Dimensions of Leadership and Social Influence in Online Communities

The purpose of this article is to examine the communication behaviors of online leaders, or those who influence other members of online communities in triggering message replies, sparking conversation, and diffusing language. It relies on 632,622 messages from 33,450 participants across 16 discussion groups from Google Groups that took place over a 2‐year period. It utilizes automated text analysis, social network analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling to uncover the language and social behavior of online leaders. The findings show that online leaders influence others through high communication activity, credibility, network centrality, and the use of affective, assertive, and linguistic diversity in their online messages.     

中国英语聊天室中的网络语言特征

随着互联网的不断普及和发展,网络互动交际（Computer-Mediated communication,简称为CMC）作为一种新的交际方式,已在世界各国普及并使用。本文从语言学的角度出发,用会话分析的方法来研究英语聊天室中网络语言在话轮转换、过渡关联处（TRP）及话轮分配等方面与面对面会话（FTF）所呈现出的异同。从而丰富对会话分析理论的了解,提高对人类交际模式和网络语言使用关系的认识。     

人格判断的线索及其有效性

透镜模型强调线索的有效性是人格判断准确的重要条件。已有研究表明, 文字信息, 语音内容, 面孔图片, 反映不同情境的视频片段以及面对面交流涉及的言语、非言语信息在人格判断过程中发挥着重要作用。另一方面, 网络背景下常规的文字、视频信息等同样能够有效反映个体的人格特质, 而与人格特质密切相关的网络语言、表情的使用, 状态更新与点赞等特殊线索的有效性也值得深入探究。未来对人格判断线索的研究应加强现实生活情境以提高研究的生态效度, 考虑不同线索间的相互比较以考察线索有效性的适用条件, 深入探究网络情境中个体行为线索的有效性。     

ROLE OF INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORKS IN SUPPORTING SOCIAL VALUES TO SUSTAIN ECONOMIC SUCCESS IN NEWLY-INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS

Organizations are evolving into a flatter structure with fewer intermediate organizational levels. Especially, fewer middle managers are needed to relay communications up and down the hierarchy. As information technology is deployed for competitive advantage, fulfilling internal communication becomes as crucial as fulfilling external communications with suppliers and customers. Fulfilling internal communications is especially crucial because incorporation of social (organizational) values and corporate culture requires communication. As the role of communication expands, the role of information technology in promoting communication is fostering experimentation in organizing work and in management practices. For example, electronic mail promotes equality and consensus in a manner that enables participatory rather than authoritarian management. An infrastructure network is a telecommunications network that provides basic communication services on which public, e.g. government, or private organizations depend for their survival. An infrastructure network is distinguished from any ordinary communications facility because it is both pervasive and comprehensive to promote group participation. An infrastructure network is further distinguished by its robustness that allows sufficient bandwidth for substantial resource sharing. Infrastructure networks represent a vital opportunity for newly-industrialized nations in Asia. In these nations, through effective communication, social values related to the ‘group’ will produce a better payoff. This payoff would result from the momentum and partnership experience generated by recent economic success. Also, the relatively smaller size of these nations would enable easier networking. Finally, as demonstrated by their success and as a result of their smaller scale, the ability of these nations to focus on what needs to be done will ensure the wise investment of funds earned from economic success in projects that will guarantee future success. This paper recommends the development of infrastructure networks including national and local networks as well as gateways (to other national networks) and other network, e.g. data bases, resources. The involvement of all constituencies, government and education as well as the private sector, will encourage experiments with information technology in organizing work and in management practices that incorporate social values.     

Multiple Audiences as Text Stakeholders: A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Complex Rhetorical Situations

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.     

Bonds and boundaries: Network structure,organizational boundaries,and job performance

We propose and test a framework that describes the relationship between network structures and job performance. We provide an integration of the current conceptualizations of social capital as they pertain to job performance outcomes by taking a multi-dimensional view of job performance. We break down job performance into creativity, decision-making, task execution, and teamwork, and distinguish the effect of structural holes within and across the organizational boundary on these four job performance domains. In an analysis of 318 managers, we find that networks rich in structural holes that cross the organizational boundary had a positive association with creativity and decision-making, whereas networks with few structural holes within the organization had a positive association with task execution and teamwork. We discuss the theoretical implications for integrating the social capital, boundary spanning, and network structure literatures, as well as the practical benefits of giving much more precise advice to managers and employees regarding how to use networks to improve performance at work.     

