Chih-Hui Lai | National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (original) (raw)

Papers by Chih-Hui Lai

Organizations have adopted social media to communicate their alliances to the public, that is, en... more Organizations have adopted social media to communicate their alliances to the public, that is, engage in representational networks. Yet a comprehensive examination of what is communicated in representational networks and how public reactions are associated with these networks is relatively scarce. This study builds on the Symbiotic Sustainability Model (SSM) to examine the content of messages passed in representational networks on social media and their related public reactions. Based on a panel analysis of one year of Facebook data generated by 605 public organizations in Taiwan, this study reveals that referencing certain topics such as economic and technological development and employing linguistic features demonstrating efficacy, formality, and empathetic concern in Facebook messages was associated with an increased diversity of alliance ties reported by public organizations. Moreover, the relationship between communicating diverse alliance ties and positive public reactions in the form of likes went both ways. Integrating automated topic modeling, linguistic analysis, and panel analysis, this study provides a process-based and communication-centered view of the mechanisms and disparities underlying organizations' strategic network management on social media.

Journal of Applied Communication Research, 2021

Enriching the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC) with the media theories of inform... more Enriching the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC)
with the media theories of information repertoire and curation as
well as the literature of risk communication, this study examines
the antecedents, processes, and protective outcomes of disaster
communication in the form of information gathering and sharing
across countries. Analysis of online survey data collected in the
United States and China shows that while Americans and Chinese
exhibit similar patterns in using repertoires for disaster
information gathering, they differ in the repertoires used for
sharing disaster information. Moreover, different inter-repertoire
patterns are manifested in disaster information gathering and
sharing. Both countries also exhibit similarities and differences in
terms of the association between the repertoires of disaster
communication and protective action taking. Furthermore, the
results show that subjective norms are the most consistent
predictor of all types of repertoires of disaster information
gathering across countries.

Communication Monographs, 2021

Building on the symbiotic sustainability model, this study investigated how offline collaboration... more Building on the symbiotic sustainability model, this study investigated how offline collaboration networks are related to organizations’ representational networks on social media. We analyzed survey data from disaster risk reduction organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions, along with these organizations’ representational networks on Facebook (N = 108) and Twitter (N = 96). Results showed that diverse offline collaboration networks are positively related to diverse representational tie building on Facebook via organizations’ sense of mutuality. By contrast, homogeneous offline collaboration networks are positively related to diverse representational tie building on Twitter via mutuality and openness to collaboration. This study contributes to research on interorganizational networks and social media, particularly concerning the offline–online connection in the field of interorganizational communication.

International Journal of Strategic Communication, 2020

Despite the growing list of literature on governmental social media use, little is known about ho... more Despite the growing list of literature on governmental social media use, little is known about how different social media message strategies facilitate different types of engagement outcomes (i.e., likes, shares, or comments) and the factors that influence perceived effectiveness of social media use. Drawing on the dialogic communication framework, this study captures these aspects and analyzes data from a public organization in Taiwan, including the content and linguistic analyses of this organization’s Facebook messages over a year, along with interviews and survey with the organization. The data show that the messages aiming to mobilize publics offline and communicated through conversation-style, informal language, and affective and motion words, exemplify dialogic orientation. These messages are positively associated with public engagement on Facebook in terms of the number of likes, comments, and shares. Further, analysis of the interviews and the survey shows that the organization and the targeted publics have mutual and interdependent relationships developed through varied uses of Facebook. Such relationships also influence the perceived effectiveness of the organization’s message strategies intended to foster dialogic communication. Nonetheless, the lack of communication among units within the organization, as well as its bureaucratic culture, result in negative effects for certain message strategies.

