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This week, Inderscience Research Picks are focusing on a special issue of the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising dedicated to social media influencers.
The credibility of digital influencers on YouTube and Instagram is discussed in a paper from Elmira Djafarova of the Faculty of Business and Law at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and Natasha Matson of the Newcastle Business School there. The team has specifically looked at those people who are commonly referred to as micro-celebrities in the realm of beauty on these platforms.
The team found that for “beauty gurus” trustworthiness is the most important factor determining credibility but the quality of the video and images shared and the “professionalism” of the person’s profile is also an important part of the public’s perception of a given influencer. In addition, the team found that those influencers using YouTube had the most effect on viewers aged between 18 and 21 years old and was less potent in the older target group, 22-29 year olds. This, they suggest, implies that beauty reference group influence decreases with audience age.
It has previously been demonstrated that beauty gurus are responsible for all (97.4%) of the conversation and “buzz” surrounding new beauty products. But, there remains a need to understand the credibility and trustworthiness of such people, specifically from the perspective of a company recruiting a beauty guru to assist with a marketing campaign, for instance.
This latest study offers a cautionary tale for those marketing executives hoping to benefit from the micro-celebrity status of social media influencers:
Marketers within the beauty industry can take advantage of micro-celebrity influence, but do so carefully to remain credible, especially given the fickle nature of social media in general. They add that beauty brands should not push sponsored content and should instead focus on persuading micro-celebrities to offer endorsements seamlessly through their profiles rather than their content. This, one might suggest, is akin to the classic celebrity endorsement approach. Such endorsements are less questionable to consumers and more likely to be interpreted as credible electronic word-of-mouth whereas a sponsored review or product placement might be perceived as less trustworthy.
Djafarova, E. and Matson, N. (2021) ‘Credibility of digital influencers on YouTube and Instagram’, Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp.131–148.
International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems 14(1/2) 2021
Social media has a lot of pros and quite a few cons. One area in which there is much controversy is in the concept of influencers. People with lots of very engaged followers in a particular niche who can affect the decisions their devotees make in many different areas such as what they spend their money on, their own publicly declared likes and dislikes, their opinions on scientific issues such as climate change and vaccination, and even their voting intent.
The emergence of the so-called Web 2.0 whereby erstwhile visitors to websites became content creators and commentators in their own right has led to the advent of micro-celebrities, people who find themselves famous in a small area among a group of people for their prowess, wit, or opinions in that niche. For instance, people creating informative or humorous tutorials for video site Youtube, for instance, have found fame and occasionally fortune by demonstrating their skills and teaching others in cookery, makeup, music, and many other areas.
Indeed, the world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and countless other apps and sites offers a platform for such influencers that would simply not have existed for them in the previous incarnation of the world wide web where content and influence were in the hands of the original media companies and a few start-ups. Today, many of the social media influencers are emerging as celebrities in their own right and finding they can command a position in the mainstream media through newspaper and magazine columns, podcasts and radio appearances and even presenting and acting roles on television and in cinema.
Inderscience has now published a special issue of the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, to share the latest research into how social media influencers are disrupting the notion of conventional marketing.
In an editorial to lead the issue Chong Guan of Singapore University of Social Sciences and Eldon Li of Tongji University, in Shanghai, China, discuss the impact of social media influencers over the past decade. “The proliferation of social media marketing, alongside advances in mobile technologies and location-based targeting, has significantly enhanced the capabilities of customer engagement,” they explain. This has led to the concept of Influencer marketing which is becoming more contextually relevant with brands and has taken off with this unprecedented connectivity.”
Of course, celebrity endorsements and product placement advertising in the media have been with us for many years. However, what is evolving is the concept of what constitutes celebrity and how, given Warhol’s axiom that “everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes”, fame is something that is grasped or thrust upon the talented and the untalented almost in equal measure regardless of one’s actual proclivity for that worldwide renown.
