Ranjan Vaidya
email: r.vaidya@auckland.ac.nz

Michael D Myers
email: m.myers@auckland.ac.nz

Lesley Gardner
email: l.gardner@auckland.ac.nz

Major Issues in the successful implementation of information systems in developing countries

Keywords: information systems failure, developing countries, critical case study, agricultural marketing

Information systems projects in developing countries continue to fail. Our research aims to understand some of the major issues that negatively impact the success of public sector information systems projects in developing countries. For this, we conducted a qualitative study of a state agricultural marketing board in India. The board initiated an information systems project in 2003. The objective of the project was to connect the various agricultural markets spread across the state by deploying hi-tech information and communication technologies. Unfortunately, the project was abandoned because of the growing conflicts between the government and private vendors implementing the project. The major stakeholders in the project included the government, private vendors, farmers and traders. The data for this critical case study were collected over a period of eight months from 2009 to 2012 using semi structured interviews, field visits and observations. The findings suggest that the lack of trust and resignation (to certain unfair practices being virtually impossible to change) are the core issues that impede success of information systems implementation in developing countries.

Introduction

The UN millennium development goals have changed the emphasis of development from economic growth to poverty reduction [START_REF] Christiaensen | The (Evolving) Role of Agriculture in Poverty Reduction[END_REF]. As almost three fourths of the world's poor live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihood [START_REF] Giovannucci | Food and Agriculture: the future of sustainability[END_REF], many international developmental institutions are focusing their efforts on improving agriculture in these areas. Poverty reduction can be achieved in a variety of ways e.g. improving agricultural productivity by increasing crop yields, or by improving the supply chain and marketing of agricultural produce.

In this article we focus on how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can play a decisive role in agricultural marketing. Information about weather forecasts, market prices, and the demand-supply status can be readily accessed and distributed through ICT. In the last two decades many government organisations, non-government organisations, and corporate and funding agencies across the developing countries have initiated ICT projects that exclusively deal with agricultural marketing [START_REF] Banker | The effects of digital trading platforms on commodity prices in agricultural supply chains[END_REF][START_REF] Kamala | ICT use by businesses in rural India: The case of EID Parry's Indiagriline[END_REF]. However, empirical evidence indicates that there are various kinds of problems in the conceptualisation, design and implementation of these projects. In most cases, these projects are conceptualised as price information systems that do not address the marketing asymmetries in the supply chain [START_REF] Islam | Agriculture Market Information Services (AMIS) in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs): Nature, Scopes, and Challenges[END_REF]. They suffer due to various contextual problems such as lack of education and the illiteracy of the farmers [START_REF] Lokanathan | Leveraging Mobile 2.0 in India for Agricultural Market Access[END_REF], lack of supporting policies [START_REF] Rao | A framework for implementing information and communication technologies in agricultural development in India[END_REF] and intermittent political interference (FAO, 1997). Economically, these projects often do not have proper funding support [START_REF] Tollens | Market Information Systems in sub-Sahara Africa Challenges and Opportunities[END_REF]. The government organisations implementing these tend to be ridden with rigid bureaucracies, corruption and inefficient project management [START_REF] Islam | Agriculture Market Information Services (AMIS) in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs): Nature, Scopes, and Challenges[END_REF]. The situation is further acerbated because agricultural technology adoption is difficult in these developing countries, both because of geographical and cultural reasons [START_REF] Aker | Dial "A" for agriculture: a review of information and communication technologies for agricultural extension in developing countries[END_REF]Batt, 2001a). Given these various kinds of problems and issues related to agricultural marketing information systems (AMIS) implementation, this research project seeks to understand the major issues in the successful implementation of AMIS in developing countries. Consequently the research question that it addresses is: What are the major issues in the successful implementation of agricultural marketing information systems in developing countries?

To try to answer this question, the research undertakes a critical case study of the implementation and adoption of an agricultural marketing information system in India. The AMIS was designed to improve the lives of the poor farmers by streamlining the entire auction process, giving them access to price information, and generally improving transparency. The AMIS was implemented in over two hundred market yards (popularly called as Mandi) in one state of India beginning in 2003. Unfortunately however, by 2011-2012 the project was abandoned. This case study provides a good opportunity to understand the major issues in the implementation of AMIS in developing countries. The paper is structured as follows. In the next section we present a literature review on agricultural marketing information systems. This is followed by the description of our research method. Section four presents the case study of the agricultural marketing board. In section five we present our analysis of the case. Finally, we present our conclusions.

Literature Review

A literature review of seventy six research articles covering the period of thirty five years from 1967 [START_REF] Abbott | Agricultural Marketing Boards in the Developing Countries[END_REF] to 2011 [START_REF] Ghadiyali | Agriculture Intelligence: An Emerging Technology for Farmer Community[END_REF] indicated three major themes namely; conceptual challenges to AMIS implementation, empirical challenges to AMIS implementation and trust issues in AMIS implementation. Ontologically, the conceptual and empirical challenges together represent the design-reality gap [START_REF] Heeks | Information System in Developing Countries: Failure, Success, and Local Improvisations[END_REF]. Trust issues, on the other hand, represent the human issues of implementation. Together these three conceptual elements provide a good picture of the implementation challenges. Each of these is briefly discussed here.

Conceptualization challenges to AMIS

Information systems researchers have identified four types of agriculture related information systems. These are knowledge management systems, inspection and certification systems, market information systems and procurement and traceability systems [START_REF] Parikh | A survey of information systems reaching small producers in global agricultural value chains[END_REF]. A "marketing information system" fails to fall in any of these categories because of the conceptual differences between the terms market and marketing in agriculture. [START_REF] Park | Market information and price reporting systems in food and agricultural sector[END_REF] conceptualises agricultural activities as complex business activities rather than a simple means of subsistence. The author sees agricultural marketing as a coordinated activity of farm supplies, harvesting and production, logistics and commodity processing. The author mentions that while price information systems are well conceived, the 'marketing' component has not received adequate attention from developers. [START_REF] Shepherd | The Indonesian horticultural market information service[END_REF] suggest that marketing is a broader concept that includes "details on potential market channels, payment requirements, packaging, quality and a whole range of other information, including market information." According to [START_REF] Van Crowder | Marketing Information Systems for Small-Scale Farmers[END_REF], market information alone limits the farmers to react to changes in prices. Marketing information, on the other hand, provides them an opportunity to manoeuvre according to the market dynamics. By and large AMIS have been wrongly conceptualised as price information systems and hence the majority of AMIS projects in developing countries merely capture the price or quantity of agricultural commodities in various retail or wholesale markets [START_REF] Tollens | Market Information Systems in sub-Sahara Africa Challenges and Opportunities[END_REF].

Empirical challenges in AMIS implementation

Researchers have identified various implementation challenges of AMIS. Often organisations implementing AMIS deploy their own staff for collection of data. This results in overhead expenses that cannot be sustained over a long period. Second, there are issues related to public sector organisational culture in developing countries. Researchers have suggested that rigid bureaucracy, corruption and the attitude of government officers in developing countries pose a challenge to information systems implementation generally, and AMIS implementation in particular [START_REF] Krishna | Implementing public information systems in developing countries: Learning from a success story[END_REF][START_REF] Walsham | ICTS for the broader development of India: An analysis of the literature[END_REF]. AMIS are sometimes deployed to serve the information needs of the government officers rather than the farmers who are meant to be the intended beneficiaries in AMIS [START_REF] Tollens | Market Information Systems in sub-Sahara Africa Challenges and Opportunities[END_REF]. Third, researchers have identified issues with data collection and their accuracy [START_REF] Islam | Agriculture Market Information Services (AMIS) in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs): Nature, Scopes, and Challenges[END_REF]. Fourth, there are contextual challenges to AMIS implementation. AMIS implementation might not be accompanied with changes in the statutory laws as is demonstrated in the e-choupal case [START_REF] Rao | A framework for implementing information and communication technologies in agricultural development in India[END_REF]. There are also frequent interventions from the powerful stakeholder groups such as traders and politicians [START_REF] Shepherd | Market Information Services: Theory and Practice[END_REF].

