Jeong-Woo Jang

Research on participatory websites has been minimally theoretical and lacks a comprehensive framework that identifies common elements and their functions across a variety of Web 2.0 platforms. This article suggests the definitions of 4 common message types in participatory websites—proprietor content, user-generated content, deliberate aggregate user representations, and incidental aggregate user representations—and offers research exemplars that illustrate how they may function in transforming

Two studies investigated (a) how public figures’ interaction with their followers on social network sites (SNS) affects individuals’ impressions about and attitudes toward them, and (b) how individuals’ interpersonal orientation moderates such effects, if any. In Study 1, participants viewed either a famous actor’s Twitter page or a news article merely relaying his Tweets. Exposure to the Twitter page (vs. news article) induced stronger feelings of actual conversation (i.e., social presence) amo

Drawing upon the uses and gratifications approach, the current study examined how international students' Internet use motivations affect their academic, social, and emotional adjustments in the new environment. A total of 166 Chinese students studying in Korea participated in a web-based survey. First, a factor analysis identified four distinct motivations for Internet use: homeland orientation (to stay connected to the home country), local information seeking (to learn about the host society),

A web-based experiment (<i>n</i> = 960) examined how debunking of publicly shared news on social media affects viewers' attitudes toward the source who shared the fake news, their agreement with the news position, and perceived credibility of social media as a news platform. Exposure to debunking information did not lower participants' agreement with the news position, but led them to derogate (1) the source who shared the misinformation and (2) social media as a news platform. However, particip

Unlike traditional media, social media systems often present information of different types from different kinds of contributors within a single message pane, a juxtaposition of potential influences that challenges traditional health communication processing. One type of social media system, question-and-answer advice systems, provides peers' answers to health-related questions, which yet other peers read and rate. Responses may appear good or bad, responders may claim expertise, and others' agg

The relationship between self-disclosure and liking another person is well-known, as is the prevalence and importance of self-disclosure in computer-mediated interactions. The effects of conversation partners’ responses to disclosures are an overlooked issue, implicated but not examined in most previous research. An original experiment examined whether different forms of response to self-disclosure in computer-mediated communication affect liking differently. Participants engaged in dyadic onlin

This study researches the impact of self-expansion experiences in the Metaverse on users' identity perception, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. To do so, the researchers conducted a two-wave panel study with a 3-month interval ( N = 486) in VRChat, one of the most popular social virtual reality (VR) platforms. As predicted, the increase in self-expansion experience in VR environments positively predicted users' self-esteem and life satisfaction. However, when self-expansion led to a loss of c

In computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems, the messages that a user types usually persist on the screen for some time, a feature that distinguishes CMC from face-to-face interaction. Persistence may activate psychological self-perception, leading communicators to infer from their persistent messaging how they feel about the subject more so than if messages did not persist. This study applies persistence and self-perception to the relationships between self-disclosure and liking. It identi

Previous research found that computer-mediated communication (CMC) users affectively compensate for partners when they believe their partners’ negative demeanor to be malleable, but unlike in other media, they discount their own influence on their partner. This research examined attributions that chat users make when they influence their partners but do not recognize their own causal influence. Dyads conducted either online text-based conversations or audio interactions. Each male dyad member wa

This study investigated how older adults’ informational, social, and recreational motives predict their Internet use and life satisfaction. In doing so, we tested how two distinct forms of digital skills—receptive and participatory—affect the ways in which older people fulfil their needs through the Internet as well as the extent to which their Internet use leads to psychological benefits. A total of 200 Internet users in their 60s joined a face-to-face survey. As predicted, the older users’ inf