Fear that the Internet promotes harmful political rumoring is merited but not for reasons originally anticipated. Although the network accelerates and widens rumor circulation, on the whole, it does not increase recipient credulity. E-mail, however, which fosters informal political communication within existing social networks, poses a unique…

When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, he not only used a grassroots campaign to reach out to his constituents, he also utilized social media. Since Obama's run for President, other politicians and federal government officials have sought to capitalize on social media's reach by creating their own Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts.…

Literature on aggression often suggests that individual deficiencies, such as social incompetence, psychological difficulties, or troublesome home environments, are responsible for aggressive behavior. In this article, by contrast, we examine aggression from a social network perspective, arguing that social network centrality, our primary measure…

Twitter is a website that enables one to send and receive short text messages to and from another person. It is an easy way of communicating at virtually no cost with friends and family, a brilliant way of getting up-to-date news, teaching resources and ideas, and the means of receiving a really useful, free, hour's CPD each week, through…

Pro-social behaviors serve essential societal functions. This study examines the factors affecting the quality of social networks, in terms of network size and perceived respect. It further explores the role of social networks in enhancing helping intention and helping behaviors. Eight hundred and eighty people were randomly interviewed by phone.…

This issue brief explores how college career service centers can assist college students and recent college graduates in using social media as part of their job search. The brief discusses the value of social media in the job search and offers a glimpse of various types of social networking options. It then provides some practical steps and advice…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to encourage a discourse aiming to better understand the "psycho-social situation" of many people--from a global perspective. The following "first hypotheses" are formulated; pointing to crucial "hidden agendas" which shall be "named" in order to focus attention towards…

Alongside a growing interest in knowledge mobilization (trying to increase the connection between research, policy and practice) there has been a transformation of how knowledge is produced, accessed and disseminated in light of the internet and social media strategies. Few studies have explored the use of social media for research dissemination.…

The current study examined the development of bullying and defending over a 1-year period as related to friends' influence and individual and friends' moral disengagement (i.e., self-justification mechanisms that allow one to avoid moral self-censure of transgressive actions) in children and young adolescents. Via longitudinal social network…

This study investigated early adolescent friendship selection and social influence with regard to academic motivation (self-efficacy and intrinsic value), engagement (effortful and disruptive behavior), and achievement (GPA calculated from report card grades) among 6th graders (N = 587, 50% girls at Wave 1; N = 576, 52% girls at Wave 2) followed…

The idea that different media can work in conjunction to transmit a story, understood as a distributed narrative, is a new one and has partly been developed as a result of the technological evolution of media. On a basic level, it has been applied in education in a similar way for a long time. However, transmedia storytelling based on digital…

The purpose of this study is to ascertain the differences in online reading habits between genders and investigate the relationship between socio-economic status and online reading habits. Using a questionnaire, a quantitative approach was administered to 240 Form-Four students from four secondary schools in Penang Island, Malaysia. Findings…

Collaborative learning has become a dominant learning apparatus for higher level learning objectives. Much of the psychological and social mechanisms operating under this complex group activity, however, is not yet well understood. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of college students' communication competence and degree…

Second language (L2) gains during study abroad have been related to several variables including length of stay (Llanes, 2011), language use (Martinsen, Baker, Dewey, Bown, & Johnson, 2010), and social network development (Isabelli-García, 2006), among others. However, most studies have investigated only a few predictors in single study abroad…

A canyonesque gulf has long existed between open academia and many external subject communities. Since 2011, we have been developing and piloting the public open scholar role (Coughlan and Perryman 2012)--involving open academics discovering, sharing and discussing open educational resources (OER) with online communities outside formal education…