Trust issues in agricultural marketing:

Some researchers have highlighted the importance of trust in agricultural marketing. Researchers have suggested that trust is paramount in agricultural marketing as it reduces uncertainty across the agricultural supply chain and trustful relationships are essential for agricultural development [START_REF] Ballantyne | Accessing, Sharing and Communicating Agricultural Information for Development: emerging trends and issues[END_REF]. Some factors or conditions have a negative impact on trust formation in agriculture marketing in developing countries, for example, use of coercive power by stakeholders, opportunistic behaviour and trader collusion. On the other hand, relationship investments, satisfaction with past services, information sharing attitudes and humbleness have a positive impact on trust formation [START_REF] Banerji | Millers, Commission Agents and Collusion in Grain Auction Markets: Evidence From Basmati Auctions in North India[END_REF]Batt, 2001a;[START_REF] Best | Building linkages and enhancing trust between small-scale rural producers, buyers in growing markets and suppliers of critical inputs[END_REF]. Some researchers have suggested that trust formation in agricultural marketing is a long term process (Batt, 2001a(Batt, , 2001b;;[START_REF] Molony | Running out of credit: the limitations of mobile telephony in a Tanzanian agricultural marketing system[END_REF]. Certain behavioural patterns of the stakeholders in agricultural marketing can have an impact on stakeholder trust [START_REF] Drafor | Local information systems for community development in Ghana[END_REF][START_REF] Jensen | Information, efficiency, and welfare in agricultural markets[END_REF][START_REF] Mittal | Socio-Economic Impact of Mobile Phones on Indian Agriculture[END_REF]. Based on our analysis of seventy six research articles, we were able to identify those agricultural marketing related practices of farmers and traders that have an impact on trust levels between the stakeholders. These are presented in the Table 1.

Table 1: Stakeholders' patterns of behaviour cited by researchers

Amongst the three themes discussed above, we focus on trust issues in AMIS implementation from now on. This is for two reasons. First, researchers have suggested that trust formation is critical for the success of agriculture marketing [START_REF] Almond | Beyond Agriculture-Making Markets Work for the Poor: Proceedings of an International Seminar[END_REF]) and yet trust issues are usually not given adequate importance in AMIS design and implementation [START_REF] Islam | Agriculture Market Information Services (AMIS) in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs): Nature, Scopes, and Challenges[END_REF]. Second, trust (or rather, the lack of trust) was the major issue leading to the failure of the AMIS in our particular case.

Research Method

We used qualitative case study research, since qualitative research helps the researchers to understand the behaviour of people in the light of their context and values [START_REF] Myers | Qualitative Research in Business & Management[END_REF]. Specifically, we used critical case study research, since critical research in IS "is concerned with social issues such as freedom, power, social control, and values with respect to the development, use, and impact of information technology" (Myers & Klein, 2011 p.17). The data for the study was collected by one of the authors for a nine month period between 2009 and 2012. The data was collected from 23 semi structured interviews with the stakeholder groups namely farmers, traders, government officers and private partners. The interviews with the government officers and private partners were undertaken at different levels of hierarchy. The interviews with the farmers and traders were undertaken at market yards as well as their villages. These interviews and field visits were carried out at four different yards in the state. At the micro level, the constant comparison method (CCM) proposed by [START_REF] Boeije | A Purposeful Approach to the Constant Comparative Method in the Analysis of Qualitative Interviews[END_REF] was followed to identify the main themes. Thematic analysis was then undertaken as per the guidelines proposed by [START_REF] Braun | Using thematic analysis in psychology[END_REF] leading to the identification of our main findings.

Case Description

The case study is of a government owned agricultural marketing board in India. The board controls over 200 hundred market yards of the state which are commonly called as Mandi.

The farmers bring their produce to these yards where it is auctioned. Studies indicate that there are large price discrepancies across these market yards and often the farmers are not able to realize the best available prices [START_REF] Goyal | Information, Direct Access to Farmers, and Rural Market Performance in Central India[END_REF]. Past studies also indicate that farmers face various kinds of problems in the yards such as cheating in commodity weighing, bearing the cost of commodity bags, delays in the payments, etc. These problems have an impact on the socio-psychological well-being of the farmers [START_REF] Anupindi | Supply Chain Reengineering in Agri-Business Building Supply Chain Excellence in Emerging Economies[END_REF]. It is against this background that the board initiated the project to computerize its operations in 2003. The project intended to make the yard operations transparent and help the decision making of the stakeholders, particularly the farmers [START_REF] Vaidya | The Design -Reality Gap: The Impact of Stakeholder Strategies on IS Implementation in Developing Countries. Governance and Sustainability in Information Systems. Managing the Transfer and Diffusion of IT[END_REF]. In this project, sixty four yards were selected from the over two hundred yards of the state. The data on auctions and weighing was to be collected through hand held electronic machines. A software application was developed to upload the data to a central server. The collated data on commodity prices and volumes was redistributed to the market yards. In the yards, this data was displayed on computers as well as television sets. This helped the farmers and traders to know the rates prevalent in other neighbouring yards. Also, the website of the board displayed the latest commodity data. The private vendor installed the hardware and also deployed manpower to conduct these tasks on built-own-operate basis. The vendor charged a fee for their services, which was based on the yard type and ranged between thirteen to seventeen per cent [START_REF] Mapit | E-Agricultural Marketing in Madhya Pradesh[END_REF][START_REF] Vaidya | Computerization of Agricultural Marketing Board: Lessons from Madhya Pradesh, India[END_REF]. A 2008 evaluation by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Government of India indicated that the project was a success (DIT, 2008 p.92). However, our visits to the yard in 2010 revealed that conflicts had developed between the private partners and the government on various issues. The government blamed the private partners for not being sincere, whereas the government officers complained that the private partners were not sincere. The private partners, on the other hand, blamed the government for lacking the appropriate organisational culture for computerisation. In 2011 the equipment of the private partners was seized by the respective yards. Following this the private partners appealed in the state high court where they lost the case. The reasons for the failure of the project are presented in the next section.

