The impacts of social media bandwagon cues on public demand for regulatory intervention during corporate crises

In the social media era, a growing number of corporate crises are entwined with salient social issues. To address such crises, publics may demand their government take action with regulations, legislation or public policy remediation. Through two online experiments in China, this study investigates how social media bandwagon cues contribute to public demand for regulatory intervention during corporate crises. This study finds that a social media post collecting a great number of likes, comments and shares (i.e., high levels of bandwagon cues) can directly lead to increased public demand. This study also reveals significant mediating roles of perceived crisis severity and publics' responsibility attributions to dual agents—an in-crisis company and social systems wherein the company operates. When publics are exposed to a post with high levels of bandwagon cues, they perceive greater crisis severity, which in turn increases their responsibility attribution to the company and to social systems. The heightened responsibility attribution then spills over to public demand. Moreover, crisis blame frames of the post content moderated the effects of bandwagon cues on publics' attribution to social systems and subsequent public demand.     

A regression approach to testing genetic influence on communication behavior: Social media use as an example

A behavior genetics perspective suggests both social and biological forces influence human behavior, including highly specialized media and communication behaviors. In this paper, I use a behavior genetics framework and twin study data from the 2013 Midlife in the United States (MIDUS III) survey to examine how both environmental and genetic factors contribute to social media use. By applying a straightforward—and easily replicable—analytical extension to linear regression called DeFries-Fulker (DF) regression, I demonstrate that approximately one-to two-thirds of variance in social media use is attributable to additive genetic traits; unique and shared environmental factors account for the remainder of variance. In addition to showing social media use is partially motivated by underlying genetic traits, this paper, more importantly, provides an analytical blueprint for using DF regression in future investigations of genetic influence on communication behaviors and media effects.     

Past,present, and future barriers to digital transformation in manufacturing: A review

Research in digital transformation (DT) is burgeoning. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has not only influenced both day-to-day functions of firms dramatically, but also their efforts to become more digitally mature. In this review paper, we discuss the barriers to DT before, during, and what may well continue after the COVID-19 pandemic and offer a new strategy discipline—Strategic Doing—that may be useful to manufacturing firms in achieving successful DT. We discuss the divergent definitions and drivers of DT diving deep into the barriers for manufacturing firms to mature digitally. We briefly describe digital readiness and current efforts of DT in manufacturing while describing the impact of COVID-19 on DT initiatives. We conclude by describing Strategic Doing and suggesting new paths for research in this area.     

Identification and analyses of job difficulty dimensions An empirical study

A study was conducted to identify what job incumbent's interpret as dimensions of job difficulty. In this study job difficulty is defined as a job activity that requires significant physical and/or mental effort to complete. First, interviews, card sorting, and categorization procedures were used with randomly selected staff nurses in three hospitals to develop an occupation specific job difficulty composite scale. The scale was then administered to 130 medical-surgical staff nurses. Factor analysis revealed three job difficulty dimensions for nurses—overload, conflict, head nurse practices, Second, ANOVA and stepwise multiple regression were used to examine the relationships between the factor analytically derived dimensions and satisfaction, commitment, job tension, and performance ratings. It was determined that the various dimensions were differentially related to the various outcome measures.     

Can crisis management teams mitigate COVID-19's effects? A comparative case study between China and the United States

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the world's greatest challenge since World War II. As an unprecedented global public health crisis, crisis management teams (CMTs) in the infected countries need to rethink to cope with the similar uncertainty and urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The shared context of COVID-19 allows us to explore a cross-nation study of different constructs and CMT to communicate information about crises with the public effectively. Since the pandemic affected all countries, the comparison is warranted. Can CMTs mitigate the effects of COVID-19? Based on the analysis of China and the US cases, our study explores how shared and common knowledge cognition among crisis responders plays a pivotal role in effective CMTs' communication while technological failures and inadequate information disrupt the system, worsening pandemics like COVID-19. Furthermore, organizational dysfunction, such as institutional fragmentation, regulatory hurdles and bureaucratic arrogance, impede effective communication between CMTs. However, effective coordination and decisive leadership could improve coordination effectiveness and reduce crisis costs.     

