Chyng Yang Jang

Writing for Friends and Family: The Interpersonal Nature of Blogs

This research explores variables related to the use of personal-journal style blogs for interpersonal goals. A random sample of bloggers completed surveys exploring how the combination of extraversion and self-disclosure affect strong tie network size, which in turn serves as motivation to use blogs as an alternative communication channel. Bloggers who exhibit both extraversion and self-disclosure traits tend to maintain larger strong-tie social networks and are more likely to appropriate blogs to support those relationships. Age, gender, and education have no relationship to network size, blog content, or the use of blogs as a relationship maintenance tool. These results contribute to the continuing discussion about the impact that the Internet and its tools are having on relationships by suggesting that, rather than promoting isolation, computer-mediated communication tools such as blogs often function to enhance existing relationships.

Virtual team awareness and groupware support

This paper overviews a Web-based collaborative system called TeamSCOPE that has been designed to support awareness needs of globally distributed teams. Four types of awareness needs of virtual teams are defined and the awareness support features of TeamSCOPE are described. The usage patterns of eight globally distributed engineering design teams are outlined, and evaluation results are provided. Findings illustrate how group process interacts with technology to create design challenges in the support of virtual team awareness needs.

Supporting awareness among virtual teams in a web-based collaborative system: the teamSCOPE system

This paper overviews a Web-based collaborative system called TeamSCOPE that has been designed to support awareness needs of globally distributed teams. Four types of awareness needs of virtual teams are defined and the awareness support features of TeamSCOPE are described. The use of TeamSCOPE in a project involving a number of globally distributed engineering design teams is outlined, and evaluation results are provided. Findings illustrate how group process interacts with technology to create design challenges in the support of virtual team awareness needs.

Managing fairness: reward distribution in a self-organized online game player community

Reward distribution is essential to the wellbeing of self-organized online game player communities. This paper adopted a case-study approach to investigate how a particular player community managed fairness in sharing rewards among members. The results found that the community primarily relied on a raid point based auction system for reward distribution. Perceived fairness was managed as various written policies focusing on two dimensions: behavior regulation and resource management. The guiding principles of fairness management were identified and articulated. So was the role of structural features of the game and the community in triggering policy discussion. Finally, the implications for future research was discussed.

New Media Use in Context: Environmental Cues and Online Self-Disclosure via Weblogs

As Internet access moves away from desktop platforms to increasingly mobile, handheld, ubiquitous computing tools, questions arise regarding the impact physical surroundings have on online self-disclosure. Considering that popular Web2.0 applications like weblogs are characterized by broad and often intimate disclosures of personal information, we test the relationship between a range of environmental characteristics and onine self-disclosure via blogs. Results suggest that both the familiarity and perceived warmth of locations predict online disclosure. Interestingly, results also suggest that people with low general life satisfaction who also like to talk about themselves tend to engage in online self-disclosure.

The (lack of) use of Facebook by small businesses

As social media continue their popularity, they have become an important part of todays business communication. Previous research on business uses of social media primarily focused on large enterprises. It is not clear how small local businesses use these online interactive platforms. This study attempts to address this issue. Using a commercial database, businesses with less than 50 employees were identified in a city in North Texas. Among them, 480 companies were randomly selected and searched on Facebook. Data were collected in both 2014 and 2015. The results show that only about one fifth of local stores and service providers have business fan pages and more than half of those pages are in a dormant state. The results of adoption rate, fan page life span, user activities, and their year-to-year changes are presented and discussed. Overall, data from this sample indicate a lack of enthusiasm in adopting and continuously using Facebook by small businesses.

Antecedents of awareness in virtual teams

This study examined the antecedents of awareness in geographically distributed teams. Task structure, group propensity, communication frequency, groupware usage, and subjective reliance on various communication tools were proposed to affect the perceived level of awareness. Based on data collected from seven distributed student engineering teams, results showed that perceived task interdependence and communication frequency were positively associated with the level of awareness, but group propensity and groupware usage were not. Further analysis found the reliance on synchronous meetings mediated the relationship between task interdependence and awareness level. Implications for virtual team management are discussed.