Case Analysis

Our analysis of the stakeholder interviews revealed that lack of trust was the most important issue in the unsuccessful implementation of the agricultural marketing information systems project. Each stakeholder group regarded the other stakeholder group as dishonest, lacking sincerity and also hegemonic. Nearly all the stakeholders blamed the farmers for not showing the true sample of commodities to the traders. For example, one government officer described this as follows:

"The farmers have different qualities of the commodity. What is shown as the sample is different from the actual commodity. For example on the top of the bag, they keep good quality while in the bottom, they keep the poor quality. The trader cannot inspect the full commodity as the bags and trolleys are too large to be fully opened...so if you go to the yard premises, you will observe that these conflicts are occurring continuously". All the stakeholders blamed the traders for doing unregistered trade transactions. According to the other stakeholders, traders under reported their commodities in order to save their service charge payments to the yards. One of the private partner employees described this as follows:

"The two per cent service charge that the traders are required to pay brings a lot of difference to them as their transaction gets documented. If documented, they have to pay other taxes such as value added tax or sales tax. Sometimes such taxes may reach as high as twenty per cent of the purchased commodity. Obviously the traders try to avoid it". The private vendors blamed the government officers for lacking the organizational culture that was necessary for the successful implementation of information systems projects. For example one private partner employee mentioned as follows:

"If any senior officer from the head office comes for a visit to the yard, then all his expenses are borne by the junior government officers. However, I have never seen a junior claiming these expenses from the yard. I fail to understand this, why the junior does not claim these expenses. Is it not his right, is he not entitled to claim these expenses? What is the reason? Why he does not claim these expenses? Sometimes the juniors also ask the private partner to pay for these expenses. Why should the private partner pay for these expenses?" The government officers blamed the private partners for manipulating their reports in order to prove that computerization was yielding benefits to the yards. This was explained by one government officer as follows: "I will give you one more example of the…tricks that private partners play to prove the effectiveness of the IS. The traders submit their records of the transaction usually after ten days. For instance, for the trade done between the 1 st and 10 th of a month, the trader submits the record on 11 th . Similarly for the next 10 days, the records are submitted after 20 th . Obviously, if you check the computerized records on the fifteenth, it will show that some traders have not paid their service charges. So the private partner reports a recovery from the trader, when in effect the truth is that the trader has not yet submitted the records. So the private partners do such false reporting to show that the IS has been successful in recovering the service charge payments. I can say this thing on behalf of the entire board that just to prove that they have made a positive impact on the yard revenue they present wrong information and do all kinds of manipulations". The government officers also felt that the private partners often emulated the bureaucratic style of functioning of the government. A government officer revealed this as follows:

"If we ask for any new information or any new module, they say that the required information or module can be generated only after the approval or sanction from the Mandi board". The same officer presented another example that revealed the working of the private partner: "I will give an example of the things that they (private partner) do. There is a module in their software for the salary records of the Mandi employees. We were instructed by the authorities in the board that we should help them in the computerisation of the salary records. So we were asked by the establishment section to help this process.

The private partners wrote us a letter asking that we should provide them the required information related to employees and their salary records. This meant that we should provide them the data in a format. Obviously this implied that we first do the data entry ourselves and then provide them the data. After some time when we asked them as to why they have not started with the data entry of the salary records? Their site incharge replied that they had already written a letter to us asking for the required information. Now it is their responsibility to enter the data for the 300 staff employed here. If we are asked to provide the data to them, obviously we will need to do the data entry ourselves. So then what's the work of the private partner? We do not have staff for our own works, and they expect that we will have the staff to enter the data of 300 employees. So we told them clearly that our responsibility is to provide you with the records and not the data and so we will provide you the records and you are supposed to feed these records in your system". An integrated model of trust formation, based on each stakeholder group's perception about the other stakeholder group, is presented in figure 1. The model presents four key constructs that contribute to trust formation. These include stakeholder attitude, stakeholder sincerity, stakeholder honesty and stakeholder efficiency. Within stakeholder attitude, it suggests that hegemonic attitude has negative implications on trust formation. The discussion above demonstrates that stakeholder trust was a key issue in the unsuccessful implementation of this agricultural marketing information system. Our evidence suggests that indeed yard stakeholders did not trust each other and that they blamed the other stakeholder group for various problems present in the yard. But at the same time our empirical evidence indicated that yard stakeholders were aware about their own behaviour that had a negative impact on functioning of the yards. For instance, farmers were aware of their involvement in the acts of quality manipulations. The traders accepted that it was common for them to under-report their trade transactions; and the government officer readily agreed to the fact that they did "corruption". Table 2 presents some excerpts, in which the stakeholder groups indicated that they were well aware of their own behaviour. This indicates that each stakeholder group was involved in certain activities that had a negative impact on trust, but at the same time, the stakeholders were also aware of their behaviour. This suggests that everyone knew what the others were doing. It seems as if each stakeholder accepted the untrustworthy behaviour of the other stakeholder, including themselves, in spite of being aware that such behaviour had a negative impact on the overall functioning of the yard. This can be understood from the following excerpt by a government officer:

"It is the weighing process that is the most problematic because those who weigh the commodity, they harass the farmers a lot. They will not weigh the commodity timely; they will not weigh the commodity properly. The weighing labourers are very rude and rash, some of them are not worth talking to. But the farmer keeps his patience, he tolerates everything…he has to tolerate everything…he cannot help it…if he fights or opposes, his payment is delayed…so he tolerates everything…" Observe here that the government officer mentions that the labourers who weigh the commodity are hegemonic, dishonest and insincere in fulfilling their responsibilities. However, the officer also mentions that the farmers tolerate such behaviour of the labourers. This suggests that stakeholders have a high sense of resignation as they have no other alternatives to the yard. Another excerpt from a farmer will further establish that resignation along with mistrust presents a major challenge for the functioning of the yards. This excerpt relates to a discussion with a farmer who had just completed the weighing of the commodity. There was some conflict between the labourers and farmers while the weighing was still in progress. After the conflict deescalated, one of the authors approached the farmers and asked them about the conflict. The farmer described the conflict as follows:

"Actually it is the duty of the labourer to weigh the commodity. He is required to lift the commodity from the vehicle and put it on the weight balance. He is also required to remove it from the weigh balance but they do not do the entire work. So the labour did not come to do this work yet we had to pay to the labourer. So that is what happens here…so they got their labour charges even when they had not done the labour…the rule of the Mandi is that the labourer will weigh the commodity and then will take the charges from us…but here as you may have seen we paid the labourer charges even when they did not do any labour…see if there is a big lot…say in a truck …then the labours take interest in unloading it…else they do not take interest…and suppose we tell them that we need no labour…then they will weigh our commodity late in the evening…and hence we will be relieved later…so we gave them 50 rupees and also did the labour on our own…so that we may be relieved quickly from the yard…see one of us has come from 20 kilometres and another has come from 30 kilometres..." The foregoing statement clearly suggests that the farmers agreed to pay the labour charges in spite of the fact that the labourers did not do any labour. The farmer also describes the repercussions of not paying to the labourer -"so that we may be relieved quickly from the yard". The farmer was fearful that if he will not pay to the labourers, it will have certain consequences i.e., he will not be relieved from the yards timely or that his payments will be delayed. This fear of further delay in the yards, to the already exhausted farmer, forces him to succumb to the whims of the labourers. Of course, farmers mistrust the labourers, but the economic circumstances are such that, in spite of this mistrust, the farmers resign themselves to participating in transactions with them. Let us look at another example. The government officers, both senior level and junior level, are well aware that the farmers are involved in quality manipulations, yet they are not willing to install quality checking mechanisms in the yards. For example, one government officer mentioned that quality problems are a prime source of conflicts in the yards and that there were no facilities in the yards to grade the commodity quality. For example, one government officer mentioned this as follows:

"The farmer does not have grading equipment for these different commodities. So if we can install these different grading machines in the yard such conflicts will be reduced. So computerisation should look into these aspects also". In spite of awareness about this issuean issue that is prevalent for a long timethe government officers ignored the problem and made no effort to resolve it. On another occasion, the same government officer mentioned that he was not promoted for years and the first promotion that he received was after twenty seven years of service. His concluding remarks are as follows:

"why should I be any more interested so, slowly, I have now become disinterested in the affairs of the yard…let it go…who cares…" This attitude clearly suggests that the yard officer had become disinterested in resolving the problems in the yards. This again suggests that stakeholders are well aware of the precise nature of yard issues, but they become reluctant to resolve them for various reasons. Clearly there are two issues here: reluctance to confront the issues in appropriate forums and mistrust. The former is resignation. Our analysis reveals that mistrust and resignation were the two major issues that had a negative impact on the implementation of this agricultural marketing information system.