The Inder science Research Picks this week, dated 21-23 April 2021, will focus on a particular paper selected from the special issue including papers on fame and fashion, beauty gurus, food and diet and the impact of influencers in those realms.
The following paper, "Critical success factors for technology-based startups" (International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business 42(4) 2021), is freely available for download as an open access article.
It can be downloaded via the full-text link available here.
Journal for Global Business Advancement 14(1) 2021
Computer-generated images are becoming increasingly realistic to the point that viewers might, with a casual glance, assume an image to be a natural, real image rather than CGI, and now even to the point that deep fakes are credible as natural images to all but the most intense gaze and examination.
Work described in the International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems, shows how a forensic method based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) might be used to automate the distinction between natural images and CGI. Min Long and Sai Long of the School of Computer and Communication Engineering at the Changsha University of Science and Technology, and Fei Peng and Xiao-hua Hu of the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at Hunan University, in Hunan, China, have constructed a new network model fine-tuned using a database of 10000 images.
The proof of principle shows exactly how well this system can distinguish between natural and artificial images. It even works with JPEG images, which notoriously can often suffer from compression artefacts, be scaled, have high levels of visual noise and the effects of post-processing operations that lower their quality and blur the lines between CGI and a digital photograph.
The ability to distinguish between CGI and natural images has important implications for news reporting, politics, and forensic work all of which are increasingly wont to succumb to fake, falsified, and fraudulent images. The team’s approach is based on the Inception-v3 deep convolution neural network and transfer learning. It utilises 2048 dimensions of features in the images, which are extracted by the network for classification to allow the computer to make a decision as to the veracity of an image. In the current setup, this is as high as 98 per cent accuracy for certain types of image. The next step will be to improve performance still further and to perform large-scale experimental tests on its accuracy.
Long, M., Long, S., Peng, F. and Hu, X-h. (2021) ‘Identifying natural images and computer generated graphics based on convolutional neural network’, Int. J. Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems, Vol. 14, Nos. 1/2, pp.151–162.
International Journal of Nanotechnology 18(1/2/3/4) 2021
Chemists Kaushik Sarkar and Rajesh Kumar of the University of North Bengal in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India, have investigated the potential of various natural products of plant origin that might be developed into novel pharmaceuticals for treating Covid-19, the pandemic disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. The team details their molecular docking experiments, absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME), and toxicity studies.
Since the emergence of the potentially lethal pathogen that causes Covid-19 parallel research to understand its behaviour, to find effective treatments, and to develop vaccines have been underway. Our understanding of the virus and the disease have grown enormously within the year or so since the pandemic was declared. Novel treatments and patient protocols have been developed and old pharmaceuticals repurporsed to treat the worst of the symptoms. Teams are working on dozens, if not hundreds of vaccines, and several of these are already being used clinically.
However, in the absence of vaccine “security” and global access to such a prophylactic approach to the virus, there remains an urgent need for therapeutic agents. Given the natural product origins of some 40 percent of prescription drugs, the natural world is always a source of inspiration for drug development. The team has investigated known drugs that have been used to treat lung cancer and bronchitis, and as blood-thinning agents. They have also homed in on a range of plant-derived compounds. All were screened against one of the primary viral protein targets, the covid-19 main protease enzyme (PDB: 6LU7).
Docking studies in which a computer model of a molecule of interest is used to see how well it fits into the active site of the main protease revealed a good fit for the following compounds: disulfiram, tideglusib, and shikonin. Any molecule that fits and binds to the active site of a protein can potentially block or even just slow the normal activity of that enzyme and so inhibit the activity of the virus. The team also carried out ADME prediction studies on those lead compounds. Their success suggests a need to move to laboratory testing and ultimately clinical trials in humans to help in the ongoing battle against Covid-19.
The team found that capmatinib, dabrafenib, alectinib, afatinib, trametinib, crizotinib, lorlatinib, osimertinib and tetracycline also revealed themselves to be effective inhibitors of the main protease based on overall docking, ADME, and toxicity parameters. Of the natural products investigated paradol, gingerol, and vasicine were seen as most promising.
