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During the first months of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected several countries all over the world, including Italy. To prevent the spread of the virus, governments instructed employers and self-employed workers to close their offices and work from home. Thus, the use of remote working increased during the pandemic and is expected to maintain high levels of application even after the emergency. Despite its benefits for both organizations and workers, remote working entails negative consequences, such as technostress. The present study had a double aim: to test the psychometric characteristics of the Italian translation of the brief version of the technostress creators scale and to apply the scale to investigate technostress during the Covid-19 emergency. The research involved 878 participants for the first study and 749 participants for the second one; they completed a self-report online questionnaire. Results confirmed the three-factor structure of the Italian technostress creators scale and highlighted positive relationships between workload, techno-stressors, work–family conflict and behavioural stress. The role of remote working conditions has been analysed as well. The study provided a useful tool for the investigation of technostress in the Italian context. Moreover, it provided indications for practice in the field of remote working and workers’ wellbeing.

This report is part of a wider research project, Reframing Creativity, which studied how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the work and creative practice of professional artists, producers and makers. Here we discuss a specific finding about artists’ and creators’ relationships with nature. After conducting a first round of interviews with 11 participants, we identified that around half of them had talked about having found a valuable connection with nature since the pandemic—even though nature was not a topic in our sequence of questions. This led to a deeper analysis of nature and creativity through a second round of interviews with 11 further participants. For both rounds of interviews, we used a semi-structured questionnaire with a snowball sampling method for recruitment. We conclude that artists and creators developed new meanings and perspectives on their relationship with the outdoors as an unexpected result of the new first-hand experiences they were able to have outside, that is, as a result of the the pandemic enabled. We also argue that creators face an urgent need to find a healthy balance between the unstoppable advancement of digital technologies, accelerated by the pandemic, and the fundamental need to be connected with the natural world. These new creator-nature connections should be fostered, preserved, and researched further.

This study investigated the relationships among specific technostress inhibitors (literacy facilitation, technical support provision, and involvement facilitation) and creators (techno-overload, techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty) and their impacts on university teachers’ work performance in higher education. Data from 312 university teachers were analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modelling. The findings indicate that involvement facilitation, in particular, and technical support provision might have significantly curbing effects on three technostress creators (techno-overload, techno-complexity, and techno-insecurity). However, literacy facilitation as one technostress inhibitor might stimulate the development of technostress creators. As to the effect of technostress on university teachers’ work performance, techno-complexity and techno-insecurity had significant negative influence on their work performance. Nevertheless, techno-overload as one technostress creator was positively associated with their work performance. Meanwhile, literacy facilitation and involvement facilitation demonstrated positive effects on university teachers’ work performance. Additionally, the group comparison between young and senior university teachers suggested that literacy facilitation might more greatly boost two technostress creators (techno-overload and techno-complexity) for senior teachers than young teachers. Nonetheless, no gender difference was observed among university teachers in suffering from technostress. This study’s findings provide evidence-based support for policymakers and information and communication technology (ICT) providers in higher education to develop strategies for effective ICT integration in learning and teaching by accounting for university teachers’ technostress in the use of ICT in their work.

SummaryThis article focuses on the effects of modern-day paid digital marketing, commonly known as digital content creation, on the escalating sales of counterfeit goods in South Africa. The marketing and promotion of South African businesses has always been facilitated by established media and marketing houses, which are formal businesses and statutorily bound. This arrangement caused these establishments to shy away from advertising counterfeit goods, to avoid liability from third parties. However, with the move towards digitisation, businesses have swayed from using traditional marketing companies for advertisements and promotion to using the services of individual content creators, popularly known as social media influencers. These influencers/digital content creators are best described as independent personalities who can affect the buying behaviour of their social media audience, as a result of their persuasiveness and engagement with their audience. This is done through advertising on various online platforms such as social media networks, video channels, websites, and blogs. Formerly, celebrities were considered for digital marketing under the guise of “company endorsements and ambassadorships”. Nonetheless, this has since changed as ordinary people, irrespective of their age, financial backgrounds, and with a substantial social media audience, are eligible. Nowadays, social media marketing has become a suitable platform for advertising almost every product or service, despite the legality or illegality thereof. This article aims to investigate the effects of South Africa’s modern-day digital advertising on the increasing sales of counterfeit goods in South Africa and to show a need for explicit legal rules aimed at prohibiting the marketing of fake goods.