Discussion and Conclusions:

Our findings have revealed that mistrust and stakeholder resignation were the major issues that negatively impacted the successful implementation of this agricultural marketing information systems. We believe that our findings may be applicable to similar projects in other developing countries. Researchers studying agricultural ICT implementation in developing countries such as Tanzania and Dar es Salaam have argued that trust relationships between the farmers and traders are important for the successful implementation of ICT projects [START_REF] Molony | Running out of credit: the limitations of mobile telephony in a Tanzanian agricultural marketing system[END_REF]. Trust is an important success factor in situations characterised by uncertainty, risks and incomplete buyer information (Batt, 2001a(Batt, , 2003;;[START_REF] Batt | Building Trust in Agribusiness Supply Chains: A Conceptual Model of Buyer-Seller Relationships in the Seed Potato Industry in Asia[END_REF]. However, overcoming lack of trust is difficult in developing countries, given that they are characterised by poverty, exploitation and corruption. Our findings clearly demonstrate that honesty, efficiency and sincerity were missing amongst all the stakeholders. To counter exploitation and corruption, stakeholders adopt practices of dishonesty and hegemony themselves: it is a cycle that keeps repeating itself. We have suggested that low levels of trust and helplessness result in the resignation of stakeholders. Past studies have also suggested that mistrust becomes a chosen strategy of stakeholders when there is an expectation of selfish behaviour from other stakeholders [START_REF] Baba | Dangerous liaisons: Trust, distrust, and information technology in American work organizations[END_REF]. Hence we conclude that trust and resignation are the core issues in the successful implementation of information systems in developing countries.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Integrated model of trust formation

Table 2 : Stakeholder excerpts on behavioural self-awareness

 2


Nikhil Srinivasan

Jan Damsgaard

Tensions Between Individual Use and Network Adoption of Social Media Platforms

Keywords: social media, adoption, use, social network, tensions

Social media have diffused into the everyday lives of many but still pose challenges to individuals regarding use of these platforms. This paper explores the multiple manners in which social media platforms gets employed by individuals based on an examination of 4 vignettes generated by interviewing individuals within a university context. An analysis of the vignettes and individual use behaviors highlights the tension between network-based adoption of social media platforms and the constraints that the network places on individual use of the platform.

Introduction

Social media platforms have in a very short time integrated well into people´s lives, both socially and professionally. Long-lost school mates reconnect with one another, friends and family share news, and professional bonds are easily continued after a work relation has ended; all as a result of social media platforms. A social media platform is built around social relations that individuals establish or confirm with each other through information and communication technologies for the purpose of communication, collaboration and coordination of information, knowledge and activities. A social media platform is inherently a participative environment where the consumers of information and knowledge are simultaneously the co-creators and consumers of new information and knowledge, while at the same time interacting with and engaging with individuals [START_REF] Parameswaran | Research issues in social computing[END_REF].

Academic studies have examined the diffusion and adoption of specific social media technologies [START_REF] Hester | Innovating with organizational wikis: factors facilitating adoption and diffusion of an effective collaborative knowledge management system[END_REF][START_REF] Hester | A conceptual model of wiki technology diffusion[END_REF]) and employed popular and widely acknowledged models such as Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) [START_REF] Rogers | Diffusion of innovations[END_REF], Technology Acceptance (TAM) or Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) [START_REF] Davis | User acceptance of computer technology: A comparison of two theoretical models[END_REF][START_REF] Venkatesh | User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view[END_REF] that have proven themselves in the past as useful vehicles in explaining the diffusion and adoption of IT in general. However extensions of DOI and TAM to cover social media platforms do so without revisiting the basic assumptions of the models and their validity domain [START_REF] Sledgianowski | Using social network sites: the effects of playfulness, critical mass and trust in a hedonic context[END_REF][START_REF] Tufekci | Grooming, Gossip, Facebook and MySpace[END_REF]. This results in a conflation of individual use behaviors on the part of the individual with social network adoption contexts. This conflation of individual use and network adoption is significant because the one profound difference between general IT and social media platforms is that social media platforms are communal and have inherent network effects. Social media platforms only have value when many are using them, which is not paramount for many previous IT applications that were perfectly useful for the individual alone: e.g. word-processing. Consequently, examining social media platforms from the perspective of TAM and DOI tend to emphasize their individual use behaviors and the antecedents to those behaviors, rather than a broader examination of those individual use behaviors within a situated network [START_REF] Granovetter | The Strength of Weak Ties[END_REF].

We contend that while DOI and TAM do shed light on examining adoption and diffusion of IT in general, social media represents a new paradigm in IT and as such traditional models of adoption and diffusion may not readily apply. The goal of this paper is to explore the adoption and diffusion of social media platforms. The central point of departure is the following research question.

How does the networked nature of social media platforms influence their use by individuals?

The remainder of this paper is organized the following way. In the next section we revisit classical adoption and diffusion theories in light of social media platforms. We then examine the nature of social media platforms and the characteristics that describe them. We then describe a field study designed to examine the tension between individual use and network adoption of social media platforms. We subsequently discuss our field study results and make some conclusions and note some limitations in our study.

Revisiting Classical Adoption and Diffusion Theory

This section discusses how the diffusion and adoption of technologies have been previously examined.

Technology Adoption

The individual adoption of a technology is based on two broad theories from social psychology i.e. the theory of reasoned action [START_REF] Fishbein | Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: An introduction to theory and research Addison-Wesley[END_REF]) and the theory of planned behavior [START_REF] Ajzen | From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior[END_REF]. The theories were immediately absorbed by information systems researchers and formed the basis for some of the most interesting, vibrant and comprehensive research programs of the discipline. The first work by Davis, Bagozzi and others (1989;1989) was referred to as the technology acceptance model (TAM) and was subsequently built on by others to extend the model. The theory has been applied to compare across cultures [START_REF] Straub | Testing the technology acceptance model across cultures: A three country study[END_REF]) and genders [START_REF] Gefen | Gender differences in the perception and use of e-mail: An extension to the technology acceptance model[END_REF], extended with social influence [START_REF] Malhotra | Extending the technology acceptance model to account for social influence: theoretical bases and empirical validation[END_REF], accounted for tasktechnology fit [START_REF] Dishaw | Extending the technology acceptance model with task-technology fit constructs[END_REF], and other similar extensions. A comprehensive examination of the theory of technology acceptance was performed by [START_REF] Venkatesh | User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view[END_REF] who compared 8 different user acceptance models and synthesized them into a comprehensive model referred to as the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Work still continues in this program of research with an examination of IS continuance [START_REF] Bhattacherjee | Understanding information systems continuance: An expectation-confirmation model[END_REF]) that examines the nature of continued use past the point of initial adoption and the role of habit (Limayem et al.). Since a complete review of the theory is beyond the scope of the paper please refer to Venkatesh [START_REF] Venkatesh | Dead or alive? The development, trajectory and future of technology adoption research[END_REF][START_REF] Venkatesh | User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view[END_REF] and the special issue of JAIS 1 for a more extensive review of the literature in this domain.