Tweeting during food crises: A psychosocial analysis of threat coping expressions in Spain,during the 2011 European EHEC outbreak

Food crises imply responses that are not what people and organisations would normally do, if one or more threats (health, economic, etc.) were not present. At an individual level, this motivates individuals to implement coping strategies aimed at adaptation to the threat that has been presented, as well as the reduction of stressful experiences. In this regard, microblogging channels such as Twitter emerge as a valuable resource to access individuals' expressions of coping. Accordingly, Twitter expressions are generally more natural, spontaneous and heterogeneous — in cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions — than expressions found on other types of social media (e.g. blogs). Moreover, as a social media channel, it provides access not only to an individual but also to a social level of analysis, i.e. a psychosocial media analysis. To show the potential in this regard, our study analysed Twitter messages produced by individuals during the 2011 EHEC/Escherichia coli bacteria outbreak in Europe, due to contaminated food products. This involved more than 3100 cases of bloody diarrhoea and 850 of haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), and 53 confirmed deaths across the EU. Based on data collected in Spain, the country initially thought to be the source of the outbreak, an initial quantitative analysis considered 11,411 tweets, of which 2099 were further analysed through a qualitative content analysis. This aimed at identifying (1) the ways of coping expressed during the crisis; and (2) how uncertainty about the contaminated product, expressed through hazard notifications, influenced the former. Results revealed coping expressions as being dynamic, flexible and social, with a predominance of accommodation, information seeking and opposition (e.g. anger) strategies. The latter were more likely during a period of uncertainty, with the opposite being true for strategies relying on the identification of the contaminated product (e.g. avoid consumption/purchase). Implications for food crisis communication and monitoring systems are discussed.     

Belief revision in structured probabilistic argumentation

In real-world applications, knowledge bases consisting of all the available information for a specific domain, along with the current state of affairs, will typically contain contradictory data, coming from different sources, as well as data with varying degrees of uncertainty attached. An important aspect of the effort associated with maintaining such knowledge bases is deciding what information is no longer useful; pieces of information may be outdated; may come from sources that have recently been discovered to be of low quality; or abundant evidence may be available that contradicts them. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic structured argumentation framework that arises from the extension of Presumptive Defeasible Logic Programming (PreDeLP) with probabilistic models, and argue that this formalism is capable of addressing these basic issues. The formalism is capable of handling contradictory and uncertain data, and we study non-prioritized belief revision over probabilistic PreDeLP programs that can help with knowledge-base maintenance. For belief revision, we propose a set of rationality postulates — based on well-known ones developed for classical knowledge bases — that characterize how these belief revision operations should behave, and study classes of operators along with theoretical relationships with the proposed postulates, including representation theorems stating the equivalence between classes of operators and their associated postulates. We then demonstrate how our framework can be used to address the attribution problem in cyber security/cyber warfare.     

Civil liability for misuse of online communication through websites: an analytical study of UAE law

ABSTRACT

This paper takes the UAE legal system as case in point to illustrate certain challenges posed for jurists by the spread of the Internet. Since it enables large-scale participatory multimedia content production, the Internet is surrounded by regulatory safeguards for ensuring its public accountability. In the UAE, the National Media Council holds responsibility for licensing media outlets, including online ones, and for overseeing content published therein. Together, legal disciplines on content, regulatory accountability frameworks and the collaborative nature of Internet content production form the context in which existing regimes, such as for civil liability (tort), call for interpretive adaptation. This is what this paper undertakes, with respect to civil liability claims for misuse of online communication through websites. A close analytical study of UAE law helps clarify how civil liability is established and apportioned between the National Media Council (vicarious liability), media outlets and individual users, alongside other findings.     

Beyond Bandwidth: Dimensions of Connection in Interpersonal Communication

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a keystone of computer-supported collaborative work. Current CMC theory utilizes an information channel metaphor in which media vary according to how well they afford the transfer of messages in the channel, i.e., bandwidth. This paper draws attention to a different aspect of communication argued to be equally important: a relation between people that defines a state of communicative readiness in which fruitful communication is likely. Drawing on research on instant messaging (Nardi et al., 2000) and face to face communication (Nardi et al., 2002; Nardi and Whittaker, 2003), as well as related literature, three dimensions of connection that activate readiness are proposed: affinity, commitment, and attention. These dimensions comprise a field of connection between dyads. A field of connection is conceptualized as a labile, multidimensional space in which the values of the dimensions vary according to the history of communicative activity. Affinity, commitment, and attention are constantly monitored, negotiated, and managed through social bonding, expression of commitment, and capture of attention. The management of fields of connection requires significant interactional work to sustain communication over time.     

Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin's Sources on Twitter During the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions

News sourcing practices are critical as they shape from whom journalists get their information and what information they obtain, mostly from elite sources. This study evaluates whether social media platforms expand the range of actors involved in the news through a quantitative content analysis of the sources cited by NPR's Andy Carvin on Twitter during the Arab Spring. Results show that, on balance, nonelite sources had a greater representation in the content than elite sources. Alternative actors accounted for nearly half of the messages. The study points to the innovative forms of production that can emerge with new communication technologies, with the journalist as a central node trusted to authenticate and interpret news flows on social awareness streams.     

Improving automated crisis detection via an improved understanding of crisis language: Linguistic categories in social media crises

By applying the Linguistic Category Model (LCM) in crisis communication, this study explores the potential of verb tracking on social media to examine how linguistic categories can elucidate the intentional and/or unintentional communication of crisis attribution frames. Through a content analysis, linguistic categories used in both media posts reporting three clusters of crisis and public comments on Facebook were examined. Results indicated that linguistic abstraction in both media post and public comments describing the crisis varied based on crisis cluster, suggesting that the level of linguistic abstraction reflected perceived attribution of responsibility through stability, locus and controllability. Language used to describe preventable crisis tend to be more abstract than those used to describe accidental and victim crisis. Findings of this study empirically tested the integration of LCM in crisis communication and implied potential application of LCM in building automated environmental scanning and crisis prediction systems.     

The US cryptographic export debate — Round five?

The problems with export of cryptographic products started many years ago (1937) with the US Government realization that if cryptographic technologies were to become rampant, US security would be compromised for lack of knowledge on what adversaries and persons who wished harm on the US and its interests. Of course, there are many arguments on hows and whys, but the basic problem is that of law and what the US Government perceives to be a threat to the national security of the US.     

从“人本位”到“主客关系”的思考——刍议设计之沟通观念

本文以"人本位"设计理念为出发点,以设计中"主客体关系"为切入点,以链接设计的主体(设计者)和客体(客户、用户)间的"沟通"元素为立足点。阐述设计沟通的基本形式,及其内在规律性、相互关联性等问题。并试图说明沟通行为在设计活动中的地位与所起到的积极作用。     

Corporate Social Responsibility in Innovation: Insights from two Cases of Syngenta's Activities in Genetically Modified Organisms

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) implies that companies have collective responsibility beyond legal requirements. This ‘beyond’ can be described along the ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability (social, environmental and economic dimensions). Dealing with these dimensions is under discussion in societies and some propose the stakeholder concept as a framework for companies to identify their responsibilities. However, who counts as a key stakeholder and what is a legitimate stake are difficult to determine. This article discusses reasons, possibilities and difficulties of managing responsibility in innovation, taking two cases of genetically modified organisms as examples. It is argued that the stakeholder approach is necessary to provide different perspectives, but is not enough or even completely unsuitable for defining responsibilities. Moral responsibility involves judgement that differs between stakeholders and might vary over time, owing to emerging insights and changing priorities. Therefore, pursuing or abandoning a particular project does not constitute a responsible organization; rather, it is the preparation of decisions, accountability and the resulting pattern of behaviour that renders an organization responsible. The various notions of responsibility set the scene for discussion but do not provide a clear answer to the questions of right or wrong and good or ill intent. Key conclusions are that companies need to organize for responsibility and that responsibility needs to be complemented with accountability.     

On the classification of telework

Information and communication technology (ICT) provides organizations with a whole range of new possibilities for performing work and structuring the organization. The technical, and to a certain extent the organizational development, has been rapid and there has not been the time for any consensus on concepts to evolve. This article is concentrated to a limited part of the area of organizations and ICT, telework and concepts related to telework. It is argued that many of these concepts—notably telework—have been used by so many authors in so many different ways that they have lost their specifity. They are defined in so many ways in different studies that they in each instance need to be further defined to clarify exactly what is being studied. The aim of the article is therefore not to propose new definitions but to show instead how it is possible to discriminate among telework situations by using dimensions, along which new ways of doing work can be further specified. We distinguish among forms of organizations such as telecommuting, multiflex, mobile work, satellite office, and virtual organization. We also discuss concepts regarding work places, such as neighbourhood work centres, resort offices, satellite work centres and mobile workplaces. We discriminate between the telework situations by discussing dimensions for forms of organization and workplaces, respectively.     

