Video game streaming has introduced to consumers a new method of creating branded content. Popular streaming platforms receive millions of broadcasters and viewers every month, and the current examines the influence of this type user-generated content on consumer attitudes and behaviors. The goal of this study is to understand how video game streams function as a marketing tool. To investigate this, a quantitative survey was designed and measured participants’ video gaming habits and their perceptions of credibility, usefulness of content, group identification, and purchase intention. Heavier gaming habits were found to be positively related to perceived credibility in a user-generated stream condition. Group identification and stream familiarity were found to be positively related to perceived credibility. These findings hold implications for using video game streams as a marketing tool, as heavier gamers were found perceive user-generated streams as a credible source of information.

The recent breakthroughs in communication technologies have reintroduced the user to Internet. Media consumers became empowered with the capabality to produce, and will gradually shift from the traditional role of an audience to generate content, compete with mainstream media and construct new social and cultural realities. The impact user-generated-content is having over individuals and groups is still ambiguous and requires a better understanding of both the nature of UGC and the particularity of social media platforms as a channel. The pupose of this paper is to further the discussion on how user-generated-content impact audiences in terms of opinion and behavior, particularly during periods of crisis.

Social medias användningsområde har under de senaste åren ökat. Från att till enbörjan användas av privatpersoner till att nu även vara en del av flertalet företag.Tekniken kan skapa nya tillfällen att synas, skapa kundrelationer samt kommunikationsmöjligheter. Det finns olika syften med att använda social mediamen värdet kommer inte från plattformen i sig utan från hur den används. För attett företag ska använda social media kan det finnas anledning att acceptera och varamedvetna om att kritik riktat till företaget offentliggörs. Forskning pekar på attföretag förväntas bemöta åsikter, uppfattningar och upplevelser från konsumenter.Dock saknas tydlig vetskap om hur eller på vilket sätt. Vi har genom en kvalitativstudie, intervjuat representanter från olika företag gällande deras sätt att bedrivakritikhantering på social media. Studien resulterade i tre övergripande teman medunderliggande exempel som beskriver hur företag hanterar kritik på social media. / The use of social media has increased in recent years. Individuals used it first, andnow it has become a part of multiple companies. Technology can create newopportunities for companies to show them self publicly, create customer relations aswell as communication opportunities. The purposes of using social media arevarious, but the value it brings is not from the platform itself, but from the ways it isbeing used. In order for a company to use social media, there may be reason toaccept and be aware of that criticism addressed to the company will be public.Research indicates that companies are expected to respond to opinions, perceptionsand experiences from customers. However, clear knowledge of how or in what wayis missing. We have through a qualitative study, interviewed representatives fromvarious companies regarding their way of conducting criticism management onsocial media. The study resulted in three overarching themes with underlyingexamples illustrating how companies manage criticism on social media.

The present study examines typical features of internet language found in user-generated comments collected from commenting groups from four online magazines aimed at different readerships: (1) adult women (Working Mother and Mothering), (2) adult men (Esquire), (3) young women (Seventeen) and (4) young men (Gameinformer). Approximately 5,000 words from each commenting group were collected, creating a 21,087 word corpus which was analyzed with regard to typographic (emoticons, nonstandard typography of and, personal pronouns you and I) and orthographic features (abbreviations, acronyms) as well as syntactic and stylistic features resembling spoken language (contracted forms, ellipsis of subject and/or verb and commenting tone). The results show that adult men wrote the longest comments, followed by adult women, young men and young women in descending order. Furthermore, as for the typical features regarding typography and orthography, it was found that among the four commenting groups, adult men and adult women used them very sparsely, young men used them occasionally and young women used the features most frequently. The analysis of tone showed that adult men mostly used an aggressive or neutral tone, while adult women, young women and young men mostly used a friendly or neutral tone. Young women used an aggressive tone more often than adult women and young men. Moreover, regarding the syntactic and stylistic features, results revealed that the young men were the most frequent users of ellipsis of subject and/or verb, followed by adult women, young women and adult men. Contracted forms were used extensively in the potential places of contractions, regardless of commenting group. Since young men used the ellipsis of subject and/or verb most frequently of all commenting groups and also used the contracted forms in all potential places of contractions, the conclusion is that the young men used a style that is closer to spoken English than the three other commenting groups. / Den här studien undersöker språkdrag som är typiska för språk på internet. Det material som har undersöks har hämtats från användarkommentarer i nättidningar som är riktade till fyra olika läsargrupper: (1) kvinnor (Working Mother, Mothering), (2) män (Esquire), (3) unga kvinnor (Seventeen) och (4) unga män (Gameinformer). Cirka 5 000 ord hämtades från kommentarsfälten för varje tidning, vilket resulterade i en korpus som omfattade 21 087 ord totalt. Korpusen analyserades med hänsyn till typografiska språkdrag (smileys, ickestandardiserad stavning av personliga pronomen I och you samt and) och ortografiska språkdrag (förkortningar, akronymer) samt syntaktiska och stilistiska språkdrag som påminner om talspråk (sammandragningar, ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb, tonläge). Resultaten visade att män skrev de längsta kommentarerna, följda av kvinnor, unga män och unga kvinnor i fallande ordning. Vad gäller typiska typografiska och ortografiska språkdrag visar resultatet att de återfanns mycket sparsamt i kvinnornas och männens data, att de återfanns då och då i de unga männens data och att de unga kvinnorna var de som använde dessa språkdrag mest frekvent. Analys av tonläge i användarkommentarerna visade att män oftast använde en aggressiv eller neutral ton, medan kvinnor, unga kvinnor och unga män oftast använde en vänskaplig eller neutral ton. Unga kvinnor använde en aggressiv ton oftare än kvinnor och unga män. Utöver detta visade resultatet att ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb var mest frekvent i de unga männens användarkommentarer, följt av kvinnornas, de unga kvinnornas och männens. Sammandragna former användes näst intill undantagslöst i hela korpusen. Eftersom pojkarna uppvisade mest frekvent användning av ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb samt använde sammandragna former i full utsträckning, kan slutsatsen dras att de unga männens syntax är mer påverkad av engelskt talspråk än syntaxen hos de tre andra kommenterande grupperna.

