scholarly journals Imported feminism: problematizing the Westernized image of the feminist in Arab social media

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramy Magdy ◽  
Maries Mikhael ◽  
Yassmine G. Hussein

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the discourse of Arab feminism social media pages as a form of real-time new media. This is to be conducted culturally to understand the Westernized character these pages tend to propagate and the politico-cultural significations of such a propagation. Design/methodology/approach Using visual and content analysis the paper analyzes both the written and visual contents of two popular Arab feminist Facebook pages, “Thory” and “Feminist doodles” to explore its culture relevance/Westernization via the categories of “re-employing the binary second wave feminism, the historical relevance and the Westernized tone of both pages. Findings The pages showed a tendency toward second wave, Westernized, anti-orient feminism. Such importation of feminism made the pages’ message not only a bit irrelevant but also conceptually violent to a large extent. Starting from alien contexts, the two pages dislocate the Arab women experiences of their situation for the sake of comprehending and adapting to heavily Westernized images. Originality/value The paper contributes to the ongoing debate over the gender issue in the Arab context after 2011, what it originally offers is discussing the cultural relevance of popular feminist Facebook pages claiming to represent the everyday struggles of the Arab women. In addition, it shows the impact of real-time media on identity formulation.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dino A. Villegas ◽  
Alejandra Marin Marin

Purpose This paper aims to explore different strategies used by brands to target the Hispanic market via social media from the lens of the Spanish language in a multicultural country like the USA. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a netnographic approach by drawing information from a study of the Facebook pages of 11 brands belonging to different industries. Findings Companies engage in four levels of cultural identity adaptation using different strategies based on ethnicity: language adaptation, identity elements, identity matching and Latino persona. The study also shows that merely translating Facebook pages do not generate high levels of communitarian interaction. Practical implications This study examines different strategies used by brands in the USA to target the Hispanic audience on social media to provide insights for brand managers to develop online engagement. Originality/value With the increase in cultural diversity in different countries and the rise of social media platforms, brand researchers need to better understand how cultural identity permeates marketing strategies in online spaces. Social media platforms such as Facebook offer flexible environments where strategies beyond product- and brand-related aspects can be used. This study extends the literature by showing the heterogeneity of cultural identity-based strategies used by companies to ensure customer engagement and brand loyalty and the impact of such strategies on users.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 944-962 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Durkin ◽  
Gwyneth Mulholland ◽  
Aodheen McCartan

Purpose – While technology continues to make a dramatic and profound impact in service industries and radically shapes how services are delivered relatively little is understood about the impact of advancing technology on customers; their expectations, perceptions and behaviours. As banking enters an increasingly digitised world this study reports on the views of 667 e-banking customers with respect to the perceived potential of social media to add value in retail banking relationships. The purpose of this paper is to propose that in order to realise this opportunity requires the case bank to embrace the second-order level changes required within socio-technical theory (STT) in order that such value can be co-created between the relational parties. Design/methodology/approach – Using the lens of STT to interpret the findings drawn from the case bank’s e-banking customer base (n=5,500), it is argued that social media has the potential to fundamentally change customer-bank relationships and to add value to the way in which the parties interact with each other into the future. A survey methodology was adopted. Findings – The findings presented indicate a wide spectrum of customers actively using transactional e-banking solutions in the case bank. The findings showed that those in the 15-30 age group saw “real-time/up-to-date information” as the main gain of their bank being on Facebook while their older colleagues in the 31-60 age group had a desire for different returns (“competitions, events”). That the analysis showed that age was the only significant determinant of Facebook appropriateness for the case bank, and in the context of the age-related preferences outlined above, the issue of segmentation is strongly highlighted. Originality/value – This study contributes to the academic domain through a rare application of STT in a service context, offers implications for practice and highlights important areas for future research, inter alia; the role for new media in banking relationships, the impacts of new media on bank staff roles, where value now accrues in bank-customer communication, where social media fits in the promotional mix and relational strategies of banks and what are the issues emerging at the social-technical interface between both customers and staff and new technology and media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 1013-1025
Author(s):  
Shahid Iqbal Khan ◽  
Ahmad Raza Bilal ◽  
Bilal Ahmad

