International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926 Volume-3, Issue-1, Special Issue-1, Jan.-2017 http://iraj.in TWEETING EFFECTIVENESS. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF LEBANON

1MANSOUR AL-SHAMALI, 2PIERRE AL-KHOURY

Abstract- Purpose - The core purpose of this paper is to find out the twittering effectiveness in terms of time spent on social networking platform. The objective is to find out the antecedents of effectiveness of twittering. Methodology - The sample of 200 respondents have been collected through random sampling and snowball sampling methods and SPSS and AMOS has been used to investigate the intensification of theoretical antecedents taken from the theory of information diffusion and innovation. Findings - Results have shown the highly positive and significant impact of socialization and information diffusion with time bound usage while the support servicing shows moderate impact. Conclusion - is most popular social networking site and modern age drives it positively for communication, gossip, chat, sharing and diffusion of information within no time.

Keywords- Twittering, Twitter, Age of Twittering, and Networking, Micro blogging, IM, Information Diffusion.

I. INTRODUCTION & LITERATURE REVIEW ComScore (2007) reported the number of users of Twitter has reached to 94000 right within eight Allen (1983) defined that Twitter is a microblogging months of launch. Users can share or post their service and somehow a new phenomenon and current status/statuses within a conscise limit of 140 medium which gives the user an opportunity to characters on topics ranges from current events to briefly write the updates via text messages, instant daily life, , news or other interest areas. Java, messages, web or email about anything either Song, Finin, and Tseng (2007) reported that the personal or general (Java, Song, Finin, & Tseng, microblog tools enables ease in sharing status, 2007) related to life and send them to friends and messages and news publically or within a social interested observers, news and recent happenings network. (Kwak, Lee, Park, & Moon, 2010). This is provided Twitter is based on Application Programing Interface by several social media services like Twitter (Austin, (API) which makes easy to crawl and collect 1976), (Barabasi & Albert, 1999) and latest information and data. A twitter provides Pownce (Blogpulse, 2006) as these provides the light description about oneself and public profile constitues weight easy mode of communication which enable full name, location, short biography and tweets count users to share and broadcast information of their of a user also the following and followers also activities, status and opinions. enlisted there (Kwak et al., 2010). Amongst the all social media twitter is the most popular micro bloging platforms (Pontin, 2007) also Twitter track the words, phrases and and the users follow others or they can be followed shows a top ten list of trending topics of the moment (Kwak, Lee, Park, & Moon, 2010) but unlike other on user homepage, right side bar by default. Once any social media sites like MySpace, or phrase, word, or appears as a top trending Linkedin no resiprocation is required of following or topic, we follow it for seven more days after it is being followed. Nowadays, Social media became taken off the top ten trending topics’ list. The twitter very important for the socialnetworking. user can be easily measured by the number of followers and retweets a user gets. 1- Mansour AlShamali PhD, Section Head, The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training, II. TWITTER CURRENT STATISTICS Kuwait 2- Pierre Al-Khoury, PhD, Vice President for Twitter was launched on July 13, 2006 and the Development, Lebanese German University, current users till Aug 2014 shows that it has a large Lebanon, [email protected] (corresponding number of users globally. Twitter users can follow Author) each other and the user being followed by someone Now we make chat on facebook and MSN and get e- does not needs to follow back and being a follower, mails. And there are many further ways to the user can recive messages which are known as demonstrate how to improve the forecastiong power Tweets from the followers. of social media (Asur & Huberman, 2010). In the beginning of the 21st century social media Kwak et al. (2010) demonstrated the mechanism of applications brings change in our way to twittering and highlights that the responding back of communicate and now the communication method the Tweet has evolved into a well defined culture of such as face to face conversation or a telephone call is mark signs: RT is used for Retweet, “@” followed by replaced by chatting. a user identifier address the user, and “#” followed by

