Social media are an emerging news source, but questions remain regarding how citizens engage news content in this environment. This study focuses on social media news reception and friending a journalist/news organization as predictors of social media news dissemination. Secondary analysis of 2010 Pew data (N = 1,264) reveals reception and friending to be positive predictors of dissemination, and a reception-by-friending interaction is also evident. Partisanship moderates these relationships such that reception is a stronger predictor of dissemination among partisans, while the friending-dissemination link is evident for nonpartisans only. These results provide novel insights into citizens’ social media news experiences.

Predicting Dissemination of News Content in Social Media: A Focus on Reception, Friending, and Partisanship

The increase in longevity of people on one hand, and on the other hand the fact that the social networks in later life become increasingly narrower, highlights the importance of Internet use to enhance quality of life (QoL). However, whether Internet use increases or decreases social networks, loneliness, and quality of life is not clear-cut. To explore the direct and/or indirect effects of Internet use on QoL, and to examine whether ethnicity and time the elderly spent with family moderate the mediation effect of Internet use on quality of life throughout loneliness. This descriptive-correlational study was carried out in 2016 by structured interviews with a convenience sample of 502 respondents aged 50 and older, living in northern Israel. Bootstrapping with resampling strategies was used for testing mediation a model. Use of the Internet was found to be positively associated with QoL. However, this relationship was mediated by loneliness, and moderated by the time the elderly spent with family members. In addition, respondents’ ethnicity significantly moderated the mediation effect between Internet use and loneliness. Internet use can enhance QoL of older adults directly or indirectly by reducing loneliness. However, these effects are conditional on other variables. The indirect effect moderated by ethnicity, and the direct effect moderated by the time the elderly spend with their families. Researchers and practitioners should be aware of these interactions which can impact loneliness and quality of life of older persons differently.

Internet use, social networks, loneliness, and quality of life among adults aged 50 and older: mediating and moderating effects.

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The use of peer referral incentives to increase demand for voluntary medical male circumcision in Zambia

There is a robust literature examining social networks and health, which draws on the network traditions in sociology and statistics However, the application of social network approaches to understand the organization of health care is less well understood The objective of this work was to examine approaches to conceptualizing, measuring, and analyzing provider patient-sharing networks These networks are constructed using administrative data in which pairs of physicians are considered connected if they both deliver care to the same patient A scoping review of English language peer-reviewed articles in PubMed and Embase was conducted from inception to June 2017 Two reviewers evaluated article eligibility based upon inclusion criteria and abstracted relevant data into a database The literature search identified 10,855 titles, of which 63 full-text articles were examined Nine additional papers identified by reviewing article references and authors were examined Of the 49 papers that met criteria for study inclusion, 39 used a cross-sectional study design, 6 used a cohort design, and 4 were longitudinal We found that studies most commonly theorized that networks reflected aspects of collaboration or coordination Less commonly, studies drew on the strength of weak ties or diffusion of innovation frameworks A total of 180 social network measures were used to describe the networks of individual providers, provider pairs and triads, the network as a whole, and patients The literature on patient-sharing relationships between providers is marked by a diversity of measures and approaches We highlight key considerations in network identification including the definition of network ties, setting geographic boundaries, and identifying clusters of providers, and discuss gaps for future study

A scoping review of patient-sharing network studies using administrative data

Despite the widespread utilization of the mass media in HIV/AIDS prevention, little is known about the knowledge gap that results from disparities in mass media use. This study examined the relationship between HIV/AIDS-related mass media use and HIV/AIDS-related knowledge among urban and rural residents of northwestern Ethiopia. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that HIV/AIDS-related mass media use has both sequestering and mainstreaming effects in certain segments of the study population, although it was not a significant predictor of HIV/AIDS-related knowledge in the total population. The knowledge gaps between individuals with high and low education and between individuals who experience high and low levels of interpersonal communication about HIV/AIDS narrowed as HIV/AIDS-related media use increased, but the gap between urban and rural residents widened. The widening gap could be explained by differences in perceptions of information salience and several theoretical assumptions. Current mass media information campaigns, which are often prepared and broadcast from urban centers, may not only fail to improve the HIV/AIDS knowledge of the rural populace but also put rural populations at a disadvantage relative to their urban counterparts. Communication interventions informed by socioecological models might be helpful to redress and/or narrow the widening knowledge gap between urban and rural residents.

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Tiffany R. Allison

Papers

The availability of community ties predicts likelihood of peer referral for mammography: Geographic constraints on viral marketing.

Does community social capital predict likelihood of peer referral for mammography? Geographic constraints on viral marketing