International Journal of Web Based Communities (8 papers in press)

Regular Issues

• Hybrid Feature Based Approach for Recommending Friends in Social Networking Systems  
  by Abhay Kumar Rai, Rahul Kumar Yadav, Shashi Prakash Tripathi, Rajiv Ranjan Tewari 
  Abstract: Link prediction is an effective technique to be applied on graph-based models due to its wide range of applications. It helps to understand associations between nodes in social communities. The social networking systems use link prediction techniques to recommend new friends to their users. In this paper, we design two time efficient algorithms for finding all paths of length-2 and length-3 between every pair of vertices in a network which are further used in computation of final similarity scores in the proposed method. Further, we define a hybrid feature-based node similarity measure for link prediction that captures both local and global graph features. The designed similarity measure provides friend recommendations by traversing only paths of limited length, which causes more faster and accurate friend recommendations. Experimental results show adequate level of accuracy in friend recommendations within considerable computing time.
  Keywords: social networks; similarity measures; local graph features; global graph features; link prediction; hybrid approach; friend recommendations.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10024150
   
  
• International Efforts for Children Online Safety: A Survey  
  by Dittin Andrews, Sreejith Alathur, Naganna Chetty 
  Abstract: Children online safety is a global issue and attaining international attention to address it. Often, children are vulnerable to online threats. Aim of this paper is to review children online safety issues and identify existing international efforts for reducing online risks. In this regard, efforts from available international bodies for providing online safety to children are reviewed and reported. To overcome online risks, understanding the behaviour of online ecosystem and coping after facing risks are most important. The ecosystem involves different stakeholders such as service providers, physical network, online users being connected, social media sites and tools and technology. Elimination of online risks is difficult but the intensity of risks can be reduced.
  Keywords: Online safety;children;online risks; international efforts;problematic content.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10024937
   
  
• The artificial fulfilment of need for orientation: agenda-setting and salience of community news in Twitter  
  by Albaraa Altourah, Khin Wee Chen 
  Abstract: Social media is increasingly the dominant news source and the need to understand what drives peoples consumption of online news during this era of disinformation is important and urgent. McCombs (2004) identified civic duty, emotional arousal, personal interest, peer influence and self-interest as the factors compelling the information need for orientation (54). However, the ubiquity of online social media makes it is pertinent to investigate the existence of other hidden factors impacting the perception of relevance. This study, sampling Twitter data from France and Kuwait for content analysis, compares two contrasting socio-cultural settings to explore the agenda-setting effects on Twitter to ascertain how the levels of need for orientation (NFO) may be manipulated and finds that the NFO levels have been manipulated by Twitter exposure and agenda-setting effects, which increase the users uncertainty level and in turn leads to a homogenising effect of the Twitter public agenda as a result of the increased rate of conversations related to the affected topics.
  Keywords: Confidence; perception; institution; media source; World Value Survey Report; Tunisia; Egypt; Libya; Yemen; Arab Spring; dictatorship; army rule; democracy.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10024944
   
  
• The Examination of Self-Service Replenishing Solutions’ Potential  
  by Zahy Ramadan, Maya Farah, Lama Shatila 
  Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate how the introduction of self-service replenishing tech devices affect consumer buying behaviour within their consumption communities. It assesses the potential customers and/or retailers that are likely to adopt such technologies while looking into their overall impact on consumers and shoppers. For that end, this study investigates the perception of such solutions by both consumers and experts in relation to the self-service technologies' (SSTs) disruption of the customer journey. Accordingly, a total sample of 48 respondents (16 experts and 32 consumers) was reached through semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The findings of this study indicate that replenishing solutions based on SSTs will not replace traditional shopping mediums in a typical Middle-Eastern market due to the availability of quick and easy product delivery options. However, the study highlights that the likelihood to utilize such solutions depends on consumer brand loyalty as well as overall consumers' lifestyle.
  Keywords: Amazon; Dash button; Alexa; Communities of consumption; Shopper web-based community.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10025419
   
