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Authors: Jooyoung Kim; Eun Sook Kwon; Bongchul Kim (2018) - The current study explored the personality dimensions of brands on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) using a South Korean sample.
Through a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, six dimensions (i.e. Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Warmth, and Contentiousness) were yielded for brands with SNS presence. The data also produced six dimensions (i.e. Openness, Sincerity, Extraversion, Competence, Agreeableness, and Ruggedness) for brands without SNS presence. The results show that brands with which consumers interact on SNSs have more human-like personalities than brands absent from SNSs, and the personality dimensions affected brand affect and trust to varying degrees.
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Authors: Francis L. F. Lee; Joseph M. Chan (2018) - People in a society share collective memories about numerous historical events simultaneously, but not every event is equally salient all the time. This study examines the implications of memory mobilization on recall of historical events. Memory mobilization is treated as a process that involves communication activities via a wide range of platforms. Focusing on Hong Kong people’s memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident in Beijing, this study found that more people recalled the event during the period of memory mobilization, and communication activities involving interpersonal exchanges were related to recall of Tiananmen mainly in that period. In addition, the findings showed that the process of memory mobilization operated differently for different age cohorts. The theoretical impl...
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Authors: Hyelim Lee; Kyu S. Hahn (2018) - In this study, we track the severity of partisan polarization in the following of legislators on Twitter during the initial two years of Twitter’s introduction to South Korea. We examine the pattern of co-following among Twitter users following members of the 18th Korean National Assembly at three time points. We collected a complete list of all followers for each legislator and constructed their co-following network. We also supplemented our following data with survey data. This allowed us to match the same Twitter user’s following behavior with their individual level attributes. Our aggregate level analysis showed that the severity of polarization in Twitter following of National Assembly members lessened from Time 1 to Time 3. We also discovered that, even when tracking only the ...
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Authors: Zhaomeng Niu; Jessica Fitts Willoughby (2018) - Mental health is a stigmatized issue in many parts of the world. We conducted a survey of Chinese adults (n = 661) to examine predictors of intentions to seek information related to mental health. Attitudes and subjective norms positively influenced intentions to seek mental health information, with subjective norms being a stronger predictor. Cultural identity was negatively associated with intentions to seek mental health information, with participants who held a stronger cultural identity being less likely to seek information related to mental health. Media use was positively associated with intentions to seek information. This research highlights that cultural identity may influence mental health information seeking, and that health campaigns could focus more on influencing subj...
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Authors: Jialing Huang; Z. Janet Yang (2018) - Air pollution is a critical environmental problem that has spurred great public concern in China. This study examines how issue salience, environmental value, risk perception, and affective response influence information seeking, objective knowledge, and policy support related to this issue. The recent release of a controversial environmental documentary on Chinese social media, Under the Dome, also prompted us to explore the impact of exposure to this documentary on Chinese social media users’ information seeking and policy support related to air pollution.
Results showed that risk perception and negative affect influenced information seeking and policy support both directly and indirectly. Also, exposure to the documentary moderated the effects of key variables on information see...
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Authors: Shi Li (2018) - China’s photojournalistic field undertook great transformations in the 1980s. While the conservatives continued to cling to the propagandistic doctrine, a more progressive trend was emerging.
The tension between these two forces had deep historical roots and went on to shape the way Chinese media photography developed. Based on archival research and in-depth interviews, this article revisits the history of Chinese media photography practices between 1937 and 1988 and identifies the key features of three distinct periods: wartime propaganda between 1937– 1949; the intensification of ideological propaganda between 1949–1976; and the transformation to realism and humanism between 1976–1988.
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Authors: Augustine Pang; May O. Lwin; Chrystal Shu-Min Ng; Ying-Kai Ong; Shannon Rose Wing-Ching Chau; Kristle Poh-Sim Yeow (2018) - Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been found to be a strong predictor of a favorable corporate image [Gray, 1986. Managing the
corporate image: The key to public trust. London: Quorum Books].
Websites have become an essential communication platform [Dawkins, 2004. Corporate responsibility: The communication
challenge. Journal of Communication Management, 9(2), 108–119].
This study aims to investigate how CSR can be used in enhancing organizational corporate image. Content analyses of 150 corporate websites of organizations in Asia headquartered in Singapore were conducted, followed by in-depth interviews with public relations (PR) practitioners to examine the motivations behind their CSR engagement. Findings showed that organizations utilized CSR as a means to enhance co...
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Authors: Yan Bing Zhang; Soojeong Paik; Chong Xing; Jake Harwood (2018) - From the theoretical perspectives of communication accommodation and intergroup contact, this study examined South Korean young adults’ (N = 301) perceptions of their communication experiences with a frequently-contacted grandparent, as well as attitudes toward older adults and own aging. Findings from structural equation modeling indicated that the participants’ attitudes towards older adults were positively predicted by contact frequency with the grandparent and negatively predicted by perceptions of the grandparent’s non-accommodative communication. Analyses of indirect effects revealed that young adults’ intergroup anxiety explained these associations. Although the direct effects of contact frequency and the grandparent’s non-accommodation on attitudes toward own aging were nons...
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Authors: Michael Chan (2018) - Drawing from agonistic public sphere perspectives, this study examines the jamming of the Hong Kong Police Force Facebook Page by users from its establishment in October 2015 to March 2016. 203 posts accounting for 96,791 comments were analyzed using a mixed-method approach. Findings showed that the early posts were heavily jammed with three types of counterpublic comments: (1) calls for justice regarding alleged police brutality during the Umbrella Movement one year prior, (2) emotional statements with impolite tone, and (3) accusations of comment deletions by the Page administrators. But, the relative intensity of the three types of counterdiscourses diminished over time.
Moreover, despite the extensive use of embedded YouTube videos as counterdiscourses in the comments, there we...
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Authors: Qiaolei Jiang; Yan Li (2018) - With rapid adoption of smartphones globally, the negative consequences of excessive smartphone use and dependency, especially among the young, has garnered more public attention recently. This study investigated the factors influencing smartphone dependency among the young. Using the Individual Media Dependency (IMD) perspective, this study proposed an extended IMD model to examine the influencing roles of six IMD goals, three psychological traits (self-esteem, leisure boredom, and sensation seeking), and smartphone use on smartphone dependency. A survey based on stratified random sampling was used to collect data from young smartphone users at one main public university in China. Structural equation modeling was then employed to examine the fit of the data to the model. The results...
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