Broadly speaking within the individual technology acceptance literature, characteristics such as habit, self-efficacy, experience, task relevance, and others are primary and important determinants of behavior regarding individual technology adoption and use [START_REF] Davis | User acceptance of computer technology: A comparison of two theoretical models[END_REF][START_REF] Venkatesh | User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view[END_REF]). This perspective specifically privileges endogenous characteristics of the individual and individual motivations in ultimately determining behavior. Characteristics such as social norms and self-image are employed as mediating or moderating roles in influencing individual perceptions of the usefulness of a specific technology or service.

Technology Diffusion

1 http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol8/iss4/ The second perspective on the spread of technology exists at a broader level and examines the factors that contribute to the manner in which technologies diffuse across a population of potential adopters. This second perspective is often referred to as the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. While developed in the late 19 th century, it is only recently that IS researchers have started examining and applying the theory. The seminal work of [START_REF] Rogers | Diffusion of innovations[END_REF] examines a large body of work in this domain and synthesizes it. Since the work of Rogers, DOI theory has been extensively applied in the context of IT [START_REF] Attewell | Technology diffusion and organizational learning: The case of business computing[END_REF][START_REF] Mcfarlan | The information archipelago--plotting a course[END_REF][START_REF] Moore | Development of an instrument to measure the perceptions of adopting an information technology innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Mustonen-Ollila | Why organizations adopt information system process innovations: a longitudinal study using Diffusion of Innovation theory[END_REF] to examine the diffusion of technological innovations and information technologies. Much of the information systems research literature has examined the adopter populations within organizations with a focus on the factors that influence adoption [START_REF] Bala | Assimilation of interorganizational business process standards[END_REF][START_REF] Lin | Interorganizational and organizational determinants of planning effectiveness for Internet-based interorganizational systems[END_REF][START_REF] Melville | Information technology innovation diffusion: an information requirements paradigm[END_REF]. However despite its extensive application and popularity, DOI has also received some criticism (Lyytinen et al. 2001b;[START_REF] Lyytinen | Inter-organizational information systems adoption -a configuration analysis approach[END_REF] noting that information technologies are often quite complex and that diffusion theories may not be sophisticated enough to address such complex technological innovations. DOI theory is especially effective at examining singular, monolithic technologies or well-defined systems with an apparent function such as TV sets or coffee makers (Lyytinen et al. 2001b). Such technologies typically rely on economies of scale on the supply side. The use of the system on the demand side is fairly independent of others' use of the same technology.

Other Related Theories

Social influence theories have also been applied to examine technology adoption among individuals with the basic premise that individual decisions and attitudes are not developed in isolation [START_REF] Salancik | A Social Information Processing Approach to Job Attitudes and Task Design[END_REF]. Individuals refer to a social context and environmental cues in order to aid in the decision making process. Social and structural cues are conveyed through the social relations that individuals share and behavioral grammars reflect the influencers' autonomy, consistency or rigidity [START_REF] Kraut | Varieties of Social Influence: The Role of Utility and Norms in the Success of a New Communication Medium[END_REF]. Social influence and social information processing theories do lend insight into examining use and adoption behaviors of individuals; but while it explains certain types of use, it does not explain non-use by individuals that exist in similar social contexts.

Critical mass theories of information technology postulate that mass adoption and diffusion of technologies take place based on momentum built up by a social system. The momentum builds up based on social factors within a system such as size, interrelatedness of individuals and levels of communication. Critical mass theories also suggest that there is a point at which enough users have adopted an innovation or technology that the acceleration of adoption process is selfsustaining [START_REF] Sledgianowski | Using social network sites: the effects of playfulness, critical mass and trust in a hedonic context[END_REF] which is also referred to as the "bandwagon effect" [START_REF] Peng | Critical Mass, Diffusion Channels, and Digital Divide[END_REF]. Critical mass theories have also been examined in the context of adoption of new telecommunication services [START_REF] Mahler | The diffusion of interactive communication innovations and the critical mass: the adoption of telecommunications services by German banks[END_REF], online gaming [START_REF] Hsu | Why do people play on-line games? An extended TAM with social influences and flow experience[END_REF]), contribution to public knowledge databases [START_REF] Peddibhotla | Contributing to public document repositories: A critical mass theory perspective[END_REF], adoption of EDI systems [START_REF] Iacovou | Electronic data interchange and small organizations: Adoption and impact of technology[END_REF] and more. These studies highlight the self-sustaining effects that adoption behavior of certain technologies may have. [START_REF] Markus | Toward a "critical mass" theory of interactive media[END_REF] proposed a critical mass theory for interactive media where she suggests that examining individuals' technology adoption and use decisions may not be sufficient to predict behavior at the community level due to the interdependence in the use of certain technologies. This suggests that certain information and communication technologies need to have a unique lens applied to examine their adoption and diffusion processes.

Revisiting the Assumptions of TAM and DOI

In the TAM approach to the adoption of innovations and technologies, individual characteristics are the primary determinant of individual adoption and use behavior. The limitation of such a theory is that the individual is the primary unit of analysis without an examination of the embeddedness [START_REF] Granovetter | The Strength of Weak Ties[END_REF] of the individual in the context of their social networks. The role of social networks and embeddedness in such theories takes the form of subjective norms through which influence operates [START_REF] Vannoy | The social influence model of technology adoption[END_REF]. DOI theory has been found as ineffective when examining diffusion of complex, networked information technologies (Lyytinen et al. 2001b). In examining the adopter population, individuals are treated as relatively isolated from the group, thereby separating them from the social setting in which they are embedded. By treating individuals as independent in their adoption behavior, the TAM and DOI perspectives do not focus on the interplay between users and between user behaviors [START_REF] Benbasat | Quo vadis, TAM[END_REF] that involve more than one system and might involve an infrastructure of systems. This is a specific neglect of group, social and cultural aspects of decision-making behavior and a lack of examination of self-regulation processes [START_REF] Bagozzi | The legacy of the technology acceptance model and a proposal for a paradigm shift[END_REF]. Traditional TAM and DOI models are less suitable in situations where adoption decisions are joint processes of decision-making or "we-intention" [START_REF] Bagozzi | The legacy of the technology acceptance model and a proposal for a paradigm shift[END_REF], that are rooted in a collective intention to adopt. Attention paid to the collective or "we-intention" examines the role of valence or feelings that individuals in a group have to each other and to choices of the group on the intention to adopt a technology [START_REF] Sarker | Technology adoption by groups: A valence perspective[END_REF]. "We-intention" or "we-ness" refers to the interdependence of individuals in making technology adoption decisions where relational linkages play a key role [START_REF] Sarker | An Alternative to Methodological Individualism: A Non-Reductionist Approach to Studying Technoogy Adoption by Groups[END_REF].

Furthermore, TAM and associated theories of adoption do not adequately explain why parts of the population are more likely to adopt the technology or service and the other parts of the population less so, despite sharing similar individual characteristics (Lyytinen et al. 2001a). While they do a good job of explaining why specific individuals adopt technologies and service, they do a relatively poor job of understanding and explaining why others do not adopt a technology or service despite being similar and belonging to the same pool of potential adopters (Lyytinen et al. 2001a).