International Journal of Communication, 2020

Guided by the dialogic communication framework, stakeholder theory, and research on implicit fram... more Guided by the dialogic communication framework, stakeholder theory, and research on implicit framing, this study examines how stakeholder engagement reflects organizations' dialogic social media use in the form of stakeholder targeting and message framing. Analysis of survey data from 156 humanitarian organizations and semantic network analysis of their messages on Facebook and Twitter reveal that organizations with higher levels of dialogic social media use target relatively distinctive stakeholders. More dialogic organizations explore more diverse concepts in their posts, but the themes of discussion on Twitter and Facebook both diverge and converge regardless of levels of dialogic social media use. Moreover, the semantic differences among the organizations in the low-and high-dialogic groups are more salient on Twitter than on Facebook. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are drawn from the findings.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organization, 2021

Nonprofit scholars have long considered stakeholder targeting communication (STC), an important m... more Nonprofit scholars have long considered stakeholder targeting communication (STC), an important mechanism of organizational accountability to meet stakeholders’ diverse interests and needs. However, research has yet to systematically examine the antecedents and outcomes of organizations’ STC to advance a more comprehensive understanding of how organizations manage accountability demands in the digital era. To address this gap, this study proposes a conceptual framework to explain how organizations’ STC on social media (SM) is shaped by STC via non-SM channels and their external communication capacity and the resulting STC outcomes in the SM domain. Survey data from 156 humanitarian relief and development organizations on four continents showed that using non-SM channels to engage various groups of stakeholders helped build organizations’ external communication capacity, which in turn helped improve their engagement in STC on SM. STC on SM further contributed to organizations’ success in information dissemination, community building, and action mobilization outcomes on SM.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2020

Online social networks (OSNs), comprised of varying types of relations among actors that interact... more Online social networks (OSNs), comprised of varying types of relations among actors that interact through social technologies, are widespread in today's media environment. However, questions remain whether we are moving towards convergence within the sub-disciplines of communication and with other disciplines in OSN research. This article pursues two interrelated goals. First, it performs a bibliometric analysis of existing scholarship on OSNs in the past 20 years, highlighting both the convergence and divergence of inquiry on OSNs in computer-mediated communication (CMC) research. Second, based on the results of the bibliometric analysis, it articulates an agenda for future CMC research. Specifically, we advocate for a social network approach that will bridge various theoretical frameworks and disciplinary/sub-disciplinary boundaries, for employing the communication network taxonomy, for greater effort to integrate traditional and computational approaches within and beyond social network analysis, and for addressing a greater diversity of institutional contexts.

Environmental Communication , 2020

The study examines differential motivational factors underlying risk information seeking and shar... more The study examines differential motivational factors underlying risk information seeking and sharing in the context of transboundary air pollution (“haze”) in Singapore. In particular, it addresses specific conditions under which information insufficiency influences information seeking and sharing. The analysis of an online survey with 1,021 Singaporeans showed that one’s perceived knowledge about haze was a consistent predictor of both information seeking and sharing intention. Information seeking was attitudinally driven, whereas information sharing was primarily driven by the perceived capacity of sharing information. Others’ information insufficiency promoted information sharing only when individuals considered themselves sufficiently efficacious at and had positive attitudes toward information sharing. Addressing perceived others’ knowledge, beyond one’s own, this study provides new theoretical insights into the factors that may promote risk information seeking and sharing.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2019

This study addresses the questions of how individuals use social media (SM) to build awareness of... more This study addresses the questions of how individuals use social media (SM) to build awareness of social networks (network perceptions) within and beyond SM, and how motivations and SM behaviors differentiate individuals’ ability to build such awareness. The analysis of the 2017 Taiwan Communication Survey (TCS) identifies three types of users based on their motivations for SM use: omnivores, time-killers, and social-groomers, who are differentiated from one another in terms of different types of SM behaviors as well as perceived network structures on SM and beyond. For example, omnivores, who use SM for diverse purposes, tend to engage in SM browsing and reacting more than time-killers, who use SM to pass time. Compared to time-killers, social-groomers, those who use SM for social purposes, are more likely to perceive that they have a larger SM response network, a response network containing close ties, and that they have maintained diverse social relationships in the form of mixed-media relationships (MMRs). Moreover, SM posting is associated with the size and the diverse composition of the perceived response network on SM. More frequent SM posting is also associated with perceptions of having diverse social contacts maintained through MMRs, but such association depends on the size and composition of the perceived SM response network.

