For nearly sixty years, scholars have studied how information is selected, vetted, and shared by news organizations. The process, known as gatekeeping, is an enduring mass communications theory that describes the process by which news is gathered and filtered to audiences. It has been suggested, however, that in the wake of online communications the traditional function of media gatekeeping is changing. The infusion of citizen-gathered media into news programming is resulting in what some call a paradigm shift. As mainstream news outlets adopt and encourage public participation, it is important that researchers have a greater understanding of the theoretical implications related to participatory media and gatekeeping. This study will be among the first to examine the adoption of citizen journalism by a major cable news network. It will focus on CNN's citizen journalism online news community called iReport, which allows the public to share and submit "unfiltered" content. Vetted submissions that are deemed newsworthy can then be broadcasted across CNN's networks, and published on CNN.com. This journalism practice appears to follow the thoughts of Nguyen (2006), who states that, "future journalists will need to be trained to not only become critical gate-keepers but also act as listeners, discussion and forum leaders/mediators in an intimate interaction with their audiences." The goal of the paper is to lay a foundation for understanding how participatory media is utilized by a news network to help researchers possibly develop new models and hypotheses related to gatekeeping theory.

<div>Digitization has led to emergence of many platforms-based markets. In this dissertation I focus on three different design problems in these markets. The first essay relates to augmented-reality platforms. Pok\'emon Go, an augmented-reality technology-based game, garnered tremendous public interest upon release with an average of 20 million active daily users. The game combines geo-spatial elements with gamification practices to incentivize user movement in the physical world. This work examines the potential externalities that such incentives may have on associated businesses. Particularly, we study the impact of Pok\'emon Go on local restaurants using online reviews as a proxy for consumer engagement and perception. We treat the release of Pok\'emon Go as a natural experiment and study the post-release impact on the associated restaurants. We find that restaurants located near an in-game artifact do indeed observe a higher level of consumer engagement and a more positive consumer perception as compared with those that have no in-game artifacts nearby. In addition, we find that the heterogeneous characteristics of the restaurants moderate the effect significantly. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the economic implications of augmented-reality applications. Thereby, our research lays the foundations for how augmented-reality games affect consumer economic behavior. This work also builds insights into the potential value of such associations for business owners and policymakers. </div><div><br></div><div>The second essay focuses on the platform design problem in sponsored seaerch ad-market.Recent advances in technology have reduced frictions in various markets. In this research, we specifically investigate the role of frictions in determining the efficiency and bidding behavior in a generalized second price auction (GSP) -- the most preferred mechanism for sponsored search advertisements. First, we simulate computational agents in the GSP setting and obtain predictions for the metrics of interest. Second, we test these predictions by conducting a human-subject experiment. We find that, contrary to the theoretical prediction, the lower-valued advertisers (who do not win the auction) substantially overbid. Moreover, we find that the presence of market frictions moderates this phenomenon and results in higher allocative efficiency. These results have implications for policymakers and auction platform managers in designing incentives for more efficient auctions.</div><div><br></div><div>The third essay is about user-generated content platforms. These platform utilize various gamification strategies to incentivize user contributions. One of the most popular strategy is to provide platform sponsorships like a special status. Previous literature has extensively studied the impact of having these sponsorships user contributions. We specifically focus on the impact of losing such elite status. Once their contributions to the platform reduce in volume, elite users lose status. Using a unique empirical strategy we show that users continue to contribute high quality reviews, even though they lose their status. We utilize NLP to extract various review characteristics including sentiment and topics. Using an empirical strategy, we find that losing status does not modify the topic of the reviews written by the users, on average. </div><div><br></div>

Internet has become increasingly ubiquitous and with the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies and concepts it has almost become second nature for many Internet users. This study attempts to view the “social life” of this “new” online environment through its current manifestation in the form of the popular social networking site Facebook. It argues that Facebook has become a tool for the management of one's self both online and offline and that people's reflexive relation to their self-identity is made visible through their engagement with this social media. How such a new form of social media incorporates itself into everyday life but also how the media acts as an extension of the reflexive self has been the main focus of this study.

