Internet users’ perceptions of ‘privacy concerns’ and ‘privacy actions’

A consistent finding reported in online privacy research is that an overwhelming majority of people are ‘concerned’ about their privacy when they use the Internet. Therefore, it is important to understand the discourse of Internet users’ privacy concerns, and any actions they take to guard against these concerns. A Dynamic Interviewing Programme (DIP) was employed in order to survey users of an instant messaging ICQ (‘I seek you’) client using both closed and open question formats. Analysis of 530 respondents’ data illustrates the importance of establishing users’ privacy concerns and the reasoning behind these concerns. Results indicate that Internet users are concerned about a wider range of privacy issues than surveys have typically covered. The results do not provide final definitions for the areas of online privacy, but provide information that is useful to gain a better understanding of privacy concerns and actions.     

Multisensory teamwork: using a tactile or an auditory display to exchange gaze information improves performance in joint visual search

In joint tasks, adjusting to the actions of others is critical for success. For joint visual search tasks, research has shown that when search partners visually receive information about each other’s gaze, they use this information to adjust to each other’s actions, resulting in faster search performance. The present study used a visual, a tactile and an auditory display, respectively, to provide search partners with information about each other’s gaze. Results showed that search partners performed faster when the gaze information was received via a tactile or auditory display in comparison to receiving it via a visual display or receiving no gaze information. Findings demonstrate the effectiveness of tactile and auditory displays for receiving task-relevant information in joint tasks and are applicable to circumstances in which little or no visual information is available or the visual modality is already taxed with a demanding task such as air-traffic control. Practitioner Summary: The present study demonstrates that tactile and auditory displays are effective for receiving information about actions of others in joint tasks. Findings are either applicable to circumstances in which little or no visual information is available or when the visual modality is already taxed with a demanding task.     

From the user's perspective: Perceptions of risk relative to benefit associated with using the Internet

We departed from existing studies on Internet use by exploring users' perception of their own use of the Internet. Using a mixed-method explanatory sequential design approach, we first asked users to generate lists of actions they take on the Internet and then asked them why they engage in these 35 activities. Using the information gleaned from the interviews, we developed surveys that asked 261 users (ages 19–68) to rate the perceived risk (defined as situations that contain uncertainty regarding outcomes and/or possess the potential for negative consequences) associated with each action, benefits received from each action, frequency with which they engage in the action, and amount of information they are willing to share to engage in the action. We also assessed a number of individual difference characteristics. Our study results (1) provide an Internet Action list usable in future studies; (2) provide an initial understanding that users (to a degree) engage in Internet actions for the benefits they perceive they gain; (3) show that users share little personal information, if any, to get those benefits; and (4) users have little ability to accurately evaluate the true risk (i.e., due to Internet threats) associated with those actions.     

Firm actions,user engagement,and firm performance: A mediated model with evidences from internet service firms

As firms’ essential stakeholder, users can be evoked by the information from firms’ action. Users interpret relevant cues from the information and respond to it through engagement behavior such as online word of mouth through social media. Drawing on the information processing theory, this study develops a model of how user engagement behavior mediates the relationship between a firm’s actions and performance. The theoretical model is tested in two empirical studies. One uses actions of six representative Internet service firms and their users’ online word-of-mouth behavior over a 50-month period. The second is a two-stage controlled laboratory experiment designed to establish causal linkages between firm actions and user engagement. The study provides support for its hypotheses and offers several key findings. First, the firm’s actions influence user engagement behavior. Specifically, when a firm launches a larger number of actions, users are engaged in a higher volume of activities and deeper activities. When a firm employs actions that are simpler and easier to understand, users are engaged in deeper activities but not necessarily a larger volume of activities. Second, user engagement is a missing link between a firm’s actions and performance. Specifically, engagement depth positively mediates the effects of both action volume and action simplicity on performance. By contrast, engagement breadth positively mediates the effect of action volume but not the effect of action simplicity on performance. Collectively, the study contributes to a clearer understanding of the role of users in firms’ actions and provides key insights regarding how firms benefit from user engagement.     