Public Relations Review, 2018

While social media like Twitter have been increasingly adopted by public-sector organizations, it... more While social media like Twitter have been increasingly adopted by public-sector organizations, it remains less explored as to how government and emergency management (EM) organizations use these platforms to communicate with the public in response to emerging natural disasters.
Extending the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to the realm of social media, this study examines the emerging semantic networks from 67 government and EM organizations’ official tweets during Hurricane Harvey over a three-week period. It identifies how multiple crisis response strategies—including instructing information, adjusting information, and bolstering—are constituted of different issues, actions, and organizational actors before, during, and immediately after the disaster event. Results suggest that government agencies use the strategy of instructing information predominantly before and during the disaster, whereas adjusting information and bolstering strategies are utilized more during post-disaster recovery. The study offers theoretical and practical implications of using a semantic network approach to studying organizational crisis responses.

Computers in Human Behavior, Jun 18, 2018

Curation is the process where one finds ways to search, filter, interpret, and share the message ... more Curation is the process where one finds ways to search, filter, interpret, and share the message content. Such process is dynamically enacted within one’s mediated and nonmediated social operating system. Integrating and extending the frameworks of curation, this study examines the foundation, processes, and effects of personal curation in the context of disaster management. Results based on a multi-country survey in the United States, China, and Australia showed that the use of social media and mobile devices laid an important foundation of individuals’ personal curation, which include consumptive (information gathering) and productive (information sharing) curation. Moreover, personal curation in normal times consistently predicted personal curation practiced during disasters, which in turn facilitated disaster preparedness. The conceptual model of personal curation was confirmed in all three countries in spite of variations in cultural and disaster situations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in ways to advance research on contemporary curation and adaptive behaviors.

Disasters , 2018

This paper proposes an ecological view to investigate how disparities in mobile technology use re... more This paper proposes an ecological view to investigate how disparities in mobile technology use reflect vulnerabilities in communities vis-à-vis disaster preparedness. Data (n=1,603) were collected through a multi-country survey conducted equally in rural and urban areas of Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, where mobile technology has become a dominant and ubiquitous communication and information medium. The findings show that smartphone users’ routinised use of mobile technology and their risk perception are significantly associated with disaster preparedness behaviour indirectly through disaster-related information sharing. In addition to disaster-specific social support, smartphone users’ disaster-related information repertoires are another strong influencing factor. In contrast, non-smartphone users are likely to rely solely on receipt of disaster-specific social support as the motivator of disaster preparedness. The results also reveal demographic and rural–urban differences in disaster information behaviour and preparedness.
Given the increasing shift from basic mobile phone models to smartphones, the theoretical and policy-oriented implications of digital disparities and vulnerability are discussed.

Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Feb 8, 2018

Building on the resilience literature, this study analyzes the response networks that were activa... more Building on the resilience literature, this study analyzes the response networks that were activated for four disasters during 2015-2016 (Cyclone Pam, the 2015 Nepal earthquake, Cyclone Winston, the 2016 Ecuador earthquake). The analysis shows that different interrelated resilient capacities were manifested in the activation of response networks. In particular, in exhibiting redundancy and robustness, disaster-specific network structures were discerned. In both cyclones, response networks resembled a pre-defined cluster design whereas in the earthquake disasters, networks were more fluid. Moreover, organizations' varied levels of prior response experiences helped build the network's capacities of redundancy and resourcefulness. Implications are discussed in ways to advance contributions to research on resilience and disaster response networks.