The Nature of Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms refer to technological and social infrastructures that are used to support specific and generalized modes of communication and collaboration between distributed individuals that share a common interest. They are also avenues for content generation where persons individually and collaboratively create, contribute and build on others' information contribution. Social media has been described as having the unique feature of "active creation of content by their users or members" [START_REF] Scott | Getting the truth': exploring the material grounds of institutional dynamics in social media[END_REF] where the creation of content takes place through the building and maintaining of social networks and relations. Social media or social media platforms are collective, distributed and fluid, and as such are both complex and highly topical. While social media and social media technologies are easier to distinguish from traditional computer mediated communication environments, they are harder to distinguish from one another [START_REF] Hanna | We're all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem[END_REF]. Social media technologies enhance communication effectiveness with customers and make them part of the organization's environment. The technologies extend the organization's antenna and moves it closer to the customer [START_REF] Jones | Corporate reputation in the era of Web 2.0: the case of Primark[END_REF]). The social media technologies described, and the organizations and social networks adopting them, are presented with several opportunities and challenges. Several strategies [START_REF] Dutta | What's Your Personal Social Media Strategy?[END_REF]) have actively been developed for managing the social media technology environment ranging from personal to professional and private to public.

A honey comb structure (Figure 1) can be used to represent the various capabilities of social media and social media platforms [START_REF] Kietzmann | Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media[END_REF]. The structure encapsulates seven functional capabilities that social media may have. These capabilities are presence, sharing, relationships, identity, conversations, groups and reputation. The identity component represents the extent to which users reveal their identities in the social media setting such as disclosing their name, age and other personal information. Conversations represent the extent and abilities of the system to enable users to communicate with other users in the social media and social media environment. Sharing represents the extent to which users exchange, distribute and receive content. Social media is based around the social interconnectedness between individuals and consequently sharing forms an important part of social media and social media environments. Presence represents the capability in the system to inform the users as to whether other users are accessible within the system. Identifying co-presence in virtual environments such as social media and social media platforms the relationships components represents the extent to which individuals can relate to or establish relationships with other users. This represents the sociality component of social media. Reputation is the extent to which users can identify the standing of others in a social media and social media setting. Groups represent the extent to which users can form communities and subgroups within the social media and social media setting.

These 7 elements of the honeycomb structure represent characteristics and functionalities that are present within applications of the social media ecosystem. Various tools provide combinations of these functionalities to achieve their intended purpose. For instance, Facebook is based around the characteristic of relationships but goes on to provide functionality in the domains of identity, reputation, conversations and presence. Foursquare, another social media and social media tool is based around the notion of presence but also provides functionality around the notions of identity and relationships. The value to the users of social platforms is based on their appropriation of the functionalities based on individual use behavior or network appropriations based on number of their friends, family and colleagues they can communicate and collaborate with, within the specific social media platform. Thus while a single individual may be mobile across social media platforms, the social network and an individual's interactions with that network are locked into the specific platform used by the social network. Subsequently an individual's use of social media platforms is poised between individual use of functionalities and network use based on their communication and information needs with the relevant social networks.

Differentiating Social media Platforms from other technologies

Social media platforms are complex and are composed of disparate and fragmented networked systems that are the infrastructure on which social networks create content, communicate and collaborate. Individuals are not isolated on social media platforms. Architectures of participation and networks of users are fundamental to the notion of "collective intelligence" that form the basis of social media platforms (O'Reilly 2005). Social media platforms as infrastructures bind social networks together through which existing and new social relations are established and maintained. Network externalities result from the use of systems by friends, neighbors and families of individuals and consequently make social media platforms more valuable.

In addition to the network effects that are inherent in social media platforms; social networks add their own unique twist to technology adoption. Social networks are important in social media services since they are likely the first and major sources of influence in adoption decisions. The local configuration of relationships and the social network's adoption of technology represents a "we-intention" [START_REF] Bagozzi | The legacy of the technology acceptance model and a proposal for a paradigm shift[END_REF]) on part of the social network. The migration of traditional social networks of friends, colleagues, family and acquaintances to digital networks has often resulted in the clash of these various networks. In addition to making the various social networks available on common technological platforms, these networks now are visible to each other. The availability and visibility of social networks however come at a price; the flattening or collapsing of the relationships into single homogeneous relationships, resulting in uncomfortable experiences with them [START_REF] Boyd | None of this is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster[END_REF]. Furthermore, [START_REF] Boyd | None of this is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster[END_REF] found that in the case of Friendster, the social network of individuals played a significant role in both the initial and second phases of adoption. This adoption was prior to the discussion in popular media, and invitation to use the service was based on whether your friends considered you a fit within the specific community that you were invited to. The observation that individuals belong to several social networks; e.g., professional, sports, relatives etc., suggests that social networks may adopt different social media platforms for supporting their social relations. This may mean that an individual may adopt several such platforms, essentially one for each network that they participate in or belong to. Thus the social network must form the key factor in the adoption of social media platforms, given the network effects associated with them.

The honeycomb framework that was described in figure 1 identifies several functional characteristics of social media platforms. These characteristics are centered on the affordances provided to the individual by social media platforms. While the affordances and functional capabilities of social media are individual centered, they are also relationship and network oriented. For instance, the functional capability of sharing which is the ability to exchange and distribute content is provided by the social media platform to the individual, but the exchanging and distribution of the content can either be one-to-one, one-to-many or one-to-all. Similarly, presence, a functional capability provided to the individual to communicate with and share presence information with others highlights the individual use nature of social media platforms while conversations highlights the social network oriented nature of social media platforms.

Research Method

Through a field study, we examine the central thesis in this paper, which is that social media platforms exist within a duality of individual use and social network adoption. The field study allows us to examine the context of adoption, and the adoption and use process of the social network's use of social media platforms [START_REF] Lee | A scientific methodology for MIS case studies[END_REF][START_REF] Yin | Case Study Research: Design and Methods Sage Publications[END_REF].

Field study design

We employed semi-structured interviews as a data collection technique. The semi-structured interview started by focusing on the broad concept of the study and then narrowed down into specific instantiations of the adoption of social media by the interviewees. We started by probing into the use of social media and other communication technologies by the individual. We then asked the individual to describe the specific technologies in detail with emphasis on the social media technologies that specific groups and cliques employ in the interviewee's network. As such we asked for an individual interviewee to speak on the various social networks he or she may be participating in and his or her adoption and use of the social media platform for these networks.

Data collection

This field study was conducted in a university setting. This setting is appropriate for data collection purposes as such populations are likely to use the social media services and are more amenable to having their behavior and use. The informants employ a variety of communication technologies and of course belong to a number of social networks. We probed the informant about the communication technologies their social networks employed, and for each social network that the person named we asked:

1. The genesis, name, size and history of the social network 2. The social network´s general use of social media platforms and other communication technologies 3. The date of initiation and the adoption among the members of the social network 4. The number of close friends, followers and relationships the social network has. 5. If there is a core of strong ties that forms the network, and what weak ties are common 6. How the members of the social network previously communicated.

The interviews lasted between 30 to 45 minutes. The interviewees were recruited from a marketing class. Students were invited to participate in the study by one of the authors.