Understanding identity exposure in pervasive computing environments

Various miniaturized computing devices that store our identity information are emerging rapidly and are likely to become ubiquitous in the future. They allow private information to be exposed and accessed easily via wireless networks. When identity and context information is gathered by pervasive computing devices, personal privacy might be sacrificed to a greater extent than ever before. People whose information is targeted may have different privacy protection skills, awareness, and privacy preferences. In this research, we studied the following issues and their relations: (a) identity information that people think is important to keep private; (b) actions that people claim to take to protect their identities and privacy; (c) privacy concerns; (d) how people expose their identity information in pervasive computing environments; and (e) how our RationalExposure model can help minimize unnecessary identity exposure. We conducted the research in three stages, a comprehensive survey and two in-lab experiments. We built a simulated pervasive computing shopping system, called InfoSource. It consisted of two applications and our RationalExposure model. Our data show that identity exposure decisions depended on participants’ attitudes about maintaining privacy, but did not depend on participants’ concerns or security actions that they claimed to have taken. Our RationalExposure model did help the participants reduce unnecessary disclosures.     

Dynamic Epistemic Logic for Implicit and Explicit Beliefs

Epistemic logic with its possible worlds semantic model is a powerful framework that allows us to represent an agent’s information not only about propositional facts, but also about her own information. Nevertheless, agents represented in this framework are logically omniscient: their information is closed under logical consequence. This property, useful in some applications, is an unrealistic idealisation in some others. Many proposals to solve this problem focus on weakening the properties of the agent’s information, but some authors have argued that solutions of this kind are not completely adequate because they do not look at the heart of the matter: the actions that allow the agent to reach such omniscient state. Recent works have explored how acts of observation, inference, consideration and forgetting affect an agent’s implicit and explicit knowledge; the present work focuses on acts that affect an agent’s implicit and explicit beliefs. It starts by proposing a framework in which these two notions can be represented, and then it looks into their dynamics, first by reviewing the existing notion of belief revision, and then by introducing a rich framework for representing diverse forms of inference that involve both knowledge and beliefs.     

The linkage between IOS use and competitive action: a competitive dynamics perspective

The use of interorganizational systems (IOS) for competitive advantage has been the topic of much writing and research. As a successful example, American Airlines’ aggressive use of its computer-based reservation system, SABRE, has often been cited for improving operational efficiency, increasing organizational flexibility, and altering interorganizational relationships. Yet, little attention has been given to a series of competitive actions that were generated through the use of SABRE along this system’s evolutionary trajectory. These competitive actions enabled American to disrupt competitive forces and remain as a market leader in the airline industry for decades. Stimulated by American’s case and today’s widespread use of IOS, this study asks two interesting questions: “Is there a systematic link between IOS use and competitive action?” “If so, how do they relate to each other?” In addressing these questions, we adopt research from the field of competitive dynamics to examine roles of IOS in influencing firm behavior and resultant firm performance. Competitive dynamics research has shown robust relationships between measures of competitive action and firm competitiveness, but technological antecedents of competitive action have been little studied. Collecting and analyzing 12 months of data for the year 2003 from multiple secondary data sources, this study empirically investigates links between IOS uses and competitive actions for nine major sports car makers. Our findings suggest a strong link between IOS uses and competitive actions. Also, there are larger implications for information technology (IT) researchers. The novel adoption of competitive dynamics suggests the development of a new kind of IT value measure, going beyond limitations of traditional measures by recognizing competitive actions as specific moves that are first observed after undertaking initiatives aimed at enhancing competitiveness. Additional implications for IT research, methodology, and practice are discussed.     