How good is good enough? Metrics for worm/anti-worm evaluation

Self-replicating code is a huge problem worldwide, with worms like SQL/Slammer becoming pandemic within minutes of their initial release. Because of this, there has been significant interest in worm spread and how this spread is affected by various countermeasures. However, to date, comparative analysis of spread has been carried out “by eye”—there exist no meaningful metrics by which one can quantitatively compare the effectiveness of different protection paradigms. In this paper, we discuss several possible metrics for measuring worm spread and countermeasure effectiveness. We note that the “correct” metric for comparative purposes will vary depending on the goal of the defender, and provide several different measures which can be used to compare countermeasures. Finally, we discuss the idea of significance—that is, what changes induced by worm design or countermeasures are actually meaningful in the real world?     

An integrated approach to untangling mediated connectedness with online and mobile media

With the growth and convergence of mobile and social computing technology, mobile media are accorded new social meaning manifested in different aspects of our everyday life. This paper employs multiple theoretical frameworks—including the theory of the niche, the framework of media repertoires, and the communication infrastructure model—to examine individual-technology relationship as manifested through media repertoires and media connectedness. It argues that individuals tend to construct a set of media options and build connectedness with media technologies by engaging in a wide scope of activities through these media. In turn, this media repertoire and media connectedness may facilitate the performance of social and cultural practices in the public space. To investigate this conceptualization empirically, this study conducted a secondary analysis of data collected by the Pew Research Center in the United States. The results showed that multidimensional use of mobile apps was predicted by multidimensional Internet use, along with the scope of regular apps used and monetary investment by users. Additionally, multidimensional Internet use and the use of media repertoires consisting of mobile media and social media for socio-cultural activities facilitate public socio-cultural engagement. These results bring to light a new way of understanding how humans appropriate multiple types of technologies for activities in everyday life.     

Dynamics of control on digital platforms

Digital platforms are supraorganizational entities that use digital technology to facilitate interactions between diverse actors, leading to novel forms of organisation and accompanying forms of control. The current Information Systems (IS) literature, however, struggles to describe control on digital platforms in a way that does justice to the dynamic character of the phenomenon. Taking this as an opportunity, we follow the enactment of control over time and across parties in a hybrid ethnographic study of the social commerce platform Poshmark. Specifically, we conceptualise the dynamics of control as changes in the means of control—formal or informal—and the sources of control—operator or participants—over time. Tracking these conceptual dimensions, we identify the distinct ways control has changed on Poshmark. Synthesising these findings into four dynamics of control, we show that control on digital platforms is rarely static due to aggregate effects arising from the operator and from participant interactions with each other through the digital features deployed on the platform. Based on these insights, our study contributes to the IS literature on control by broadening the conception of control on digital platforms. The theoretical and practical insights generated in this paper thereby lay the foundation for the systematic study of the dynamics of control that are unique to platform environments.     

Composition and role of convergent technological repertoires in audiovisual media consumption

This mixed-method research focuses on the growing appropriation of multiple screen devices for audiovisual media consumption. Based on survey measures, we distinguish three patterns: (a) maintaining the status quo, by mainly drawing upon television, (b) broadening up the repertoire, by extending television with computers and mobile devices, or (c) even replacing television by a computer. Next, we draw upon insights from niche theory, rationalising media choices in terms of competing gratifications. This perspective is however too one-sided, as our results indicate that habit is a much stronger explanatory variable, especially when a broad range of devices are appropriated. In a follow-up qualitative study, based on Q-methodology, we found that the orientations towards what people seek in audiovisual technologies are only mildly contingent with specific technology appropriation. This problematises the very substance of niches in the audiovisual: as technologies are capable of the same benefits, their discriminating power is declining. Hence, in future applications of niche theory, gratifications and habits of communication modes (what people do with media technologies) should be taken into account, rather than media as tied to a specific technology. Niche theory's core remains, but its applications should be updated to theoretical insights matching the evolving media environment.