PurposeThis study explores the key platform affordances that online social platform providers need to offer digital creators to strengthen the creator ecosystem, one of the leading accelerators for platform growth. Specifically, it aims to investigate how these affordances make the dynamic combinations for high platform quality across diverse platform types and demographic characteristics of digital creators.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a multi-method approach. Drawing upon the affordance theory, Study 1 aims to identify the key affordances of online social platforms based on relevant literature and the qualitative interview data collected from 22 digital creators, thereby constructing a conceptual framework of key platform affordances for digital creators. Building on the findings of Study 1, Study 2 explores the dynamic combinations of these platform affordances that contribute to platform quality using a configurational approach. Data from online surveys of 185 digital creators were analyzed using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).FindingsThe results of Study 1 identified key online social platform affordances for digital creators, including Storytelling, Socialization, Design, Development, Promotion, and Protection affordance. Study 2 showed that the combinations of these platform affordances for digital creators are diverse according to the types of platforms, creators’ gender, and their professionality.Research limitations/implicationsLike many studies, this research also has several limitations. One limitation of the research is the potential constraint of the extent of how well the data samples represent the group of creators who are actively producing digital content. Despite the addition of screening questions and meticulous data filtering, it is possible that we did not secure sufficient data from creators who are actively engaged in creative activities. In future research, it is worth contemplating the acquisition of data from actual groups of creators, such as creator communities. Future researchers anticipate obtaining more in-depth and accurate data by directly involving and collaborating with creators.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the need for online social platforms to enhance features for storytelling, socializing, design, development, promotion, and protection, fostering a robust digital creator ecosystem. It emphasizes clear communication of these affordances, ensuring creators can effectively utilize them. Importantly, platforms should adapt these features to accommodate diverse creator profiles, considering differences in gender and expertise levels, especially in emerging spaces like the Metaverse. This approach ensures an equitable and enriching experience for all users and creators, underlining the importance of dynamic interaction and inclusivity in platform development and creator support strategies.Social implicationsThis study underscores the social implications of evolving digital creator ecosystems on online platforms. Identifying six key affordances essential for digital creators highlights the need for platforms to enhance storytelling, socializing, design, development, promotion, and product protection. Crucially, it emphasizes inclusivity, urging platforms to consider diverse creator profiles, including gender and expertise differences, particularly in transitioning from traditional social media to the Metaverse. This approach nurtures a more robust creator ecosystem and fosters an equitable and enriching experience for all users. It signals a shift towards more dynamic, adaptive online environments catering to diverse creators and audiences.Originality/valueFor academics, this study builds the conceptual framework of online social platform affordances for digital creators. Using the configurational approach, this study identified various interdependent relationships among the affordances, which are nuanced by specific contexts, and suggested novel insights for future studies. For practices, the findings specified by creators and platform types are expected to guide platform providers in developing strategies to support digital creators and contribute to platform growth.

No detailed description available for \"Watching While Black Rebooted!\".

