify the needs and cater for it will be able to thrive in this digital age. For example, Amazon’s success story.

Reference

Adner, R., & Kapoor, R. (2016). Right tech, wrong time. Harvard Business Review, 94(11), 61-67. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/

Lupac, P. (2018). Beyond the digital divide : contextualizing the information society. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=f47e6e21-7d85-492a-88ef-f2c3abf1c667%40pdc-v-sessmgr02&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=1746442&db=nlebk

We Are Social Ltd. (2019).  Digital 2019 in Australia.  Retrieved from   https://wearesocial.com/au/digital-2019-australia?mc_cid=2627112634&mc_eid=632bbf90f7

Web 2.0. (2008). Retrieved January 2, 2020, from https://techterms.com/definition/web20

Van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & de Waal, M.  (2018).  The Platform Society. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190889760.001.0001

Journal Article Analysis – Digital Overuse and Subjective Well-Being in a Digitised Society

The growing popularity of the internet and technologies has an impact on all aspects of our society.  With over 90% internet penetration in North America and Europe and Mobile subscriptions over 100% in many parts of the world, the Internet and technologies are becoming necessities of a person’s life.  Although the abundance of digital information and communication brings positive transformations to society, there are some issues that all agencies should take seriously, digital divide, privacy, and health issue.   As to the health issue, most studies focus on IT addiction or problematic use. Studies indicate a positive association between digital technology exposure and all four type of addictions (Wang, Sigerson & Cheng, 2019).

Photo Credit : Alexas_Fotos, Computer addition help, License

This kind of study only considers internet use is dysfunctional when the amount of time spent on the technologies is considered reaching addiction level (Young, 2018). However, there are many people who spend a significant amount of time on digital technologies yet not addicted to it.  How this overuse impact on the wellbeing of the users? This Buchi and his colleagues’ work is trying to answer the question. The study sample is from Switzerland which is a country with high internet penetration.  The first difficulty of the study is how to measure wellbeing. They used subjective wellbeing (SWB) which is a self-assessment of an individual’s wellbeing in different domains.  They also tested the relationship between SWB and Perceived Digital Overuse(PDO) and their relationship with the contextual and individual factors (Social Digital Pressure, Digital Coping Skills). Their result indicates that Results indicated that 28% of Swiss Internet users perceived digital overuse, which was strongly and negatively associated with well-being and digital coping skills can offset its negative impact. The author also indicates that internet overuse has become a social issue in this digital age and a new set of skills to cope with the challenges (Buchi, Festic & Latzer, 2019).

In today’s world, the internet and technologies are becoming necessities for most people. Although access to technologies is considered as a positive thing, internet overuse is a social phenomenon.  This article provides some thoughts for policy-making and academic research to cope with the emerging social issue. It would be interesting to see a study on digital users from an Asian culture, as the Asian cultures seemingly had significant problems dealing with problem Internet use compared to the rest of the world(Young, 2018).

Reference:

Buchi, M., Festic, N. & Latzer, M. (2019). Digital Overuse and Subjective Well-Being in a Digitized Society.  Social Media + Society, 5(4), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119886031

Wang, H., Sigerson, L. & Cheng, C. (2019).  Digital Nativity and Information Technology Addiction: Age cohort versus individual difference approaches. Computers in Human Behavior, 90, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.031

We Are Social Ltd. (2019).  Digital in 2019 Australia.  Retrieved from https://wearesocial.com/au/digital-2019-australia?mc_cid=2627112634&mc_eid=632bbf90f7

Young, S. K. (2018). The evolution of Internet addiction. Addictive Behaviors, 64, 229-230.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2015.05.016