Tweeting Effectiveness. An empirical Study of Lebanon

75 International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926 Volume-3, Issue-1, Special Issue-1, Jan.-2017 http://iraj.in a word represents a hashtag. This markup vacabulary diffusion of information and innovation has been combined with 140 characters per post conveniences widely researched in sociology, epidemiology and users with brevity in expression. The retweet marketing (Kempe, Kleinberg, & Tardos, 2003; mechanism empowers the users to spread information Leskovec, Adamic, & Huberman, 2006; Pastor- of their choice beyond the reach of the original Satorras & Vespignani, 2002; Strang & Soule, 1998). tweet’s followers (Kwak et al., 2010). The online social media and networking success III. RESEARCH GAP initiates a new problem of information diffussion at large scale in terms of topic promulgation in Even twitter is one of the most popular sites among blogspace (D. Gruhl, Guha, Liben-Nowell, & the online social media web servicesbut till now, not Tomkins, 2004), linking pattren in graphs much of the literature has been published to date. The (Leskovec & Horvitz, 2007), favoriting photos social interaction on twitter has been studied and marking and sharing socially (Sun, Rosenn, Marlow, described that the driving process for usage is a & Lento, 2009) all these reported large scale sparse hidden network underlying the friends and information diffusion on of Twitter. followers, while most of the links represent The retweet trees are considered as the channels for meaningless interactions (Bernardo, Huberman, communication of information diffusion from where Daniel, Romero, & Fang, 2009). Java et al. (2007) it will reach upto large audience and fastly spreads investigated the community structure and isolated among the audience (Kwak et al., 2010). different kinds of users with versatile intentions on Twitter. V. SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

B. Jansen, M. Zhang, K. Sobel, and A. Chowdury The day by day increasing popularity of online social (2009) has investigated mechanism of marketing media has encouraged the researchers to seek the known as word of mouth (WOM) marketing as well characteristics and antecedents (Benevenut, as advertisement and considers peculiar products and Rodrigues, Cha, & Almeida, 2009) of it beyond the brands while examining the posting structures and crawled data (Wilson, Boe, Sala, Puttaswamy, & changes in sentiments but didn’t analyze predictive of Zhao, 2009). Twitter. Daniel Gruhl, Guha, Kumar, Novak, and Tomkins (2005) has priory done some research in Twitter is not more than 5 years old but has gained analyzing correlation among the and review much popularity and attention since last couple of mentions and performance. Joshi, Das, Gimpel, and years. Java et al. (2007) has conducted priliminary Smith (2010) used linear regression technique to see analysis on twitter and reported a data set of 76000 the impact among the variables and metadata users with 1,000,000 posts and found the user cluster features. based on their intention towards topics by clique percolation methods. IV. RATIONALE & SCOPE OF STUDY Krishnamurthy, Gill, and Arlitt (2008) analyzed the The traditional perspective assumed that in a society characteristics of users through relationship among there is a minority of members who possess the the followers and following. Zhao and Rosson (2009) qualities which makes them exceptionally influential qualitatively investigated the usage of twitter through in dissemination ideas to others and these exceptions motivation to use whereas the Huberman, Romero, drives the trends on behalf of ordinary people and Wu (2008) reported that the number of friends is majority.They are loosely described as being in actual smaller than the folowers and following. B. informed, respected, and well-connected; they are J. Jansen, M. Zhang, K. Sobel, and A. Chowdury called the opinion leaders in the two-step flow theory (2009) conducted the priliminary research on twitter Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) which stated the diffusion branding by word of mouth. of innovation theory and connectors, hubs and mavens in different work (Gladwell, 2002). The VI. RESEARCH QUESTIONS & OBJECTIVES theory of influential is compeling as well as intuitive OF THE STUDY through which identifying and convincing small number of influential individuals a This study encircles around the social media in news/campaign/information can be reached to a wider specific to Twitter and its users, activities and audience in cost effective manner(Gladwell information diffusion. This study has core objectives 2002;Berry & Keller, 2003). to seek how the people are connected on twitter? What people talk there and who are the most The core centeric of social media is diffusion of influential people? Also it pursues to investigate the information and twitter has main concerns that the information diffusion via tweeting and getting the new idea/action has been spread widely via retweets? In addition to the above mentioned research communication channels (Rogers, 2003). The objectives this study further investigates about the

