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Nowadays, people have many business activities and entertainments on a variety of online platforms. Despite their various functionalities, online platforms have a fundamental administrative problem: How do platform designers or administrators create proper online environments, including mechanisms and policies, to better manage user behaviors, in order to reach the goals of the platforms? Starting with a taxonomy of online platforms, I introduce three critical dimensions that help to characterize such platforms, including revenue model, heterogeneity in the role of users and level of user interaction. Then, I choose three online platforms as research contexts and conduct empirical studies, trying to identify and understand the impact of the incentive program, quality information disclosure, and social influence, on users' decision-making in online platforms. The first essay investigates the effectiveness of incentive hierarchies, where users achieve increasingly higher status in the community after achieving increasingly more challenging goals, in motivating user contribution in the same platform. The findings have important implications for crowd-based online applications, such as knowledge exchange and crowdsourcing. The second essay focuses on online consumer review sites, and studies whether and how consumer-generated word-of-mouth of restaurants-both volume and valence-is influenced by the disclosure of quality information from health inspectors, by conducting analytical modeling and econometric analyses using data from a leading consumer review site. The third essay examines how social interactions matter in a large-scale online social game that adopts an increasingly popular freemium revenue model. The study leverages an econometric model to quantify the effect of peer consumption on players' repeated decisions for the consumption of both free services and premium services. Finally, I conclude the dissertation by highlighting the three fundamental issues of design and management of online platforms.

Konformitet ses som att människor anpassar sitt beteende utifrån andra och betraktas ofta som något negativt i västerlänska samhällen. Syftet med undersökningen var att framhäva om konformitet gynnade människor när andra ansågs bidra med nyttig information, konstruera ett mätinstrument för normativ och informativ social influens samt undersöka samband mellan personlighetsindexar och konformitet. En enkätstudie genomfördes med totalt 83 deltagare från en högskola i Mellansverige. Deltagarna delades in i två grupper, där konformitetsgruppen fick, tillskillnad från kontrollgruppen, en procentsats vid varje kunskapsfråga. Resultaten visade att konformitet förekom och att det gynnade sig att följa strömmen vid lätta och medelsvåra kunskapsfrågor. Ytterligare förekom det inga samband mellan personlighetsindexarna och konformitet. Slutsatsen var att människor inte borde se konformitet som något negativt, utan bör ibland ta del av det majoriteten har att erbjuda i vardagliga situationer. Förhoppningsvis kommer det konstruerade mätinstrumentet användas i framtida forskningar.

While knowledge is one of an organization’s greatest assets, it remains a challenge to facilitate knowledge transfer between people within an organization. Social influence has been studied in its role of facilitating information diffusion, which is necessary for knowledge transfer to occur. Among this research, tie strength, a quantifiable characteristic of a social network that determines the link between two nodes, has been measured to determine the impact of social influence on knowledge transfer and information dissemination within a social network. Current research that explores the impact of social influence on information diffusion has been conducted within public social networks due to the availability of data that can be gathered from public social online network systems, such as Facebook. With the emergence of collaboration technologies that exist in online social network tools being utilized within organizations, there is an opportunity to digitally collect information regarding information dissemination within a collaborative network. This study captured data from an online social network, specifically a unified communication tool, being used within a collaborative social network at a mid-sized South Central corporation. A content analysis of Lync messages for 1,749 connections was performed to quantitatively measure the influence of tie strength on information dissemination within a collaborative social network. The results demonstrated that tie strength had a significant impact on information dissemination using a collaborative system. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that tie strength had the largest impact on information dissemination using the instant messaging modality of a collaboration system.

Studies investigating aspects of social influence or power in counseling settings have examined the relationship between nonverbal cues and social influence or power. This study investigated perceptions of power, responsiveness, attractiveness, expertness, and trustworthiness by manipulating posture, facial expression and sex of therapist. After viewing photographs of stimulus therapists and listening to audio tapes, 96 male and 98 female undergraduates completed the Counselor Rating Form and a questionnaire measuring therapists' power and responsiveness. Results indicated that facial expression was more salient than posture. Smiling decreased ratings of power and increased ratings of attractiveness, responsiveness, and trustworthiness. Open posture was seen as more attractive and more powerful than closed posture. Surprisingly, females were viewed as more powerful than males. Other gender differences were found only in interaction with other variables.

The study examines how social media can be used in a business-to-business context. To understand the communication conditions, factors has been identified that affects the choice of communication channels for different types of information transferred between parts. Furthermore, the study investigates the underlying reasons for why certain communication channels are chosen before others, in different situations. The study results are based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with employees in a small engineering consulting company. The investigation has focused on employee communication and choice of communication tools primarily in relation to the business relationship. The study answers the following questions: What factors may contribute to the selection of different communication tools in business-to-business? What are the conditions and reasons for employees to use social media in business-to-business? What opportunities can social media pose for managing knowledge exchange with customers in business-to-business? The theoretical framework is based on Media Richness Theory and Social Influence Theory. The results show that factors that affect use of social media between businesses are 1) social environmental influences on attitudes towards social media (positive or negative), 2) individual analogue and digital values, 3) social media are primarily used in a private context 4) individual's role and level within the company. It is proposed that companies require strategies and increased knowledge to operate efficiently with social media in business to business. The results also shows that factors affecting the choice of communications channels between employees and business relationship are: 1) context-dependent, 2) the availability and accessibility, 3) the role and level in the company, 4) customer relationship development, 5) the information degree of ambiguity, 6) communication channel degree of "richness", 7) urgency, 8) confirmation of agreement. / Program: Magisterutbildning i strategisk information och kommunikation