A design department in the company Sandvik AB in Kista, Stockholm, has built a web-based platform for knowledge sharing that allows the employees to share knowledge, regardless of their role and position in the hierarchical structure of the organization. The web-based platform gathers disseminated information and provides a way of finding needed information in an easy way and thus enables increasing productivity and efficiency of the employees. The purpose of the research was to find out what the potential users find encouraging and motivating in order to use a web-based platform for knowledge sharing and a functionality for performance measurement. Compared to what technically is possible today, there is lack of transparency in the company. The knowledge that exists within the company is dispersed and difficult to access for the employees in the organization. By gathering the knowledge and information and enabling the employees to share knowledge, they could potentially increase their performance of work assignments. The problem that this report addresses is that currently there are not good enough ways of measuring and keeping track of the performance of work assignments or routines in some departments in the company. The qualitative method of semi-structured interviews has been used for gathering data in this research. The data have been analyzed with the method of content analysis. The result of the research is that there are several aspects that need to be considered when encouraging and motivating users to share knowledge in a web-based platform for knowledge sharing and to use it as a tool for performance measurement. The main aspects identified in this research are corporate culture, choice of performance measures, managers’ responsibility, visibility and usage of the performance data and availability of the web-based platform. These aspects concern the attitude of the company and how to encourage and motivate the users to want to use the web-based platform.

Background: Throughout recent years, the amounts of competitions on Instagram have increased and is now a popular marketing tool for companies to use. The strong competition in digital marketing has led to the need for brands to effectively utilize this marketing strategy. However, what motivates users to participate is a subject that lacks previous research. Hence, the question of what motivates the users to participate remains. Purpose: The purpose of this study is, therefore, to explore the motivational factors for women in the ages between 16-25, which leads to participation in contests on Instagram. Further, this research additionally aims to proceed with the knowledge of UGC and partly investigate how companies can use the appeared motivational factors when designing and formulating contests.  Method: For this qualitative study, 15 interviews were conducted, using a phenomenological interview approach.  Conclusion: The main conclusion from the analysis was that several motivational factors were discovered that had not earlier been presented in previous research, the most significant one being the social aspects. Furthermore, the size of the prize and the non-motivational factors proved to be of importance for the users. Secondly, factors relating to entertainment, aesthetics and the desire to win were proved to be of high importance as well. Lastly, several managerial applications have also been discovered that could help businesses when forming contests on Instagram.

The study aims to investigate user engagement in the Generated Artificial Intelligence (GAI) marketing content within social media marketing. The increasing prominence of GAI content has sparked diverse reactions, particularly concerning the safety of personalized content and individuals' awareness of their data being utilized for customization. The main goal of this research is to understand the impact of GAI on user engagement in social media marketing, focusing on the utilization of customer data and preferences on social media platforms. The research unfolds as an empirical exploration, employing a quantitative approach and a structured questionnaire. In conclusion, the research implications emphasize the significance of transparent communication, strategic content creation, and a nuanced understanding of the relationship between awareness, personalization, and consumer engagement in the context of AI-generated content. Marketers can leverage these insights to refine their strategies, enhance user experiences, and build trust in the era of AI-driven marketing.

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Folksonomier, system som låter användare klassificera innehåll, blir allt vanligare på webben. Typiskt sker denna klassificering genom att användare fritt beskriver innehållsobjekt med hjälp av nyckelord.Denna uppsats presenterar en underökning av hur nyckelord förhåller sig till varandra hierarkiskt, inom ett folksonomisystem. Undersökningen är baserad på ett webbgränssnitt, där besökare kunde förfina eller förkasta förslag på hierarkier av nyckelord. Dessa förslag genererades utifrån av ett verkligt folksonomisystem.Efter analys av 400 inkomna svar dras slutsatsen att flera aspekter av metodologin måste förfinas för att tydliga resultat ska kunna uppnås. Förslag på sådana förändringar presenteras slutligen. / Folksonomies, systems for user classified content, are becoming more common on the web. Typically, these classification systems let users describe content objects by assigning them keywords ("tags").This thesis presents a study on how keywords in a folksonomy system relate hierarchically. The study is based on a web interface, where visitors could refine or reject suggestions of hierarchies of keywords. Suggestions where generated from a real folksonomy system.After analysis of 400 responses, the conclusion is made that to reach clear results, several aspects of the methodology have to be modified. The thesis ends with presenting possible ways to achieve this.

