Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; (iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and (iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

/pdf/social-media-and-fake-news-in-the-2016-election-1m4ttkb5mo.pdf

Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

House of Quality

Open-plan office layout is commonly assumed to facilitate communication and interaction between co-workers, promoting workplace satisfaction and team-work effectiveness. On the other hand, open-plan layouts are widely acknowledged to be more disruptive due to uncontrollable noise and loss of privacy. Based on the occupant survey database from Center for the Built Environment (CBE), empirical analyses indicated that occupants assessed Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) issues in different ways depending on the spatial configuration (classified by the degree of enclosure) of their workspace. Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ, particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced ‘ease of interaction’ were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration.

/pdf/workspace-satisfaction-the-privacy-communication-trade-off-16w2b32uyr.pdf

Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices - eScholarship

Why do people share fake news? Associations between the dark side of social media use and fake news sharing behavior

Social media? It's serious! Understanding the dark side of social media

Framing social media communication: Investigating the effects of brand post appeals on user interaction

The steady increase of sustainable consumer behavior leads companies to strengthen their efforts to become socially and ecologically more sustainable. Particularly in the clothing and footwear industry, more and more companies are aware of their need to fundamentally adapt the way they create value. Sustainability offerings are developed, e.g., usage of upcycled materials (e.g., ocean plastic), circular business models (e.g., decomposition of returned products into components for new ones), as well as adapted product ranges (e.g., smaller or with fewer fashion cycles). However, it is frequently unclear in advance, which offerings will increase (or decrease) satisfaction and, consequently, drive (or not drive) sustainable consumption. The application of a segmented Kano perspective in an apparel and sportswear context that helps to answer these questions is presented: 17 potential offerings were assessed by a sample of 490 consumers. Our analysis demonstrates the usefulness of this methodology and that returning used products (to recycle them), discounts for buying sustainable products, sustainability level indicators, and biobased materials are highly attractive. However, the responsiveness varies across the derived consumer segments, from being decisive or attractive to indifferent or reverse. As assumed, gender and attitude towards sustainability are good predictors for segment membership.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/7/2788/pdf

The Drivers of Sustainable Apparel and Sportswear Consumption: A Segmented Kano Perspective

In organizations and educational institutions, creativity trainings are the preferred approach to enhancing individual creative abilities. However, three issues regarding these trainings still remain largely unsolved. First, the question of how long-lasting creativity training effects are has not been sufficiently answered so far. Second, the question arises whether all participants benefit from such trainings equally in terms of their creative performance (CP). Third, an increasing number of studies have shown that creativity trainings may also be able to increase participants’ creative self-efficacy (CSE), that is, the confidence in one’s own creativity. Other studies, however, did not find evidence for this effect. Therefore, this article aims to address these issues by analyzing data from three measurement waves. Results reveal that participants’ CP increased during the training and decreased only slightly 4 weeks after the training. Additionally, we found an effect of diminishing training returns in that the higher a participant’s CP before the training the lower the training effect was. In contrast to most prior literature, we found no support for an effect of creativity training on participants’ CSE. We discuss these findings and offer implications for both theory and practice. Finally, we state this study’s limitations and derive avenues for further research.

Exploring the Effects of Creativity Training on Creative Performance and Creative Self‐Efficacy: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study

In recent years, companies have increasingly focused on innovative workspaces to enhance employee creativity. These new workspace concepts break with conventional office designs. Google, Apple, and Facebook are typical examples of companies that have received considerable media attention for their unique workspaces. Nowadays, many other organizations deal with the challenge of designing such creativity-enhancing workspaces. In contrast to this high practical relevance, the literature lacks an overview reflecting the present state of research on how to design such work environments. To bridge this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review to draw a comprehensive overview of existing empirical research on creativity-enhancing workspaces. Empirical evidence shows that designing creative workspaces is by no means a trivial task, because the physical work environment can both enhance and inhibit creativity in organizations. We categorize characteristics of creative workspaces and offer insights into how workspaces should be designed so that they foster creativity. Finally, we derive implications for both theory and practice, and conclude with suggestions for future research.

Timm F. Wagner

Papers

Social media? It's serious! Understanding the dark side of social media

Framing social media communication: Investigating the effects of brand post appeals on user interaction

The Drivers of Sustainable Apparel and Sportswear Consumption: A Segmented Kano Perspective

Exploring the Effects of Creativity Training on Creative Performance and Creative Self‐Efficacy: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study

Designing Creativity-Enhancing Workspaces: A Critical Look at Empirical Evidence