Tweeting Effectiveness. An empirical Study of Lebanon

76 International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926 Volume-3, Issue-1, Special Issue-1, Jan.-2017 http://iraj.in socialization, time consumption and networking users as they often owe over time. Short time period among the youth and its effects on their lives. The studies are thus unlikely to capture the consistent goal of this work is to study the topological patterns, as many users tweet rarely and with characteristics of Twitter and its power as a new irregular frequency. medium of information sharing. VIIII. RESEARCH MODEL VII. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY On the basis of extensively reviewed literature and This research study has some limitations in terms of theories a model for this research has been developed sample size and consistent pattrens of postings of and further testing will be done in next step.

METHODOLOGY used to test the collected data inorder to see the impact of antecedents of effectiveness of social media The methodology followed for this research study is on users. Ethical considerations were given quantitative in nature and the sample was collected preference while collecting data. from the twitter users through random sampling Results of Findings technique. Asample of 268 people were selected out of which the complete data was given by the 200 The results of Table – 1 show the age wise gender users with versatile demographics. demographics which demonstrates the number of Though it was quite challanging for the researcher to Twitter users and seeks to the interest of respondents select sample randomly from the twitter users so of different age groups. The table results depicts that another technique of ball sampling was applied there are more female users as compared to males on the users who frequently tweet and were being also the females belongs to 22-24 years age bracket retweeted and followers and followings as these have participated more actively in twittering as activities are interconnected (Bernardo et al., 2009; compared to males. The table further demonstrates Sharda & Delen, 2006). that the usage of twitter is almost common in all age The research methodology is based on survey group of both genders and no one is reluctant in using technique to collect data and SPSS and AMOS is it while at any age bracket.

Table – 1: Age wise Gender Demographics

The results of Table – 2 show the age wise age bracket and maximum number of participants are qualification demographics which demonstrate the graduates who have participated more actively in number of Twitter users who seeks to the interest at twittering as compared to other categories. The table being different education level categories. The table further demonstrates that the usage of twitter is results depicts that more users belongs to 22-24 yrs. almost common in all education level and age groups

Tweeting Effectiveness. An empirical Study of Lebanon

77 International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926 Volume-3, Issue-1, Special Issue-1, Jan.-2017 http://iraj.in and no one is reluctant in using it while at any age bracket. Table – 2: Age wise Qualification Demographics

The Table – 3 has shown the social status of the Lebanese and they are actively participating in respondent’s nationality wise and highlighted that Twitter activities. maximum users are Single and 60 of the sample are

Table – 3: Nationality wise Status Demographics

The Table – 4 shows the Hypothesis Testing and facilitation and moderately facilitates the Twitter demonstrated that the socialization has 100% impact users via tweeting and being retweeted or following on the effectiveness of Twittering while the support or being followers. On the other hand there is 97.4% services as being using twitter has 58% impact on intensification of information diffusion and has purposefulness of twitter in perms of support and positively strong impact on twittering effectiveness.

Table – 4: Regression Weights of Twitter Effectiveness

The Table – 5 exposed the model fit indices DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION calculated on AMOS and show the absolute and related indices as per acceptance level and close to 1 Technological advancement and social media has hence showing strong contrivance with the hypothesis changed the individual’s life and social networking assumed. online sites provides a platform for information sharing, communication and diffusion within no time Table – 5: Model Fit Indices and also it breaks the communication barriers and hurdles. Twitter brings a drastic change and provides a social network to interact with each other via technological means, via alerts, chat, sharing videos and pictures, gossips and networking. Usually the users share their personal data on the social networking sites in transparent archived ways.

Twitter is a public as well as social platform for all age groups and social status individuals and data here

Tweeting Effectiveness. An empirical Study of Lebanon

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