doi: 10.1007/s11266-017-9887-4, May 24, 2017

Disaster usually provides a good opportunity to observe the convergence of voluntary organized re... more Disaster usually provides a good opportunity to observe the convergence of voluntary organized response efforts. However, the extent to which response organizations and affected neighborhoods go through the relief process similarly or differently is surprisingly less studied. Integrating the framework of community ecology and the concept of community resilience, this study examines the evolutionary process of an emergent disaster response community that consists of the populations of response organizations and affected neighborhoods. Using a technological disaster that occurred in Taiwan in July 2014 as the research context, this study shows that response organizations’ resource provision network and affected neighborhoods’ resource receipt network exhibited similar structural tendencies over the phases of disaster response and rebuilding. The process of mutual resource mobilization was also observed as response organizations mobilized and provided resources to affected neighborhoods at the same time. Moreover, while affected neighborhoods tended to maintain their resource relationships consistently over time, the changing structural patterns of their resource network reflected individual engagement in resuming normality after the incident. Theoretical and practical implications for emergent post-disaster social and voluntary behavior are discussed through the lens of community ecology and community resilience.

In response to the call in the public relations research to examine organizations’ relationship b... more In response to the call in the public relations research to examine organizations’ relationship building beyond dyadic organization-public ties, this study employs a multidimensional network approach to understand relief organizations’ relationship building through different features of social media. Unlike the organizations studied in the existing public relations research, relief organizations often incorporate emergency or disaster response as part of their mission operations. Specifically, this study focuses on the organizations involved in the response actions after Typhoon Haiyan. Analysis of 66 relief organizations’ network data on Twitter and Facebook shows that organizations’ multiple types of relationships in the form of interorganizational representational networks constructed through different features of social media are closely linked during and immediately after Typhoon Haiyan. However, organizations’ positional centrality stays persistent across these networks over time, which suggests both constraints and opportunities for organizations to build relational advantages through distinct features of social media. Findings of this study show the usefulness of a multidimensional network approach in revealing the hidden patterns behind organizations’ communication behavior on social media. In doing so, this study offers more comprehensive explanations for organizations’ relationship building and relational outcomes through social media use.

This study integrates the theory of media multiplexity and a social network perspective to examin... more This study integrates the theory of media multiplexity and a social network perspective to examine whether and how multiple modes of participation in voluntary groups, that is, multimodal voluntary participation, facilitate community involvement. Analyzing a 2013 random sample survey of 400 residents in the Greater Cleveland area in the United States, the results show that multimodal voluntary participation contributes to community involvement after controlling for local social ties and multiple affiliations. However, the normalization hypothesis was not supported as individuals who occupy bridging affiliation positions are not necessarily more advantaged than are those without such positions in adopting multimodal voluntary participation and engaging in community activities. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

This paper examines how mobile messaging apps have how people microcoordinate. It is based on fiv... more This paper examines how mobile messaging apps have how people microcoordinate. It is based on five focus groups of young adults in Singapore and Taiwan. Originally, microcoordination usually assumed dyadic interaction using either SMS or mobile voice calls. Increasingly, mediated communication uses mobile messaging apps that allow multi-sided interactions that facilitate task-based chat groups. Groups are easy formed but can be difficult to manage. This paper advances our understanding of microcoordination via the use of messaging apps. Specifically, it provides insights into the dual roles of instrumental and expressive interaction integral to the functioning of these messaging groups, ambient mediated sociation in the form of readily available communication partners in groups, as well as the emergence of meme-based coordination.