Purpose This paper aims to strengthen the process of design thinking by aligning it with netnography, specifically auto-netnography, which this paper asserts is particularly suited to the task of studying and enriching the actions of “designerly types” who seek to fashion monetisable businesses. Design/methodology/approach This paper conducts an auto-netnography with a structure divined from established design thinking theory – that of empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing – to afford an understanding of how a popular health food influencer designs a successful vegan restaurant. Findings This paper illustrates the empathetic relationship between a long-term audience member and an entrepreneur/designer/marketer. The intimate cultural analysis reveals the nature of their symbiotic entwinement. In a way that few other methods could, the method shows how this sense of reciprocity, deepens over time. Research limitations/implications Conducting an auto-netnography is a prolonged and difficult task. Nonetheless, by revealing the rituals, expectations, roles and routines of content creators, designers and followers, this paper illustrates exciting possibilities for the enactment and development of design thinking in the marketing field. Practical implications Designerly types such as marketers and content creators should closely study, listen to and interact with consumers by using a similarly staged process that draws equally from design thinking and auto-netnography. Originality/value Prior to this study, existing research has not previously linked design thinking with either netnographic or auto-netnographic research.

Despite the increasing quantum of research on technostress, three particularly noteworthy gaps remain. First, though prior studies have described “technostress creators” through the five dimensions techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty in an aggregated way, they have not adequately considered how these technostress creators individually influence job outcomes. Second, though past organizational research suggests a curvilinear relationship between job stress and job outcomes, research has yet to examine whether the stress-performance dynamics for the technostress context follows the organizational stress literature. Third, even though the literature emphasizes information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled innovation in firms, research has not explored what influence the technostress creators have on ICT-enabled innovation in-depth. Grounding our arguments in the control theory of occupational stress and conservation of resources (COR) theory, we first theorize the linear and curvilinear relationships for each of the five technostress creators with ICT-enabled employee innovation and then test the hypothesized relationships via conducting a survey on organizational employees who regularly used ICTs for professional tasks. The results offer a nuanced understanding about the nature of individual technostress creators and their relationships with ICT-enabled employee innovation. On the practical front, our research paves the way for more meaningful technostress-management strategies in organizations.

The main objective of this paper is to present the process of preparing and conducting my biographical research regarding creators’ middle-adulthood. My intention in this study is to direct attention towards such an approach to creators’ biographies that in the very process of biographical narrative reconstruction reveals not only the different viewpoints regarding life experiences, but also interpretation of events. First of all, my approach to biographical research did not focus on creators’ life stories, but allowed them to create different tales of their own lives and to show different aspects of their autobiographical experiences related to shaping their own lives. In this paper, I intend to discuss a methodological solution and by this, to show how my research methods developed during the preparation stage, but also during the stages of implementation and preparation of the concept of analysis. A particular challenge, which is the subject of this study, was the strategy that required some aspects of creativity in the process of data collecting. Within the frame of this strategy, the researcher prepared biographical tasks designed in consideration of the poosed research problems. The tasks took a form of diverse forms of activity (verbal, visual) and encouraged respondents to refer to their own life experiences (past), reflect on the present moment (present), consider plans and projects (future), as well as to inspire constructing different stories about life (Lasocińska, 2013; 2017). The result of that was a structure that divided a biographical interview into phases and stages that assume different uses of time periods and diverse biographical reflections. In the following text, I do not focus on the results of my research, which are still being formulated, but focus my attention on concepts and research experiences related to the search for adequate solutions for the chosen topic and to the initial assumptions of the research.

This study investigated the effect of technostress on university students’ wellbeing and technology-enhanced learning (TEL) through the stressor-strain-outcome model. Interviews were first used to contextualize and inform the development of the survey instrument. Then, survey data from 796 participants were collected and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that technostress creators, including techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty, were significantly associated with students’ burnout in TEL, which in turn was negatively associated with their self-regulation, learning agency, and persistence in TEL. Group comparison analyses based on gender, academic disciplines, and willingness to join TEL show that the negative associations between burnout and self-regulation, learning agency, and persistence in TEL were significantly stronger for male students than female students. Similar findings were also found for students joining TEL willingly and unwillingly, with the latter being more strongly affected by burnout. In addition, the positive association between techno-complexity and burnout was greater for students from social sciences than those from engineering and natural sciences. The findings of this study can inform future implementation decisions of TEL in higher education and strategies to preserve university students’ wellbeing.