Charles W Steinfield

Michigan State University | MSU

This study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one's ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community...

Social media are increasingly implemented in work organizations as tools for communication among employees. As these technologies begin to proliferate across the enterprise, it is important that we develop an understanding of how they enable and constrain the communicative activities through which work is accomplished because it is these very dynam...

A survey of 191 randomly selected rural farm households in central Malawi was completed to provide a better estimate of mobile phone access in a country that falls at the lower end of published mobile subscription rates. We further ask whether there remains evidence of a mobile divide, across both socio-economic status and gender, in such a context...

Providing smallholder farmers with agricultural information could improve economic development, by helping them to grow more crops, which they could then sell for more money. Widespread mobile phone ownership in Africa means that, for the first time, there is a realistic opportunity to deliver pertinent information to remote farmers throughout the...

Effective workgroups engage in team boundary spanning, that is, using communication ties as conduits to critical external resources. The proliferation of enterprise social media (ESM) and the associated increase in visibility of people, content, and interactions, has resulted in a widespread assumption that unlimited visibility improves boundary sp...

Soil and land degradation is a common issue in Sub‐Saharan African leading to poor yield and threatening food security, yet soil conservation technologies remain underutilized. To build on prior work that primarily emphasizes demographic differences in adoption, this study contributes by identifying underlying social and cultural factors that influ...

This study designs and tests two strategies of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) aiming to increase farmers' knowledge and uptake of DT maize. One is a locally-made video, or " participatory " video. Another is a multichannel method that incorporates the same video with timely mobile phone-based audio messages. We conducted a...

This handbook is designed to provide tools for civil society institutions interested in developing and utilizing participatory videos as part of their toolkit. It is intended to serve as a practical guide for aiding organizations to conceptualize, produce, and screen participatory videos in community settings. Participatory video is a tool for posi...

This handbook is designed to provide tools for civil society institutions interested in developing and utilizing participatory videos as part of their toolkit. It is intended to serve as a practical guide for aiding organizations to conceptualize, produce, and screen participatory videos in community settings. Participatory video is a tool for po...

Recent team boundary spanning literature has recommended a shift toward assessing the role of virtual tools – such as social media. Simultaneously the proliferation of Enterprise Social Media (ESM) points to the need to theorize and investigate the supra-individual usage of these tools, such as their usefulness for organizational groups. This paper...

Boundary spanning has gained significant popularity in the field of information systems given its role as a critical antecedent to innovation and organizational performance. The majority of boundaryspanning studies have focused on assessing the impact of boundary spanning—as an activity—on distinct dependent variables, such as team innovativeness o...

Substantial interest is focused on using video to disseminate agricultural information to rural farmers in the developing world. This paper explores the effectiveness of using this approach to improve rural farmers' device literacy---that is, their ability to use mobile phones for purposes other than making and receiving voice calls. Findings from...

Effective work groups engage in team boundary spanning, that is, the use of communication ties as conduits to critical external resources. With the proliferation of social media technologies in enterprise settings and the associated increase in visibility of communication ties, understanding their impact on boundary spanning becomes imperative to i...

With the ubiquity of data, new opportunities have emerged for the application of data science and machine learning approaches to help enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge management. With the growing use of social media technologies in enterprise settings, one specific area of knowledge management warranting the use of big data ana...

This paper explores how participatory video can improve the knowledge and adoption of nutrition and food preparation practices among smallholder farmers in Malawi. Using a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design, this study found that the participatory video method improved the participants' knowledge as much as the traditional demonstration met...

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The Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) team at GCFSI explored an approach that has been used extensively in India by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Digital Green to help encourage adoption of new agricultural practices among rural farmers through the production and group-based screening of low-cost training vid...

Given the large investments in Enterprise Social Media technologies in organizational settings, this paper sets out to explore the challenges and opportunities that ESM technologies provide for organizational communication. Merging existing conceptual work on ESM with findings from thirteen appreciative interviews with professionals from a large mu...

