What’s in an @reply? A case study of two-way communication in Target Canada’s Twitter @replies

This paper analyzes the Twitter @replies (responses to a user’s initial tweet) of Target Canada as the organization entered the Canadian retail landscape in the Spring of 2013. The @replies posted by Target Canada are analyzed through two lenses: Grunig’s (1992) two-way symmetrical model of public relations and Kent & Taylor’s (2001) dialogic theory of public relations. Grunig’s model argues that the symmetrical model of communication serves the interests of both organizations and their publics by emphasizing dialogue and mutually beneficial relationships (Grunig & Jaatinen, 1999). Similarly, Kent & Taylor advocate for relational interaction and relationship building between organizations and their audience. This case study will contribute to the small body of literature that focuses on Twitter’s @reply function. As social media use is an increasingly important marketing and branding tool, it is important for organizations to realize the potential that each platform can offer. Through Twitter @replies, organizations can create a balanced dialogue (where both the organization and its public participate in a dialogic exchange) and build open, mutually beneficial relationships.

What’s in an @reply? A case study of two-way communication in Target Canada’s Twitter @replies

This paper analyzes the Twitter @replies (responses to a user’s initial tweet) of Target Canada as the organization entered the Canadian retail landscape in the Spring of 2013. The @replies posted by Target Canada are analyzed through two lenses: Grunig’s (1992) two-way symmetrical model of public relations and Kent & Taylor’s (2001) dialogic theory of public relations. Grunig’s model argues that the symmetrical model of communication serves the interests of both organizations and their publics by emphasizing dialogue and mutually beneficial relationships (Grunig & Jaatinen, 1999). Similarly, Kent & Taylor advocate for relational interaction and relationship building between organizations and their audience. This case study will contribute to the small body of literature that focuses on Twitter’s @reply function. As social media use is an increasingly important marketing and branding tool, it is important for organizations to realize the potential that each platform can offer. Through Twitter @replies, organizations can create a balanced dialogue (where both the organization and its public participate in a dialogic exchange) and build open, mutually beneficial relationships.

Twitter and Global Political Crises

This study examines social media responses to the 13 November 2015 Paris attacks by the Islamic State. First impressions of over 2,000,000 tweets containing hashtags #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria suggested a conflation of three issues: (1) Migration: were the attackers homegrown or carrying overseas passports? (2) Violence: why was Paris attacked and why is France bombing the Islamic State? (3) Media: what role should mainstream and social media play during events that are local and global, unique and yet part of a series? However, instead of conflating media, migration and terrorism, we found users of both hashtags discussing Syria, foreign policy, and justice and fairness. Building on previous research exploring how social media affordances encourage certain communication behaviors, we test whether Twitter’s reply function is more conducive to antagonistic comments than retweets, which we hypothesise allow for an expression of solidarity and universalism. Conversations about Syria contain greater antagonism, explained by aspects of the tweet, user and network effects. The #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria conversations exhibit neither the contestation of global attention nor a media-driven cycle of insecurity. The high frequency of agonistic and non-visual tweets, particularly about Syria, suggests a robust exchange of claims, refuting pessimistic depictions of Twitter as a space for superficiality and hate.

QoS-Aware Web Services Composition: A Cooperate Optimization Approach

Existing Web service optimal combination approach is mainly focused on single tasks using “selfish” behavior to pursue optimal solutions. This causes conflicts because many concurrent tasks compete for limited optimal resources, reducing service quality in services. With the best reply function of quantified task conflicts and game theory as bases, this paper establishes a mathematical model depicting the competitive relationship between multitasks and Web service under QoS constraints, and guarantees that every task can obtain optimal utility services considering other task combination strategies. Moreover, an iterative algorithm which reaches the Nash equilibrium is also proposed, and all tasks attain utility optimization under conflicting environments. Experimental analyses show that the approach can considerably enhance the actual utility of all tasks compared with existing Web services combinatorial methods.