INVOLVEMENT IN COMMUNICATION NETWORKS AS A PREDICTOR OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

This study examines the relationship between involvement in a job-related communication network and organizational commitment. The findings indicate a complex relationship that is moderated by the degree of job involvement. For employees who are not involved in their jobs, involvement in the job-related communication network functions to foster commitment to the organization. Two major conclusions are drawn: (1) the impact of involvement in communication networks on employee attitudes and behaviors may occur only for individuals with certain characteristics; and (2) previous studies that have reported main effects for individual variables on organizational commitment may need reinterpretation in light of the disordinal interaction obtained here. The possibility that different commitment processes operate for different kinds of employees is explored, with special emphasis on those employees for whom communication is a potent factor in determining attitudes. Implications for future research on the relationship between communication network involvement and other employee responses are discussed.     

Conversation analysis,cyberpsychology and online interaction

In this paper, I explore how conversation analysis (CA) can be used as a method for analysing online interaction. As the number and quantity of online communication platforms have proliferated, there has been a growing interest in social psychology about the impact and effectiveness of online, text‐based communication. A number of theories have been used and developed to explain how online communication might impact upon relationships and effective communication. However, this paper argues that in order to explore the differences between online and offline interaction an analysis of online behaviour is needed. CA allows for an in‐depth, sequential and discursive analysis of real‐life online interactions. It can explore the ways in which the affordances of the interactional platforms are oriented to or made relevant in the interaction. The utility of CA is demonstrated through a number of examples, highlighting how this method can be used to broaden our understanding of how online communication works in practise.     

PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK INFORMATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION: EVIDENCE OF CONCEPTUAL CONVERGENCE

This study investigates the degree to which performance feedback information can be conceptually housed within an existing theoretical framework of organizational communication. If one's job can be conceptualized as a work information environment, then logically there should be some communality between organizational communication and performance feedback information. In this study 213 faculty members at Iowa State University completed a questionnaire addressing patterns of organizational communication within their respective academic departments and feedback on their own job performance provided them by multiple sources. In order to uncover any underlying congruence between the communication and feedback constructs, the data were subjected to canonical correlation analysis. The results revealed that the type of feedback, source of feedback, and perceived reliability of feedback sources were all found to interact in logical patterns with selected dimensions of organizational communication.     

When your friends matter: The effect of White students' racial friendship networks on meta-perceptions and perceived identity contingencies

Prior research suggests that people expect to be perceived negatively in interracial interactions but positively in intraracial interactions. The present research demonstrates that an interaction partner's racial network of friends can moderate these expectations in interracial interactions but not intraracial interactions. Across two experiments, we led Black and White college students to believe they would have conversation with a White student on campus. The results revealed that Black students expected to be perceived more positively and anticipated a less challenging conversation, when their interaction partner had a racially diverse network of friends compared to a racially homogeneous network of friends. In contrast, White students expected to be perceived positively and anticipated few challenges in the conversation, regardless of their interaction partner's racial network of friends. The implications of racial friendship diversity are discussed.     

Testing Two Contrasting Structural Models of Innovativeness in a Contractual Network

This study examined contrasting models of the impact of formal and informal structural factors and the communication environment on organizational innovativeness. Specifically, three formal structural variables (decentralization, formalization, and slack resources), two informal structural variables (range and prominence), and two communication environment variables (communication quality and acceptance) are posited to be antecedents of organizational innovativeness. In the traditional model, formal structural impacts are posited to be shaped by informal structure. Conversely, the coexisting model argues that both formal and informal structural variables directly affect the communication environment, which, in turn, shapes perceptions of innovativeness. Data were gathered from self-report questionnaires and network analysis communication logs completed by organizational members (N = 79) of a geographically dispersed government health information agency, the Cancer Information Service (CIS). Tests of the models demonstrate that the coexisting model is clearly superior. These results suggest that the dual role of formal and informal structures needs to be more systematically specified as we focus on innovation in new organizational forms, such as the CIS.     

An improved energy efficient cluster head selection protocol using the double cluster heads and data fusion methods for IoT applications

The more energy consumption is the major issue for wireless sensor network. In wireless sensor network (WSN), sensor nodes are fixed in various routing algorithms. In the same networks, mobile sensor and fixed sensor nodes are combine and its used in few applications. The function is corruption while mobility was achieved, since these nodes have minimum battery power, lower range of communication and a lessor amount of memory. To overcome this issue, Improved Energy Efficient Cluster Head Selection protocol (IEECHS-WSN) is proposed, in these technique is used to transfer the received information by using energy efficient routing protocol. In the CH election method, two cluster heads are selected in a separated cluster and its work in various functions, this can be prolong the network lifetime and decrease the energy consumption of IoT applications. Proposed technique is described on clustering of dual CHs in the method of data fusion for data entropy. This information entropy is used for fusion and classification, the result of fusion and classification are accurate and efficient for data transmission. Our proposed IEECHS protocol has better throughput, lifetime of network and energy consumption compared than the existing technique.     