Standards are essential to ensure that devices and networks work together effectively to provide access to content and communication. They are also necessary to reduce the costs of electronic commerce transactions, especially between businesses. This entry provides a basic definition for standards and a brief overview of the role of standards throu...

Where in the past the field of digitally mediated communication was focused narrowly within organizational settings and on its impacts on interpersonal communication, it is now clear that the commercial implications of such communication are vast and pervasive, permeating every aspect of the economy. This entry provides an overview of the topics ad...

In recent years, the ability to mine, manage, and examine big data has sparked a strong interest among scholars and managers to leverage data science approaches for measuring and in turn enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of various areas of knowledge management, such as boundary spanning. In this paper, we use a data science approach to de...

First Published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. © 1989 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

One of the pillars of the Broadband Telecommunication Opportunities Program (BTOP) was expanding broadband utilization in underserved communities through the development of library-based public computing centers (PCCs) and educational outreach. This paper reports the results of two waves of surveys of 400 participants each in spring 2011, before th...

Recent boundary spanning literature has recommended a shift toward assessing the role of virtual tools-such as social media. Simultaneously the proliferation of Enterprise Social Software (ESS) points to the need to theorize and investigate the supra-individual usage of these tools. This exploratory study responds to both mandates through a longitu...

In this paper, we examine how editorial feedback for an online community is taken into consideration by users when they contribute in the future. Analyzing server data from the online peer-production game community Sploder, we looked at how editorial feedback supported future content production. We found that receiving editorial feedbacks are likel...

Throughout history, innovations in communication technology have been associated with important developments in the manner in which people and organizations engage in economic exchanges of goods and services (Beniger 1986; → Information Society). In the past several decades, communication technology researchers have examined the social and economic...

This study examines the relationships between information and communication technologies (ICT) usage, the benefits a company derives from membership in a rural business cluster, and the success of rural companies. Analysis of 333 rural businesses located in northern lower Michigan showed a strong relationship between (a) ICT adoption and benefits d...

Users in the developing world continue to appropriate information and communication technologies (ICTs) in pioneering ways resulting in innovations such as M-Pesa, the popular mobile money transfer system developed in Kenya. M-Pesa's success demonstrates the emergence of user-centered innovative applications in resource-constrained settings. The go...

A considerable body of research indicates that social support plays an integral role in determining students' successful adjustment to college. Unlike previous research that has evaluated face-to-face support interventions that occur during students' first semester at college, the current study reports on a student-centered social media site design...

IntroductionDefinition, History, and Current StatusThe Changing Nature of E-Commerce Infrastructure, Technology, and TechniqueE-Commerce Business ModelsOnline Retail Marketing StrategiesBusiness-to-Business E-CommerceOnline Content DistributionEconomic Impacts of E-CommerceConclusion GlossaryCross References

1. Introduction During the past decade usage of online social network sites has grown dramatically, now rivaling search engines as the most visited Internet sites (Experian Hitwise, 2010). With the rise of such mega‐sites as Facebook, which by itself now boasts more than 400 million active users around the world (Facebook Press Room, 2010), online...

Efforts to promote sustainable broadband Internet adoption urge new attention to the classic diffusion of innovations paradigm. For this study, innovation attributes were reconceptualized following Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). In a sample of inner-city residents, the model accounted for 36% of the variance in intentions to adopt broadband technol...

Social media has the potential to foster interactions between policy makers, government officials, and their constituencies. Opportunities to receive feedback from residents, inform them of government-provided opportunities, and increase engagement with the governance process have all been proposed as ways social media can play a role in Governance...

Despite evidence that a lack of interoperable information systems results in enormous costs, development, implementation, and effective use of interorganizational systems (IOS) remain an elusive goal for many companies. Lack of interoperability across systems is especially problematic for manufacturers dependent on global supply chains. We develop...

This study assesses whether Facebook users have different ‘connection strategies,’ a term which describes a suite of Facebook-related relational communication activities, and explores the relationship between these connection strategies and social capital. Survey data (N = 450) from a random sample of undergraduate students reveal that only social...