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of page-specific factors such as page language, posting frequency and community size on online engagement in the context of social media pages of news channels in Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachFor this research, official Facebook pages of news channels in Pakistan were defined as the target population. Secondary data were obtained from the Facebook pages of 28 news channels in Pakistan. For the selected period between August and September 2019, a total of 420 cases were obtained and manually entered in SPSS 21 for analysis. Tweedie estimation was run to check the proposed hypotheses.FindingsResults show that English pages are more engaging than Urdu. Additionally, posting frequency and community size have a negative relationship with online engagement.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study suggest that administrators of social media pages of news channels should target English news readers more than Urdu news readers. Additionally, they should manage a low posting frequency so that readers may not get irritated. Administrators should not sponsor their pages to expand community size on a single page. Instead, they may opt to build a separate page for each news category with smaller community size.Originality/valueWhile previous studies have discussed the post-specific factors of engagement, this study has checked the impact of page-specific factors such as page language, posting frequency and community size on online engagement.


2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (8) ◽  
pp. 1766-1780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Russo ◽  
Mariarosaria Simeone

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to devise and then test a theoretical model to illustrate the effects of the increasing importance of social media on consumer behavior and market equilibrium in differentiated food industries. Design/methodology/approach The authors use game theory to model the strategic use of social media by firms producing high-value food products. The authors test the predictions of the theoretical model by means of a survey of 722 randomly selected Italian food consumers using an online questionnaire. Findings The model predicts that, as social media become more and more influential, consumers using the new media become more informed, and their concern about food quality attributes increases. At the same time, the consumers using mass media only receive less information and they prefer cheaper products to the high value one. As a result, the emergence of social media favours market segmentation and the hypotheses tested were: Social consumers are, on average, more informed than mass consumers and more concerned about environmental issues than mass consumers. The data support the theoretical model. Originality/value The paper contributes to the debate about the impact of information from interested sources on market equilibrium, providing an innovative analysis of the role of social media.


Kybernetes ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 1801-1819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raed Salah Algharabat

Purpose This research aims to investigate the link between social media marketing (SMM) activities and brand love. It further investigates the mediating impact of self-expressive brands (inner and social) between the relationships of SMM activities and brand love, which in turn impact brand loyalty. Using the context provided by Facebook, the author contributes in three ways to the nascent marketing literature: by linking SMM activates with brand love, by investigating the mediating impact of self-expressive brands between SMM activities and brand love and by investigating the impact of brand love on brand loyalty. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 400 followers of Facebook pages, data were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings The findings reveal that SMM activities positively affect self-expressive brands (inner and social), which in turn impact brand love. The author also finds that brand love positively affects brand loyalty. The author further finds that self-expressive brand (inner) fully mediates the relationship between SMM activities and brand love, whereas self-expressive brand (social) partially mediates this relationship. Originality/value Previous researchers neither have the chance to link SMM activities with brand love nor to explain its role as an antecedent to self-expressive brand. Therefore, the author contributes to nascent literature by linking and investigating the mediating impact of self-expressive brands between the relationships of SMM activities and brand love which in turn impact brand loyalty.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 280-297
Author(s):  
Hazem Rasheed Gaber ◽  
Ahmed Elsamadicy

The purpose of this paper is to study how companies communicate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on their Facebook pages, and it also investigates the impact of this content type on consumer engagement behaviours. Based on content analysis of the biggest twenty corporate Facebook pages in Egypt, it was found that these companies focus on non-CSR posts more than CSR posts. However, the findings showed that the CSR posts received the highest number of likes, comments and shares if compared to other content types. This article provides social media managers with some guidelines for effective posting strategies when adopting Facebook marketing. Specifically, it recommends that corporations use this social network to communicate CSR practices to consumers. Since the adoption of Facebook in CSR activities by many corporations is a relatively new practice, this article provides practitioners with some guidelines to follow.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomás Escobar-Rodríguez ◽  
Rocío Bonsón-Fernández