Sarkar, K. and Das, R.K. (2021) ‘Molecular docking, ADME and toxicity study of some chemical and natural plant based drugs against COVID-19 main protease’, Int. J. Computational Biology and Drug Design, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp.43–63.
International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management 23(5/6) 2020
Augmented reality can be used to support children with dyslexia, according to a team from Saudi Arabia writing in the International Journal of Cloud Computing.
Dyslexia is a well-known and well-studied condition in which people of normal intelligence have difficulty reading. It affects between 3 and 7 people in every one hundred, although up to 20 percent of the population may have some problems.
Dyslexia is a spectrum condition with the least affected perhaps having issues with spelling or reading quickly while those at the other end of the spectrum may have problems not only with simple reading and writing tasks but also with basic comprehension of the written word. There is no well-defined cause and a combination of genetic and environmental factors may underlie dyslexia.
Numerous teaching techniques and even equipment such as visual filters have been used to overcome the problem although novel approaches to teaching are the most successful at ameliorating the worst of the problems to some degree for many people.
Majed Aborokbah of the Faculty of Computers and Information Technology at the University of Tabuk in Tabuk City, Saudi Arabia, is working on different learning scenarios for the Arabic language that are based on human computer interaction principles. In this novel approach meaningful virtual information – audio, video, and 3D environments – can be presented to dyslexic children in an interactive and compelling way with a view to improving reading skills and comprehension. This could circumvent some of the particular issues and complexities facing children with dyslexia when reading and writing Arabic.
Aborokbah, M. (2021) ‘Using augmented reality to support children with dyslexia’, Int. J. Cloud Computing, Vol. 10, Nos. 1/2, pp.17–25.
International Journal of Information Technology and Management 20(1/2) 2021
There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.
Just-in-time practices could help industry and the economy be rebuilt as countries emerge from pandemic lockdown, according to research published in the International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics.
As the potentially devastating effects of the rapid spread of Covid-19 early in 2020 and the subsequent pandemic became obvious, governments were forced to implement rules and regulations in an attempt to hinder the spread of the virus that causes the disease, SARS-CoV-2. These so-called lockdown measures involved shutting down parts of many industries, the hospitality sector, non-essential shopping, and limiting interpersonal contact through curfews and rules on social distancing. Unfortunately, various industries have been affected badly having been forced to halt the manufacture of countless products as demand plummeted and moreover people were limited in what they needed and could purchase.
Surbhi Singhal of the Department of Statistics at Vardhaman College in Bijnor, India, and colleagues have looked at how many suppliers will have remaining inventory to fulfill the renewed consumer demand for products after the lockdown as the world economy resurfaces. They explain how a just-in-time approach to supply could be the most effective way for industries to recover from the pandemic. Just-in-time has been an ephemeral concept for as long as companies have manufactured goods, if not longer.
The just-in-time idea was implemented widely after the Second World War to allow industry to rebuild more efficiently by only buying inventory, storing and transporting that inventory as it needed it. Moreover, it would manufacture and supply only what was needed when it was needed. The strategy was formalized and used to great effect in the 1960s and 1970s by Toyota. Singhal and colleagues now suggest that the time is right for JIT to be employed widely for the post-pandemic world. They have developed a new mathematical model of JIT that could reduce supply and demand problems with resources, make production more efficient, cut storage and transportation needs, and perhaps even shift the notion of quality inspection to the customer.
As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, the conventional approaches to many aspects of life must change, at least for the time being. This could offer us a great opportunity if we can recover efficiently and not revert to old, wasteful approaches in industry. Having JIT models in place ahead of the next pandemic might also serve us well and make industry, and society, as a whole more resilient.
Singh, S.R., Rastogi, A. and Singhal, S. (2021) ‘JIT: the best approach after lockdown in country’, Int. J. Services Operations and Informatics, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp.75–86.