In recent years, an increasing amount of attention has been placed on improving access to Information and Communication Technology in the United States. With the rapidity at which broadband construction projects are dotting America, it is important to understand the social impacts of these infrastructural projects. One particularly salient issue is...

Social network sites (SNSs) are becoming an increasingly popular resource for both students and adults, who use them to connect with and maintain relationships with a variety of ties. For many, the primary function of these sites is to consume and distribute personal content about the self. Privacy concerns around sharing information in a public or...

Research has established a positive relationship between measures of Facebook use and perceptions of social capital. Like other social network sites, Facebook is especially well-positioned to enhance users' bridging social capital because it lowers coordination costs associated with maintaining a large, potentially diverse network of Friends. The r...

Development, implementation, and effective use of interorganizational information systems (IOS) remain an elusive goal for many companies, despite growing complexity in supply chains and evidence that lack of interoperable information systems results in enormous costs. We use collective action theory and a pie sharing framework to explore factors i...

The use of Social Network Sites (SNS) has been associated with both positive and negative effects on adolescents. To untangle these conflicting findings, the present research investigates relationships among differing indicators of SNS use and indices of academic, social and psychological adjustment in a population of first year college students in...

Social network sites (SNSs) are becoming an increasingly popular resource for both students and adults, who use them to connect with and maintain relationships with a variety of ties. For many, the primary function of these sites is to consume and distribute personal content about the self. Privacy concerns around sharing information in a public or...

This study explores how some uses of ICTs, as well as having social capital and other means of access to knowledge resources, are related to company performance in a knowledge-intensive business cluster. Data were collected through a survey of companies in the Medicon Valley biotech region located in Denmark and Southern Sweden. Responding companie...

Within an organizational setting, social capital facilitates knowledge management processes in that it enables individuals to locate useful information, draw on resources and make contributions to the network. This paper explores the relationship between various dimensions of organizational social capital and the use of an internal social network s...

The convergence of affordable multimedia capabilities with local and wide area wireless data networking on handheld devices is a particularly important trend. Using off-the-shelf technology, we conducted a simple experiment that required participants to engage in a person-identification task while posing as security agents in a field setting. Parti...

Social networking sites (SNS) have the potential to fundamentally change the character of the social lives on an interpersonal and a community level. They allow the users to digitally represent their connections with other users, and provide simple, inexpensive ways to organize members, arrange meetings, spread information, and view opinion. Resear...

As social computing systems persist over time, the user experiences and interactions they support may change. One type of social computing system, Social Network Sites (SNSs), are becoming more popular across broad segments of Internet users. Facebook, in particular, has very broad participation amongst college attendees, and has been growing in ot...

Based on a wide-ranging literature review, we argue that the information and communications technology infrastructure has not received adequate attention for its role in the development and maintenance of industrial clusters. This paper develops expectations for how firms in an industrial cluster make use of a public, broadband ICT infrastructure,...

A longitudinal analysis of panel data from users of a popular online social network site, Facebook, investigated the relationship between intensity of Facebook use, measures of psychological well-being, and bridging social capital. Two surveys conducted a year apart at a large U.S. university, complemented with in-depth interviews with 18 Facebook...

Facebook is one of the largest social network sites and is widely used on college campuses. This paper builds upon earlier research which established a link between intensive Facebook use and bridging social capital, although the directionality of the relationship was unclear. Using longitudinal data, this paper provides preliminary evidence of a c...

There is conflicting evidence as to the current level of awareness and impact of Web Assurance Seal Services (WASSs). This study examines the effects of an educational intervention designed to increase consumer's knowledge, of security and privacy aspect of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce websites and assurance seal services. The study furthe...

Over the last 20 years there has been much interest in the concept of indus- trial localization, the tendency for many industries to concentrate special- ized activities in particular locations, as a source of innovation and competitive advantage (for example Porter, 1998; Becattini, 1990). A com- peting view, on the other hand, is offered by resea...

This paper reports on an empirical investigation of a particular computerization movement—the diffusion of automated underwriting in the US home mortgage industry—over a twenty-plus year timeframe. Building on and extending seminal work by Kling and Iacono (1988, 1995, 2001), this paper demonstrates the influences of technological action frames, pa...