Data analysis

We employ vignettes [START_REF] Avital | From generative fit to generative capacity: exploring an emerging dimension of information systems design and task performance[END_REF][START_REF] Jarvenpaa | The use of collaborative electronic media for information sharing: an exploratory study of determinants[END_REF] to describe the adoption and use of social media platforms by social networks and individuals. We start by discussing the data analysis process and the manner by which various vignettes were constructed. We then proceed to discuss the vignettes that were elicited.

Method

Vignettes are used to illustrate the complex use of social media platforms. Our analysis of the observed social networks has been summarized in four vignettes. The interview subjects themselves did not provide the vignettes that are described. These vignettes were constructed by the authors from the narratives described by the interviewees and are used to illustrate the Janusfaced nature of social media platforms.

The vignettes were identified based on questions discussed previously. The interviewees were asked to respond to the questions and upon identification of a specific network, were asked to detail specific characteristics of the network and the communication tool used therein. When the interviewee provided a social network that employed the social media platform as a tool, they were asked about the unique characteristic or feature of the tool they employed for that social network and the reason why such a feature was employed. This enquiry process across all the interviews provided opportunities for the interviewees to reflect on their unique experience as it relates to social media. It also allowed researchers to focus on both the overlapping and unique characteristics of social media platform use. Interviewees identified several overlapping vignettes and a few unique ones. The vignettes subsequently represent the various manners of use of the social media platform by the interviewees. We use the vignettes as short illustrations of these use scenarios. These vignettes are summarized in Table 1. Prior to the actual discussion of communication and social media technology use, the interviewees were asked to describe their daily use of the Internet and other IT. All interviewees were very accomplished with respect to communication and social media technologies. Most if not all of them spent several hours a day on the Internet. The time they spent on the Internet was a combination of school activities, job activities and hedonic activities. They attempted to articulate the amount of time spent on each of these activities but were cognizant of the fact that the manner in which they allocate time to each of these specific activities was fluid. They switched seamlessly between the activities. The interviewees were highly fluent in the use of computer and communication technologies such as phone calls, e-mail, SMS, internet chat, Voice over IP calls and social media environments such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. They often employed more than one form of communication technology and were able to articulate the communication and social media technologies effectively. Most of them spent about 25-50% of their daily time on the Internet on communicative activities.

Vignette 1: Social media is a Communication and Coordination Medium

This vignette focuses on one specific social network that was formed during participation in a Jewish summer camp and it illuminates how a social network uses a social media platform as a communication and coordination medium. The social network is made up of people that were present at the camp during the same summer. After the camp, communication in the social network was through e-mail threads used to sustain conversation or initiate new communication.

Any new communication would employ previous threads to start the communicative or coordinative activity. This e-mail thread switched over to a Facebook group in 2006. When the core of the camp network moved to Facebook, the remainder of the cohort were de facto forced to drop the use of e-mail chains to communicate and started employing the Facebook Social media platforms to communicate in the social network. Furthermore new camp networks form their own social networks within the Facebook platform and employ the platform to communicate and coordinate their activities. These activities may include future summer camp participation, visits to Israel, parties and events, travels abroad, etc. In addition to the network of the summer camp, high school cohort and soccer club networks also communicate through the Facebook Social media platform.

While the familial and friend networks of the informants may employ the more traditional modes of communication, other networks employ social media based platforms. For instance, squashbased social networks rely on weak ties to organize games that rely on Facebook-based social media platform to schedule court times.

The visibility that the social media platform provides exposes the various social networks to each other. Despite the exposure of these networks to each other, observation and communication across the social network is based on participation in the social media platform. The Facebook platform is primarily used for monitoring purposes.

Vignette 2: Social media is a Relational Continuance Device

Illustrative of social networks employing social media platforms as a relational continuance device we find that high school and secondary school social networks that use the platform. On these platforms the social networks communicate on a one-to-one or a one-to-many basis.

A university cohort social network that we identified through the interviews interacts through Facebook. Facebook use by the network is simultaneously private to the individual, while also being public. Parts of the social network like to flaunt behavior across the remainder of the social network while parts of the social network remain very subdued. Flaunting behavior is performed through sharing photos, videos and other types of provocative posts. Parts of the social network that flaunt, and the related commenting and posting behavior inform the remainder of the social network as to who is doing what and where. Facebook is used to observe the social network and occasionally touch them through the use of the commenting and the liking feature. The maintenance of relational linkages is dispersed, and social networks take place through the social media platform. Although the platform is not used for communication and coordination activities, it serves as a way to observe individuals in the network and as a way to maintain conversational and relational continuance through other modes of communication. In this vignette we saw the social media platform employed to maintain relational linkages across a specific network. These relational linkages are the weak ties that allow individuals to pick up lost threads of conversation.

Vignette 3: Social media as an Observational Platform

Some social networks use Facebook and LinkedIn as an observational platform rather than for direct and frequent interaction. Social networks employ these platforms to passively share information about their recent activities, and acts of direct communication or close coordination in the social network get transferred from the social media platforms to the more traditional modes of communication. For instance, informants have professional circles on LinkedIn and these professional circles include social networks of software developers, engineers and IT specialists. These social networks are referred to as a job opportunity networks. These social networks employ the social media platform to monitor the job opportunities and career opportunities that may be accessed through the network and platform.

In the case of our informants, various social networks are accessed through social media platforms. The social media platform affords them the observational capability to peek into their social networks. Facebook is a platform through which interviewees observe the network at a distance and subsequently take direct communicative action. On the other hand, colleague-based social networks are within the LinkedIn social media platform. The informants for this vignette belong to social networks that employ social media technologies such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Vignette 4: Social media is an Emerging Social Infrastructure

Social networks are diverse, fluid, geographically dispersed and are continually added to with new individuals. Fluid social networks are only one type of social network; social networks may also be highly stable and static. Static and stable social networks are typically family, extended family and high and secondary school networks.

The social networks described by our informants employ social media platforms to observe their networks but rely on traditional modes of communication for in-depth communication and coordination. However, specific networks encourage peripheral members of the network to communicate on social media platforms. While some networks treat Facebook as an observational platform they are aware of the need to engage further with their social network through the use of these platforms. They are aware of the increasing number of "friends" on these platforms and the need to interact with them. The social media platforms are an emergent social infrastructure for social networks in which they need to participate to potentially leverage their connections. For instance, the colleague social circle on LinkedIn is one that recognizes that such platforms provide access to a broad range of social networks that may be leveraged.

Social networks also use the social media platform to maintain relational continuance. Relational continuance in the network is important for participation in projects. For example, maintaining weak ties and awareness of the social network allows the network to function after the study abroad programs come to a close. In addition to maintaining relational continuance through these platforms, image projection on these platforms is also vital in maintaining certain social networks. The social network's continued engagement with the medium suggests that it recognizes the resources that are available through the social infrastructure embedded in these social media platforms.

Analysis and Discussion

The vignettes presented by the interviewees may be analyzed from two separate but complementary perspectives i.e. that of individual use and that of network-based adoption.

Our informants were quite capable of differentiating between the social media platforms they used and the social networks that they belonged to. They were also able to clearly articulate the adoption rationale, general use, benefits and barriers on behalf of the social network in their search for a suitable social media platform. We find in our research that the information and communication technologies adopted and used by individuals in the network in some instances were subsumed by the greater wishes of the social network. This is an interesting phenomenon where a higher level entity (the social network) is created by lower level entities (individuals and their relations), yet the higher level entity cannot be reduced to its parts [START_REF] Andersen | Downward Causation: Minds, bodies and matter[END_REF].