User-generated content (UGC) is a ubiquitous phenomenon on the Internet. UGC inform, entertain, and facilitate conversations among online users. The three essays of this dissertation examine different antecedents of UGC characteristics with text analytics. The first essay explored the effects of psychological distance on UGC positivity and found that spatial and temporal distance boost UGC positivity. The second essay investigates the effects of social media integration on the linguistic characteristic of UGC and showed that social media integration leads to increased review quantity, while more emotional, less rational and less negative language in UGC content. The third essay examines the impact of book-to-film adaptation on the rating and linguistic characteristics of UGC. The results suggest that, after the release of book-to-film adaptations, book ratings decline, and the use of language reflecting viewing, comparison and affective processes increase in book reviews. To summarize, the three essays in this dissertation contributes to research on UGC by improving our understanding on the various antecedents of UGC characteristics. / Business Administration/Marketing

This dissertation presents three essays that focus on various aspects pertaining to the management of online platforms, defined as "digital services that facilitate interactions between two or more distinct, but interdependent sets of users (whether firms or individuals) who interact through the service via the Internet" (OECD, 2019). The interactions benefit both the users and the platform. Managing online platforms involves developing strategies for one or more of three value adding functions: (a) lowering search costs for the parties connecting through the platform, (b) providing a technology infrastructure that facilitates transactions at scale by sharing both demand and supply side costs; and (c) locating other audiences or consumers for the output that results from the transaction. The platform manager must manage these value adding functions. Thus, one important management task is to recognize potential asymmetries in the economic and/or psychological motivations of the transacting parties connected through the platform. In this dissertation, I empirically examine these issues in greater detail. The first essay, "Incentivizing User-Generated Content—A Double-Edged Sword: Evidence from Field Data and a Controlled Experiment," addresses the conundrum faced by online platform managers interested in crowdsourcing user-generated content (UGC) in prosocial contexts. The dilemma stems from the fact that offering monetary incentives to stimulate UGC contributions also has a damping effect on peer approval, which is an important source of non-monetary recognition valued by UGC contributors in prosocial contexts. The second essay, "Matching and Making in Matchmaking Platforms: A Structural Analysis," examines matchmaking platforms, focusing specifically on the problem of misaligned incentives between the platform and the agents. Based on data from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on fighter characteristics, and pay-per-view revenues associated with specific bouts, we identify the potential for conflicts of interest and examine strategies that may be used to mitigate such problems. The third essay, "Matching and Making in Matching Markets: A Managerial Decision Calculus," extends the empirical model and analytical work to a class of commonly encountered one-sided matching market problems. It provides the conceptual outline of a decision calculus that allows managers to explore the revenue and profitability implications of adaptive changes to the tier structures and matching algorithms. / Doctor of Philosophy / The 21st century has witnessed the rise of the platform economy. Consumers routinely interact with online platforms ways in their day to day activities. For instance, they interact with platforms such as Quora, StackOverflow, Uber, and Airbnb to name only a few. Such platforms address a variety of needs starting from providing users with answers to a variety of questions to matching them with a range of service providers (e.g., for travel and dining needs). However, the rapid growth of the platform economy has created a knowledge gap for both consumers and platforms. The three essays in this dissertation attempt to contribute to the literature in this area. The first essay, "Incentivizing User-Generated Content—A Double-Edged Sword: Evidence from Field Data and a Controlled Experiment," examines how crowdsourcing contests influence the quantity and quality of user-generated content (UGC). Analyzing data from the popular question and answer website Quora, we find that offering monetary incentives to stimulate UGC contributions increases contributions but also has a simultaneous damping effect on peer endorsement, which is an important source of non-monetary recognition for UGC contributors in prosocial contexts. The second essay, "Matching and Making in Matchmaking Platforms: A Structural Analysis," examines matchmaking platforms, focusing on the problem of misaligned incentives between the platform and the agents. Based on data from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on fighter characteristics, and pay-per-view revenues associated with specific bouts, we identify the potential for conflicts of interest and examine strategies that may be used to mitigate such problems. The third essay, "Matching and Making in Matching Markets: A Managerial Decision Calculus," extends the empirical model and analytical work to a class of commonly encountered one-sided matching market problems. It provides the conceptual outline of a decision calculus that allows managers to explore the revenue and profitability implications of adaptive changes to the tier structures and matching algorithms.