This book covers the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and communities – both physical and virtual. The chapters deal with such subjects as online social network communities, implicit online communities, tools for researching communities, user generated content communities, communities of practice, and trust in...

Using data from a popular online social network site, this paper explores the relationship between profile structure (namely, which fields are completed) and number of friends, giving designers insight into the importance of the profile and how it works to encourage connections and articulated relationships between users. We describe a theoretical...

Vertical information systems standards are designed to promote communication and coordination among the organizations comprising a particular industry sector; these standards may address product identification, data definitions, business document layout, and/or business process sequences. A case study of the emergence of vertical information system...

Large numbers of college students have become avid Facebook users in a short period of time. In this paper, we explore whether these students are using Facebook to find new people in their offline communities or to learn more about people they initially meet offline. Our data suggest that users are largely employing Facebook to learn more about peo...

Vertical information systems (VIS) standards are technical specifications designed to promote coordination among the organizations within (or across) vertical industry sectors. Examples include the bar code, electronic data interchange (EDI) standards, and RosettaNet business process standards in the electronics industry. This contribution examines...

The literature on industrial clusters has not focused heavily on the role of the ICT infrastructure, nor on the potential implications of electronic commerce . In this paper, we examine the theoretical bases for bringing these research streams together, and develop expectations for how firms in an industrial cluster might utilize and derive benefit...

The ‘international reports on socio-informatics’ are an online report series of the International Institute for Socio- Informatics, Bonn, Germany. They aim to contribute to current research discourses in the fields of ‘Human- Computer-Interaction’ and ‘Computers and Society’. The ‘international reports on socio-informatics’ appear at least two time...

Workshop paper in "The Role of ICT in Interfirm Networks and Regional Clusters. Workshop proceedings archived by the International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI) in the International Reports on Socio-Informatics, volume 3, issue 2, 2006 (ISSN: 1861-4280) at http://www.iisi.de/fileadmin/IISI/upload/IRSI/IrsiV3I2.pdf. Edited by Bernhard Nett,...

Interorganizational Systems (IOS) can have influences that extend beyond the organiza- tions that implement them. Much can be learned at the industry-level of analysis that might not be revealed in studies conducted at the organizational level of analysis. This article summarizes a case study of one industry - the US home mortgage industry - in ord...

Vertical IS standards prescribe data structures and definitions, document formats, and business processes for particular industries, in contrast to generic IT standards, which concern IT characteristics applicable to many industries. This paper explores the potential industry structure effects of vertical IS standards through a case study of the Un...

Vertical IS standards prescribe data structures and definitions, document formats, and business processes for particular industries, in contrast to generic information technology (IT) standards, which concern IT characteristics applicable to many industries. This paper explores the potential industry structure effects of vertical information system...

E-commerce researchers have shown that retailers are increasingly following a click and mortar strategy, whereby online and offline channels are becoming more integrated. Despite case study evidence for the benefit of this approach, an analysis of the Web sites of nearly 1,000 U.S.-based retailers having both an online and offline presence reveals...

Paper prepared for presentation at the APEC Symposium on Industrial clustering for SMEs, Taipei, March 7-9, 2005 1 We are grateful to Roskilde University, which provided support for this project.

This paper reports on an empirical investigation of a particular computerization movement—the diffusion of automated underwriting in the US home mortgage industry—over a twenty-plus year timeframe. Building on and extending seminal work by Kling and Iacono (1988, 1995, 2001), this paper shows the influences of, and interplays among, technological a...

Vertical IS standards prescribe data structures and definitions, document formats, and business processes for particular industries, in contrast to horizontal IT standards, which concern IT characteristics applicable to many industries. This paper explores the potential effects of vertical IS standards in the US home mortgage industry by examining...

A multidisciplinary examination of the interplay between social capital—the value derived from social ties—and information technology. The concept of social capital, or the value that can be derived from social ties created by goodwill, mutual support, shared language, common beliefs, and a sense of mutual obligation, has been applied to a number o...