Furthermore the higher-level entity has a direct causal effect on the lower level parts´ behavior that created the higher-level entity in the first place, which is called downward causation. Here is means that the social network which is itself the result of many individuals and their mutual relations, exercises behavioral constraints on the very same individuals that constitute it.

The vignettes for social media as a communication and coordination medium and as a relational continuance device illustrate that the social network of the individual dictates adoption. This social network may be real or imagined on the part of the individual. Thus individuals that employ social media for these purposes employ the functional characteristics [START_REF] Kietzmann | Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media[END_REF] of conversation, groups, sharing and relationships to maintain and establish connections to their social networks. Vignette 1 illustrates this point as the grouping and conversation functionality of the Facebook social media technology was employed to participate in the social network of a high school camp. However vignette 1 also illustrates the individual use of the social media platform to establish and maintain presence on social media platforms. This presence can take many forms including the formation and maintenance of identities through the use of profiles or the monitoring of other identities and profiles. Consequently, the individual use of the social media platform takes place within the process of coordination within the social media platform.

Individual interviewees stated at several instances their conflicting use of social media vis-à-vis their adoption behavior. The quotes illustrate the manner in which individual use of the platform may not correspond with characteristics that the platform has despite these very characteristics driving adoption behavior.

"You have friends you want to talk to and you have friends you don't want to talk to"….Udi "I'm using Facebook to be social and show my life, there are some people I don't care for looking at my photos, so, I have been deleting a lot of friends"….Jannik

Vignette 2 describes the unique role that social media platforms play in maintaining social networks. These social networks are a result of dynamic and static ties between individuals but become a phenomenon of its own right. Naturally individuals belong to many such networks, some of which are very stable and established, and some of which are dynamic and much more fluid. Living in a digitalized age, digital natives employ information and communication technologies to establish, maintain and develop these social networks with social media being the most recent and principal of these technologies. As a relational continuance device the interviewees employed the relationship functional characteristic of the technology to create and maintain ties to other individuals within their social network. However their adoption and use of the social media platform was conditioned based on the existence of the social network on the platform.

However, the relationship continuance based on participation within social networks is moderated by the types of participants with whom individuals wish to interact. Individual use of the social media platform is moderated by the ease within which relationships are formed within the platforms. As the quotes illustrate, individuals condition their use based on the adoption by large parts of the network. Vignette 3 illustrates the role of social media as observational platforms for dynamic social networks. Social media platforms serve as an observational platform where the individual can observe the changing nature of relationships and the formation of new ones through the use of the social media platform. As a communication and coordination medium, social media platforms offer the individual transparency. Communication in the social network on social media platforms is transparent to the entire global network. The boundaries of the network are porous and the addition of new members to the network may also be actively encouraged.

While individuals may adopt social media as an observation platform, the use of the media as such a platform does not necessarily imply they employ other communicative characteristics of the platform. Interviewees describe the use of the platform as observational and then the use of other media modes as a way to communicate and coordinate. Vignette 4 describes the social media platform as an emerging social infrastructure for the informal social networks. Relations are significantly altered when moved into the social media platform. On this platform, social networks participate by exposing some of the private into the public and as such expose the social networks to each other. One manner in which to manage this would be to maintain several social media platforms as infrastructure in which to manage networks. As we find, our informants' social networks do so by maintaining several networks in the social media platform, or by having more than one social media platforms as a basis for their social networks.

However individual use of the platform is constrained by the exposure the networks have to one another. Several interviewees exhibited concern that their relatives, family and other networks may get to see their behavior and participation with friends in other settings. Specifically individuals who employed the platform to communicate and interact with several social networks reflected this concern. Despite the adoption of the platform to maintain a social infrastructure by individuals, this participation constrained their individual use of the platform by constraining their use of characteristics and features.

Conclusions

In this paper we specifically examine the tension between individual use and network-based adoption of social media platforms. The social network is an emergent entity of many individuals and their relations, yet it cannot be reduced to its constituent parts. Adoption perspectives on social media discuss the role that network effects and network behavior have on the adoption of the technology by the individual. The network lens drives us towards examining relations and relational structures that comprise groups and social networks. Consequently adoption behavior of individuals within social media platforms follows related network structures and relationships. However the adoption of a social media platform by an individual due to network behaviors constrains the use of the platform by the same individuals. These tensions have been referred to as socially mediated publicness [START_REF] Baym | Socially Mediated Publicness: An Introduction[END_REF] where collapsing contexts requires differing strategies on parts of individuals. We attempt to explore these strategies on the part of individuals and to explore how individuals manage or attempt to manage identities, relationships, and information in such social media platforms. While some individuals display behaviors of closing down communication and coordination on these platforms due to concerns of visibility [START_REF] Marwick | There Isn't Wifi in Heaven!" Negotiating Visibility on Facebook Memorial Pages[END_REF]) others may choose strategies that are more suited to their concerns. Such strategies may take many forms that use affordances and characteristics of the technology to engage in posturing, power aggrandizement and reputation management [START_REF] Lim | Facework on Facebook: The Online Publicness of Juvenile Delinquents and Youths-at-Risk[END_REF]. As the vignettes illustrate, the adoption of social media platforms have several facets, but each vignette illustrates the Janus-faced nature of the platform.

Vignette 1 illustrates the adoption of the technology as a communication and coordination medium but its affordances simultaneously constrain its use. Vignette 2 illustrates the adoption of the platform to maintain relationships but the use of the technology by individuals creates numerous relationships that are hard to distinguish and necessitate corrective behaviors in the part of individuals. Vignette 3 illustrates use of social media as an observational platform; however, the very act of observation is an act of communication that individuals are not comfortable with.

And finally Vignette 4 illustrates the use of the platform as emerging social infrastructure; however, their use in such a form implies exposure of networks to one another.

The challenges of examining social media platforms with such an approach is that it requires researchers to focus on two fundamentally related processes, i.e. adoption and use. The primary question that emerges from the examination of this tension is; how do individuals make sense of conflicting goals within the adoption and use of social media platforms? While previous research may have examined social media adoption through individualistic lenses, they have included certain social network components in their analysis. Our focus has been to examine the individual use of the platform within the context of network-based adoption. We find that the tension between network-based adoption by individuals and individual use, points to interesting dynamics within the adoption and use of social media and the understanding of such dynamics may aid in understanding the success and failures of such technologies.

Fig 1 .

 1 Fig 1. Social Media Functionality

Table 1 .

 1 Characteristics of the four vignettes

	Vignette	Social network	Representative	Social media	Frequency
				platform
	As a	Jewish Summer	Udi	Facebook	A few times a
	Communication	Camp, High school			week
	and Coordination	cohort and Soccer	Jannik
	Medium	Team
	As a Relational	University Cohort	Shu	Facebook	A few times a
	Continuance				week
	Device
	As an	Squash Team,	Casper	Facebook	A few times a
	Observational	College Network	Udi		month
	Platform	Professional	Khaled	LinkedIn	Once a week
		Network
	As Emerging	Family and friends	Casper	Facebook,	A few times a
	Social		Khaled	LinkedIn	month
	Infrastructure		Shu

  "I use Facebook for pictures mainly, vacation pictures, party pictures, videos, YouTube videos. I don't post on Facebook. I generally post once or twice a month." "I don't talk to them on Facebook. I use it to see what is going on and then send them an e-mail."….Casper "I prefer the use of closed forums."….Khaled