Purpose The present study examines relationship building of major players in fashion retailing through social media. Using the theories of word-of-mouth marketing and brand community as theoretical frameworks, this paper analyses the impact of social media marketing in creating brand community. To that end, the use of the popular networking site Facebook was studied. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent and main purposes of the usage of this communication channel and to examine companies’ activity on their Facebook pages as well as to observe their audiences and the effect in their audiences’ engagement. Additionally, this paper analyses the main type of content and the most commonly used type of media. Design/methodology/approach Research was based on a content analysis performed on 2,326 Facebook posts; a sample of 46 international leading companies in the fashion industry was analyzed in the time period between March 1 and May 31, 2015. Findings Facebook audience is positively related to retailer’s size. However, audiences in this sector are not related to the level of activity of the retailers’ Facebook pages. Audience engagement and participation in fashion retailer’s Facebook sites is higher in small retailers. The main content of the Facebook pages of top fashion retailers is marketing, photo albums and videos being the most popular drivers of this means. Originality/value No previous research analyzed fashion retailers use of Facebook sites. This study examines the variables size and engagement of fashion retailers’ audience on Facebook according to retailers’ size and activity on their corporate profiles.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 721-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faiz Ahamad

Purpose Job information through word-of-mouth (WOM) has a crucial impact on employer attractiveness. The phenomenal rise of social media offers alternate WOM platforms for sharing job information, which is quite different from traditional face-to-face WOM. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differential impact of traditional word-of-mouth (t-WOM) and social media word-of-mouth (s-WOM) on employer attractiveness along with the difference in the job attributes and relationship strength with the information source. Design/methodology/approach A 2 × 2 × 2 experiment was conducted to examine the impact of information source (t-WOM and s-WOM), job attributes (tangible and intangible) and relationship strength (strong and weak), on employer attractiveness. Source expertise and source trust were treated as the control variable. Findings The result shows the differential impact of t-WOM and s-WOM on employer attractiveness. Moreover, t-WOM from strong relation source found to have a high impact on employer attractiveness than s-WOM. No significant difference due to job attributes was found. Research limitations/implications Use of only positive WOM and not the negative one, student as the subjects, etc. Practical implications The present study suggests using t-WOM and s-WOM to attract talented job seekers. Originality/value This is the first study to analyze the differential impact of t-WOM and s-WOM on employer attractiveness.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Uren ◽  
Daniel Wright ◽  
James Scott ◽  
Yulan He ◽  
Hassan Saif

Purpose – This paper aims to address the following challenge: the push to widen participation in public consultation suggests social media as an additional mechanism through which to engage the public. Bioenergy companies need to build their capacity to communicate in these new media and to monitor the attitudes of the public and opposition organizations towards energy development projects. Design/methodology/approach – This short paper outlines the planning issues bioenergy developments face and the main methods of communication used in the public consultation process in the UK. The potential role of social media in communication with stakeholders is identified. The capacity of sentiment analysis to mine opinions from social media is summarised and illustrated using a sample of tweets containing the term “bioenergy”. Findings – Social media have the potential to improve information flows between stakeholders and developers. Sentiment analysis is a viable methodology, which bioenergy companies should be using to measure public opinion in the consultation process. Preliminary analysis shows promising results. Research limitations/implications – Analysis is preliminary and based on a small dataset. It is intended only to illustrate the potential of sentiment analysis and not to draw general conclusions about the bioenergy sector. Social implications – Social media have the potential to open access to the consultation process and help bioenergy companies to make use of waste for energy developments. Originality/value – Opinion mining, though established in marketing and political analysis, is not yet systematically applied as a planning consultation tool. This is a missed opportunity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 118 (8) ◽  
pp. 1578-1596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wandeep Kaur ◽  
Vimala Balakrishnan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of including letter repetition commonly found within social media text and its impact in determining the sentiment scores for two major airlines in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach A Sentiment Intensity Calculator (SentI-Cal) was developed by assigning individual weights to each letter repetition, and tested it using data collected from official Facebook pages of the airlines. Findings Evaluation metrics indicate that SentI-Cal outperforms the baseline tool Semantic Orientation Calculator (SO-CAL), with an accuracy of 90.7 percent compared to 58.33 percent for SO-CAL. Practical implications A more accurate sentiment score allows airline services to easily obtain a better understanding of the sentiments of their customers, hence providing opportunities in improving their airline services. Originality/value Proposed mechanism calculates sentiment intensity of social media text by assigning individual weightage to each repeated letter and exclamation mark thus producing a more accurate sentiment score.


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