Title Page
Contents
ABSTRACT 9
I. Introduction 11
1.1. Overview 11
1.2. The Problems 13
1.3. The Objectives and Contributions 15
1.4. Research Procedure 16
1.5. Organization of the Thesis 18
II. Theoretical Background 19
2.1. Social Media and Twitter 19
2.1.1. Research on Twitter 21
2.2. The Diffusion of Innovations Theory 23
2.2.1. The Elements of Innovation diffusion 23
2.2.2. Information as Innovation 26
2.3. Two-Step Flow Theory 27
2.3.1. Opinion Leaders 28
2.3.2. Opinion Leaders in Social Media 30
III. Research Model and Hypotheses 33
3.1. Research Model 33
3.2. Hypotheses 36
3.2.1. Information Contents 36
3.2.2. User Characteristics as Opinion Leaders 37
3.2.3. Moderating Effect: Information Contents 41
IV. Research Methodology 44
4.1. Data Collection 44
4.2. Case: @olleh_mobile 45
V. Research Model 1: Information Contents and Diffusion 46
5.1. Measure 46
5.1.1. Dependent Variables: Information Diffusion 46
5.1.2. Independent Variables: Information Contents 47
5.2. Analysis and Results 52
5.2.1. The Description of Information Contents 52
5.2.2. The Difference of Information Contents on Diffusion 55
VI. Research Model 2: User Characteristics and Diffusion 61
6.1. Measure 61
6.1.1. Independent Variables: User Characteristics 61
6.2. Analysis and Results 66
6.2.1. The Model 2 66
6.2.2. Main Effect: The Effect of User Characteristics on Diffusion 68
6.2.3. Moderating Effect 70
VII. Conclusions 80
7.1. Theoretical Implications 80
7.2. Managerial Implications 82
7.3. Limitations 83
Appendix 84
Appendix A. The Results of Main effect 84
Appendix B. The Results of Moderating effect 85
References 88
[Table 2.1] The Classification and Characteristics of Social media 20
[Table 2.2] Previous Research on Twitter 22
[Table 2.3] Types of Diffusion Research 25
[Table 2.4] The Characteristics of Opinion Leaders 32
[Table 5.1] Dependent Variables Definitions 47
[Table 5.2] The Level of Agreement of Information Contents 49
[Table 5.3] Examples of Each type of Information Contents 51
[Table 5.4] Information Diffusion of Each Information Contents 53
[Table 5.5] Description of Information Content Custers (Means and Standard Deviation) 56
[Table 5.6] Summary Statistics and Correlation Matrix 58
[Table 5.7] Rank of Kruskal-Wallis test 59
[Table 5.8] Result of Kruskal-Wallis test 59
[Table 6.1] The Classification of Measurement of Opinion Leaders in Literature 63
[Table 6.2] Independent Variables Definitions 64
[Table 6.3] Summary Statistics and Correlation Matrix 65
[Table 6.4] Effect of User Characteristics on Information Diffusion 68
[Table 6.5] Moderating Effect of the Scale of Information Diffusion 74
[Table 6.6] Moderating Effect of the Speed of Information Diffusion 75
[Table 6.7] Moderating Effect of the Duration of Information Diffusion 76
[Table 6.8] Summary of Results and Implications 78
[Table A.1] The Results of the Scale of Diffusion 84
[Table A.2] The Results of the Speed of Diffusion 84
[Table A.3] The Results of the Duration of Diffusion 84
[Table B.1] The Results of the Scale of Diffusion 85
[Table B.2] The Results of the Speed of Diffusion 86
[Table B.3] The Results of the Duration of Diffusion 87
[Figure 1.1] Overall Research Procedures 17
[Figure 2.1] S-Shape of Diffusion 26
[Figure 2.2] Two Step Flow 30
[Figure 3.1] The Conceptual Research Model 1 35
[Figure 3.2] The Conceptual Research Model 2 35
[Figure 4.1] @olleh_mobile Twitter account 45
[Figure 5.1] Information Contents Frequency 52
[Figure 5.2] The Scale of Information Diffusion in Types of Information 54
[Figure 5.3] The Speed of Information Diffusion in Types of Information 54
[Figure 5.4] The Duration of Information Diffusion in Types of Information 54
[Figure 5.5] The Scale of Information Diffusion in Three Clusters 57
[Figure 5.6] The Speed of Information Diffusion in Three Clusters 57
[Figure 5.7] The Duration of Information Diffusion in Three Clusters 57
[Figure 5.8] Information Diffusion According to Information Types 60
[Figure 6.1] The Moderating Impact on the Diffusion of Information 77