With the expansion of online communities, extant research in multiple disciplines has attempted to investigate its adoption and use among individuals. However, the biggest challenge encountered by managers of these communities is supplying knowledge, particularly, the willingness to share knowledge among the members. It is extremely important to maintain committed members in terms of active participation. Yet their level of participation might vary based on some social, behavioral and environmental factors that eventually affect their intentions on whether to participate actively or not, in fact some users choose to discontinue participating totally in the community. Cancers figure among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with approximately 14 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer related deaths in 2012. The number of new cases is expected to rise by about 70% over the next 2 decades. Among men, the 5 most common sites of cancer diagnosed in 2012 were lung, prostate, colorectal, stomach, and liver cancer. According to the world cancer report, among women the 5 most common sites diagnosed were breast, colorectal, lung, cervix, and stomach cancer. For this reason, there is an ever-increasing need to establish communities to offer empathic support to patients. Though peer support groups have been known to offer adequate support to patients with cancer and are considered to be an important complement to the formal health care system, however, practical barriers such as time, mobility and geography limit their use, this is where the online communities serve an advantage, as they have the potential to overcome barriers posed by regular offline communities. To achieve its objectives, this study mainly adopts the Social cognitive theory and two components of the social influence theory. According to the SCT, user behaviour is influenced by two factors: personal cognition and environment. Social influence model postulates that individual behaviour in a community can be affected by the social environment and three factors constitute this, they are compliance, identification and internalization. The study aims to provide insights on how and why patients diagnosed with cancer (and their relatives) seek social support using the Internet and social media. In particular, we seek to understand the motivation for joining these groups and the values derived from the community for the users both active and non-active.

In a broad sense, public relations is the communication between an organization and its audience. Public relations helps create and maintain a relationship between the two. When an organization experiences a success or failure public relations is put into place to help rally public support. The intent of this thesis aims to determine the tone of President Obama in U.S. newspapers and social media in association with the capturing and killing of terrorist Osama bin Laden. This thesis examines a variety of U.S. newspapers by region and social media. Newspaper articles related to the topic were retrieved from six regional newspapers: Columbus Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Charlotte Observer, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. From these papers, a specific time period was chosen to examine articles. The months of April, June, and August 2012 were chosen. During these months, a keyword search for “osama bin laden” was used. Articles that contained this keyword were then examined and coded. Blogs and Facebook pages of the Republican and Democratic Party were examined. Two political blogs, Daily Kos and Red State, were chosen. From these blogs and Facebook pages, the same time period was chosen as for the newspapers. The keyword search was also the same, “osama bin laden”.

This study was undertaken to determine the dominant cultural metaphors at work in American and Japanese organizational culture, to examine the ways in which each society interprets these metaphors, and to assess the importance of the metaphors relative to intercultural communication. Using a combination of qualitative content analysis, rhetorical criticism, contextual analysis, and non-participant observation, two of the most dominant metaphors in both cultures, business-as-war and business-as-family, were discovered and examined. The research data comes from a variety of books, scholarly and popular articles, pamphlets, unpublished papers, films, and miscellaneous documents. These materials cover many disciplines: communication, history, popular culture, sociology, psychology, business management, and literature. Additional written and verbal information obtained from personal interviews conducted at a Japanese-owned American-staffed manufacturing facility supplements these materials. By applying Osborn's (1967) theory of "archetypal metaphors," or metaphors which strike deep into the human subconscious, Gozzi's (1990b) concept of "minimetaphors" which arise from these archetypal metaphors. and Hall and Trager's (Hall, 1973) "major triad" (formal, Informal, and technical) of behavioral modes, the following conclusions were derived (1) many metaphors appear in both societies, but the familial and military metaphors dominate the business cultures, (2) viewing business as a war developed out of the violent histories of both cultures and perpetuates harmful attitudes, (3) viewing business as a family developed out of the homogeneity of the Japanese culture, but it did not develop as readily in the more heterogeneous United States. (4) each society interprets these metaphors in different ways, making them culturally unique but not culturally exclusive, (5) different interpretations may arise from the ways in which the cultures transmit the metaphors, (6) many of the minimetaphors associated with both of these archetypes no longer refer to their original meanings, and (7) multinational corporations will transmit their own unique cultural metaphors to their foreign employees.

This study examined the relationship of world view to selected communication, demographic, and social variables. Using a newly developed scale for world view, the researcher tested one hundred forty-nine high school and college level subjects to determine significant interactions between world view and communication apprehension, use of mass media, trust, life satisfaction, social participation, age, grade level, sex, income, and race. Data analyses included factor analyses, analyses of variance, and correlation and regression analyses. Results of the simple correlation indicated that the age-grade combination was the strongest single factor followed by income, religious participation, television watching, sex, newspaper reading, radio listening, and communication apprehension. Generally, the ANOVA showed that the college level student had a higher world view than the high school student; that with one exception males had a higher world view than females; that low religious participation almost consistently accompanied a higher world view than high religious participation, that low television watching accompanied high world view; that low income males showed higher world view than high income males, while income failed to show any affect on females; and that communication apprehension interacted with world view in conjunction with religious participation and sex in a complicated pattern. No significant interaction was detected with world view and race, world view and trust, or world view and life satisfaction.