Besouro: A framework for exploring compliance rules in automatic TDD behavior assessment

ContextThe improvements promoted by Test-Driven Design (TDD) have not been confirmed by quantitative assessment studies. To a great extent, the problem lies in the lack of a rigorous definition for TDD. An emerging approach has been to measure the conformance of TDD practices with the support of automated systems that embed an operational definition, which represent the specific TDD process assumed and the validation tests used to determine its presence and quantity. The empirical construction of TDD understanding and consensus building requires the ability of comparing different definitions, evaluating them with regard to practitioners’ perception, and exploring code information for improvement of automatic assessment.ObjectiveThis paper describes Besouro, a framework targeted at the development of systems for automatic TDD behavior assessment. The main rationale of Besouro’s design is the ability to compare distinct operational definitions, evaluate them with regard to users’ perception, and explore code information for further analysis and conformance assessment improvement.MethodWe developed an architecture with clear separation of concerns, which enables to vary: (a) the atomic events and respective metrics to be collected from developing and testing environments; (b) the organization of atomic events in streams of actions or processes; and (c) the classification and assessment components for each set of operational definitions adopted. The architecture also includes a mechanism for on-line user assessment awareness and feedback, and integrates event-related information with the respective code in a code version system.ResultsWe illustrate the usefulness of Besouro’s features for understanding the actions and processes underlying TDD through a prototype developed to support an experiment based on user feedback. We show how it was possible to compare variations of a same operational definition by exploring users’ feedback, and use source code to improve the automatic classification of TDD practices.ConclusionUnderstanding the actions and processes underlying successful TDD application is key for leveraging TDD benefits. In the absence of a rigorous definition for TDD, the proposed approach aims at building consensus from experimentation and empirical validation.     

Fully Distributed Nash Equilibrium Seeking for High-Order Players With Actuator Limitations

This paper explores the problem of distributed Nash equilibrium seeking in games, where players have limited knowledge on other players’ actions. In particular, the involved players are considered to be high-order integrators with their control inputs constrained within a pre-specified region. A linear transformation for players’ dynamics is firstly utilized to facilitate the design of bounded control inputs incorporating multiple saturation functions. By introducing consensus protocols with ada...     

Hollnagel’s test: being ‘in control’ of highly interdependent multi-layered networked systems

Advances in technologies for networking, sensing, and automation have resulted in multi-layered networked systems that extend information gathering, interactions across roles, and the potential for control over wider ranges. But these systems also represent a scale shift in complexity in terms of the density of interdependencies across processes and activities. In the new systems, coupling has run amok introducing new challenges about how to control processes when they are part of such highly interdependent webs. Based on the joint cognitive systems perspective, Hollnagel examines, or tests, technology changes by asking two key questions: what does it mean to be in control and how can control be amplified? Hollnagel has shown that the answers to these questions are not inherent in technology itself but rather point to emergent system properties that can and should be supported to produce success and avoid failures. This paper applies Hollnagel’s test to the reverberations of technology change that are producing multi-layered networked systems. The paper shows how being ‘in control’ of multi-layered networked systems requires the ability to navigate interdependencies and shows how ‘amplifying control’ then consists of tools that help reveal/track relevant interdependencies and help anticipate how projected actions will propagate (resonate) across interdependencies relative to goals. The end result is that a shift is underway from supervisory control to polycentric control architectures.     

Improving situation awareness in crisis response teams: An experimental analysis of enriched information and centralized coordination

In responding to an emergency, the actions of emergency response teams critically depend upon the situation awareness the team members have acquired. Situation awareness, and the design of systems to support it, has been a focus in recent emergency management research. In this paper, we introduce two interventions to the core processes of information processing and information sharing in emergency response teams to analyze their effect on the teams’ situation awareness: (1) we enrich raw incoming information by adding a summary of the information received, and (2) we channel all incoming information to a central coordinator who then decides upon further distribution within the team. The effect of both interventions is investigated through a controlled experiment with experienced professional responders. Our results show distinctly different effects for information enrichment and centralization, both for the teams and for the coordinators within the team. While the interaction effects of both conditions cannot be discerned, it is apparent that processing non-enriched information and non-centralized information sharing leads to a worse overall team situation awareness. Our work suggests several implications for the design of emergency response management information systems.     