Drawing on the model of technology-in-practice and the literature on bona fide approaches and tec... more Drawing on the model of technology-in-practice and the literature on bona fide approaches and technological affordances, this study argues that organizational actors involved in emergency response may exhibit both similar and different patterns of technology use due to the combined influence of the temporal development of the response actions, and pre-existing and newly enacted organizational, social, and technological structures. This research uses a multi-method and longitudinal case study of citizen-based response organizations after Hurricane Sandy in order to enrich the investigation. The findings demonstrate that social media were adopted in a similar manner by response organizations immediately after the hurricane but, as disaster relief evolved, there were both similarities and differences in the organizations' use of technology. This reflected the influence of emergent practices and pre-existing structures. Specifically, Twitter was used consistently for diverse purposes across the phases of the disaster response, whereas Facebook use among organizations first diverged and then converged two months after the hurricane. The organizations' different patterns of social media use also reflected the construction and reconstruction over time of the resource networks for relief operations. The originality of this study lies in its mixed-method and longitudinal design, which allows for the examination of the timing, circumstances, and outcomes of the use of technology by citizen-based response organizations. The study’s findings provide theoretical and practical knowledge about the mechanisms for integrating information systems into the building of resilient social systems for emergency response.

Employing a bona fide network perspective, this study investigates the network processes and outc... more Employing a bona fide network perspective, this study investigates the network processes and outcomes of organizational collaborative networks before and following Typhoon Haiyan, taking into account the influences of network factors, organizational attributes, and environmental exigencies. The analysis from an online survey with relief organizations and those organizations’ Twitter data showed the consistent influence of past relationships on the formation of subsequent relationships after the disaster. In the on-the-ground network, a few highly active organizations stood out and engaging in multiple modes of communication with resource contacts was seen as an adaptive practice that helped organizations to build resource ties after the typhoon. In the online domain, organizations developed a post-typhoon network by means of becoming directly linked to one another and becoming equally resourceful in building their ties. Additionally, different forms of resilience were observed as outcomes of collaborative networks. Findings of this study present theoretical and practical implications by unveiling the network dynamics of contemporary humanitarian actions.

With the growth of communication technologies in society, collective action has taken new forms t... more With the growth of communication technologies in society, collective action has taken new forms that may not be well conceptualized by existing theories. Hence two meaningful theoretical and practical questions are: how is collective action performed by these new forms of human associations and with what effects? To address these questions, this study compared and drew on theories of collective action and organizational ecology to investigate a particular type of voluntary associations, mixed-mode groups. Mixed-mode groups are created and organized online to meet physically in geographically defined ways. An online survey was conducted with 171 randomly sampled groups on Meetup.com. Meetup.com is a website that facilitates the creation and coordination of mixed-mode groups. An analysis of the survey data showed that using internal and external strategies helped groups generate positive group impacts: internal strategies had direct effects on group impacts while external strategies had more circuitous and additive effects on group impacts through network resources. Accordingly, mixed-mode groups navigated across boundaries, became embedded in the networked environment, and generated group impacts. These findings show that, unlike the expectations of collective action theories, ecological theories can be robustly extended to address the mechanisms underlying collective action of contemporary voluntary groups.

Journal of Applied Communication Research, 2021

Communication Monographs, 2021

International Journal of Strategic Communication, 2020

International Journal of Communication, 2020

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organization, 2021

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2020

Environmental Communication , 2020

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2019

Public Relations Review, 2018

Computers in Human Behavior, Jun 18, 2018

Disasters , 2018

Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Feb 8, 2018

doi: 10.1007/s11266-017-9887-4, May 24, 2017

Systems theory has influenced and spawned theory and research development in organizational studi... more Systems theory has influenced and spawned theory and research development in organizational studies since the 1960s. Seeing a parallel between biological and human social systems, systems theory places dual emphases on organizations' relationships and interdependence among the components of the system as well as the organization–environment relationships. The structure and patterns and relationships of a system emerge from interactions among components, thus each system is unique. Systems have common defining properties, such as hierarchical ordering, coupling, permeability, holism, emergence, equifinality, and homeostasis. Representing the broader systems perspective are several specific theories and perspectives, such as Weick's theory of organizing, communication network perspectives, ecological and evolutionary perspectives, and self-organizing systems theory. Systems theory has been extensively applied in research areas ranging from communication design and adoption of technology use in organizational operations to professional communication, health campaigns, and public relations.