  
• The Effects of Tourism Websites' Attributes on e-Satisfaction and e-Loyalty: A case of American Travelers to Jordan  
  by Mamoun N. Akroush, Bushra Mahadin, Hani Bata 
  Abstract: The paper aims to examine the effects of websites attributes (user friendliness, information quality, entertainment, and security and privacy) on tourists' e-satisfaction, and to examine the effects of tourists' e-satisfaction on attitudinal e-loyalty and the effects of e-attitudinal loyalty on e-behavioural loyalty. Based on a sample of 258 US tourists visiting Jordan, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to assess the validity and composite reliability of the research constructs. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed model and hypothesised relationships. The findings show that user friendliness, information quality, and security and privacy have positive effects on tourists' e-satisfaction. Tourists' e-satisfaction exerts a strong positive effect on e-attitudinal loyalty, which in turn affects e-behavioural loyalty positively. Website user friendliness and information quality are the strongest drivers of e-satisfaction, which determines tourists' e-attitudinal and e-behavioural loyalty. Results discussion, implications, limitations and future research were outlined.
  Keywords: Online tourism; website attributes; e-satisfaction; e-attitudinal loyalty; e-behavioral loyalty; U.S. tourists.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10025833
   
  
• Social Media Games: Insights from Twitter Analytics  
  by Rajesh Pai, Sreejith Alathur 
  Abstract: The addiction to online games and chat rooms has created a negative impact on human health by increasing the level of stress, anxiety, and aggression. Social media games are the one which was taken over various forms of engagement in the recent years with a greater number of reported evidence and deaths of youth population across the world. Many people had posted their emotions about this game in all social media, which had created a large amount of data. In this paper, we had tried to study the sentiment of the people by extracting 4,429 tweets. The results of the analysis indicate that the peoples’ perception towards this game is progressing in a positive direction due to the various policy implementations and controlling mechanisms supporting people from self-harm practices. Following a complex adaptive system approach for our results, this paper also explains the causal relationships between various components of isolation and problematic content on self-harm practices.
  Keywords: Causal Loop Diagram; Data Mining; Self-Harm; Sentiment Analysis; Social Media Game.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10026216
   
  
• Moving toward Smart Cities: Insights from the MENA region  
  by Imene Ben Yahia, Rania Shokeir 
  Abstract: The need for governments to deal with issues such as congestion, scarcity of resources, and waste management became a must to sustain a living. Through using innovative technologies, cities are striving to start a smart city initiative for a better life. However, little is known about the implementation of smart cities and less is provided about the Middle East and North Africa region. This research attempts to embrace the different aspects of smart cities and analyses the readiness of the MENA to move towards this promising project. Interviews were conducted with key decision makers in the MENA region who are involved in smart cities projects. Results highlight the opportunities and key aspects of this project and propose three phases to the implementation of a smart city: foundation, convergence, and transformation.
  Keywords: Smart cities; Digitalization; Internet of things; Qualitative study.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10026217
   
  
• Comparison of Multiple Different Overlapping Community Discovery Algorithms  
  by Weihua Li 
  Abstract: When analysing a real-world problem, it can be transformed into a complex network, and then its structure is divided to find out the overlapping part and study the hidden laws. In this paper, three overlapping community recognition algorithms are briefly introduced, i.e., overlapping community partitioning based on label propagation (OCPLP), footpad skin optical clearing agent (FSOCA) and the genetic algorithm (GA), and then the three artificial networks generated by the LFR tool are simulated and analysed through matrix laboratory (MATLAB) software. The results show that the increase of network complexity will reduce the recognition performance of the three algorithms. In the three algorithms, GA is relatively less affected, which always has the highest recognition performance. OCPLP is the most affected, which has the worst performance. In terms of the speed of recognition, GA is also the fastest, and OCPLP is the slowest. In summary, GA is more suitable for the search of overlapping communities in the network than that of OCPLP and FSOCA.
  Keywords: overlapping community; overlapping community partitioning based on label propagation; footpad skin optical clearing agent; genetic algorithm.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2020.10026218