The Sequential Production of Social Acts in Conversation

With reference to Mead, Peirce, speech act theory, conversation analysis, and Luhmann's phenomenological grounded version of systems theory, the paper tries to reconstruct actions as products of communication. A triadic sequence is identified as the elementary unit for the intersubjective constitution of an act. This unit combines three achievements: (a) the constitution of meaning by sequential attribution, (b) the intersubjective coordination of attributed meanings, and (c) the reproduction of rules, guiding the process of constitution and coordination of attributed meanings. Then, using the tools of systems theory and applying them to empirical results of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, it is shown how the rule scheme is integrated in a triadic sequence, functioning on three different levels of communication. Finally, a specific form of repair after next turn is discussed, relating it to the function of preserving the structure of conversational types. The analysis of such conversational types opens a possible realm of cooperation between conversation analysis and Luhmann's version of systems theory.     

Affect networks: a structural analysis of the relationship between work ties and job-related affect

The relationship between organizational networks and employees' affect was examined in 2 organizations. In Study 1, social network analysis of work ties and job-related affect for 259 employees showed that affect converged within work interaction groups. Similarity of affect between employees depended on the presence of work ties and structural equivalence. Affect was also related to the size and density of employees' work networks. Study 2 used a 10-week diary study of 31 employees to examine a merger of 2 organizational divisions and found that negative changes in employees' affect were related to having fewer cross-divisional ties and to experiencing greater reductions in network density. The findings suggest that affect permeates through and is shaped by organizational networks.     

Family resilience: a framework for clinical practice

This article presents an overview of a family resilience framework developed for clinical practice, and describes its advantages. Drawing together findings from studies of individual resilience and research on effective family functioning, key processes in family resilience are outlined in three domains: family belief systems, organizational patterns, and communication/problem-solving. Clinical practice applications are described briefly to suggest the broad utility of this conceptual framework for intervention and prevention efforts to strengthen families facing serious life challenges.     

Parallel distributed processing and neuropsychology: A neural network model of Wisconsin card sorting and verbal fluency

Neural networks can be used as a tool in the explanation of neuropsychological data. Using the Hebbian Learning Rule and other such principles as competition and modifiable interlevel feedback, researchers have successfully modeled a widely used neuropsychological test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. One of these models is reviewed here and extended to a qualitative analysis of how verbal fluency might be modeled, which demonstrates the importance of accounting for the attentional components of both tests. Difficulties remain in programming sequential cognitive processes within a parallel distributed processing (PDP) framework and integrating exceedingly complex neuropsychological tests such as Proverbs. PDP neural network methodology offers neuropsychologists co-validation procedures within narrowly defined areas of reliability and validity.     

Development of the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms-62 (CCAPS-62)

Few instruments have been designed specifically to address the needs of college counseling centers. This article reviews existing instruments and presents 4 studies that describe the development and psychometric properties of a new instrument, the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms-62 (CCAPS-62). Study 1 describes the initial item development, factor analysis, and preliminary scale development steps. Study 2 describes the results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using data from more than 22,000 clients pooled via a national practice-research network of counseling centers. Studies 3 and 4 provide preliminary evidence of subscales' convergent validity and retest reliability. Results from these 4 studies provide support for the instrument's factor structure, construct validity, and subscale reliabilities for both the total sample and subgroups. Clinical and methodological issues pertaining to the future development of the CCAPS are discussed in the context of a national practice-research network of college counseling centers.     

Innovations in local government: A sociocognitive network approach

What frames of reference (assumptions, values, and belief systems) are used by municipal decision makers to guide their assessments of management innovations? Are frames of reference related to an actor’s position in an interpersonal communication network? Can the study of frames of reference and communication roles be combined in a new “sociocognitive network” approach to the study of innovation adoption and diffusion? This study addresses these questions in the context of local government decision making. The results suggest that a sociocognitive network approach, which considers both frames of reference and communication roles, holds significant promise as an element in multivariate representations of innovative behavior. The results of this study are best viewed as contributing to theory development in research on innovative behavior in organizational decision making. Additional research will be required to test and refine this theory in other organizational contexts.