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The new developments behind Web 2.0 have increased the complexity of web systems making the task of securing these systems a challenging problem. As a result, end-to-end security for web access has been hindered by the limitations of current web security policies and by the lack of systems that enable effective enforcement of policies. The focus of this dissertation is on how new tools and frameworks may be designed to aid the protection of web systems by acting as policy specification and enforcement points. In particular, we develop a set of policies and frameworks for three web players--the user, the web browser and the web application--that determine the end-to-end security of web content. Our contributions include a framework for users to specify security policies, a platform to enforce user policies for third-party applications, a systematic analysis of browser policy issues, and a mechanism to provide improved end-to-end security/integrity guarantees.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universität Würzburg, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study explores how consumer’s attitudes towards consumer-generated advertising (CGA) have changed over time. The study measures consumer attitude changes of the winning contributions from Doritos Crash the Super bowl between the years 2007-2014 on YouTube. The study conducted in total 995 comments that was analysed with Leximancer Software, a research tool for making content analysis to determining the presence of words or concepts in collections of textual documents. Findings didn’t show a distinct change of consumer’s attitudes towards CGA over time. The study gave extended knowledge about consumers attitudes towards CGA and what factors that contribute to positive attitudes towards CGA. Were three main factors was notice, first, the fact that they managed to do an ad on a very low budget seemed to impress other consumers. Second, consumers had a tendency to defend CGA when the ad was criticized. Third, the fact that a company did not make the ad was impressive for many of the viewers.

Background: To understand the consumers’ motivation to write online reviews is of importance, especially for companies since a large number of reviews have a positive influence on sales. Previous research has been done regarding what motivate consumers to provide user generated content, online word of mouth and also, to some extent, online reviews. However, these studies have primarily been adopted in a quantitative manner. To explore, from customers’ own perspective, the motivation to write online reviews is therefore valuable to add depth to the existing literature. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore customers’ motivation to write online reviews. Research question: What factors motivate customers to write online reviews? Methodology: The design of the research is a case study where the data collection method was conducted by semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: The result of this study shows that customers’ motivation to write online reviews is due to a variety of situations. The customers are motivated to write to enhance their selfimage, helping both customers and companies, and in some situations to even harm companies. Also, customers were motivated to write to obtain economical incentives. The features of the platform are important, where easiness and the opportunity to be anonymous were preferred.

The Two-Step Flow of Communication suggests that opinion leaders have a greater impact on consumers' product choices and decisions than marketers. With the advent of the Internet and e-commerce, many consumer researchers expanded the study of opinion leadership to incorporate electronic Word-of-Mouth behavior (eWOM) into the Two-Step Flow of Communication. Yet, with the recent and increasing prominence of social media, there appears to be a gap within the opinion leadership literature. Several studies have examined how the Internet and social media empower opinion leaders to instantaneously influence large crowds with eWOM. Marginally few studies, however, have considered how the production of user-generated content (UGC) among opinion leaders can further expand their peer influence. Furthermore, emergent research illustrates that social media is transforming into an enclave for celebrity culture, wherein celebrities use social media to invoke gossip and fantasy in consumers. These technological and cultural shifts within the Internet and social media necessitate an understanding of how UGC, social media and celebrity culture fit within the Two-Step Flow of Communication. In order to address these gaps, the current study probed the relationships amongst parasocial interaction, opinion leadership and willingness to participate in UGC and eWOM. Specifically, parasocial interaction is a history of interactions between a consumer and celebrity that manifest into a fantasized, personal relationship. Relevant hypotheses were developed and used to construct a theoretical model. Data were collected from a nationally representative sample (n = 555) and a Structural Equation Model was subsequently run to test the hypotheses. The findings suggest that social values, knowledge and parasocial interaction are positively related to opinion leadership. In turn, opinion leadership is positively related to willingness to participate in UGC and eWOM. Parasocial interaction, too, is positively related to willingness to participate in UGC and eWOM. A mediation effect was supported whereby opinion leadership significantly mediates the relationship between parasocial interaction and UGC, but not eWOM. The production of UGC is shown to be dependent upon parasocial interaction and opinion leadership. Nonetheless, eWOM does not seem to necessitate opinion leadership and can be produced directly from parasocial interactions.