Organization and Decision‐Making in Enforced Networks: The River Groups in Northern Sweden

This article examines the Swedish experience of network governance in managing flooding and high water flows. The aim was to study the regional responsibility for coordinating risk awareness and risk analysis in terms of information, prevention and actions. The focus was on differences between the Swedish river groups from the coordinators perspective, including their organization and approaches to decision‐making. The conclusions reached here are based on interviews with the coordinators of county administrative boards. We argue that the absence of central guidelines in the organization of the river groups and the fact that they are enforced by the government rather than spontaneously formed have had implications for the networks’ effectiveness and for exchanges of experience among the networks.     

Bordering on Reality: Findings on the Bonfire Crisis Management Simulation

On 6 April 2005 a national crisis management simulation, code named Bonfire, was held at various locations in the Netherlands. The Bonfire scenario was built around a terrorist threat followed by an actual attack in the Amsterdam ArenA and a hostage‐taking. Bonfire's scale and realism made it unique for the Netherlands. Its complexity led to unplanned incidents that actually made it even more realistic, because this is something that occurs in every crisis situation. This evaluation shows that the co‐ordination, internal provision of information and crisis communication – the three core elements of crisis management discussed in this report –were mainly in the hands of the decision‐makers themselves. This put so much pressure on them that they were rarely able to make strategic decisions for the medium or long term. Support staff had been expected to ease pressure on the leadership by preparing their meetings and working out the results. This did not go as planned, however. Since they did not always have access to the latest information, they could not provide optimum support. As a result, they were by‐passed, so that they had even less access to information. The vicious circle was thus complete. It was observed that new counter‐terrorism structures installed in the Netherlands after ‘9–11’ functioned as foreseen, but that decision‐making required the input of far more parties than had been envisaged. In the course of the operations, therefore, the various levels established a more or less spontaneous link with the standard crisis management structures.     

Law-abiding and integrity on the Internet: A case for agents

Software agents extend the current, information-based Internet to include autonomous mobile processing. In most countries such processes, i.e., software agents are, however, without an explicit legal status. Many of the legal implications of their actions (e.g., gathering information, negotiating terms, performing transactions) are not well understood. One important characteristic of mobile software agents is that they roam the Internet: they often run on agent platforms of others. There often is no pre-existing relation between the “owner” of a running agent’s process and the owner of the agent platform on which an agent process runs. When conflicts arise, the position of the agent platform administrator is not clear: is he or she allowed to slow down the process or possibly remove it from the system? Can the interests of the user of the agent be protected? This article explores legal and technical perspectives in protecting the integrity and availability of software agents and agent platforms.     

Decision support or support for situated choice: lessons for system design from effective manual systems

In a number of organisational settings where work is highly skilled but substantially routine, certain entrenched manual systems have resisted digitisation. These systems include card-based systems in emergency despatch, the paper flight progress strips system used in air traffic control, the Kanban system and whiteboard systems used in hospital wards. Research to understand or replace these systems has frequently regarded them as decision support systems (DSS). We report here a detailed case study of a manual whiteboard-based bed allocation system in the ICU of a large general hospital, which shows that the support it provides for users’ action choices cannot be validly conceived as decision support. This system and other effective manual systems may be better understood as a ‘situated choice support system’ (SCSS). Whereas DSS provide actors with a model of the action environment in order to support reasoning about the consequences of alternative actions, SCSS provide actors with structured work environments that reduce possible actions and cue-providing information resources to support a reactive choice between these limited alternatives. The findings warn of the danger of uncritically applying the DSS design paradigm to supporting action choice in skilled routine work, and provide an alternative design theory, which can potentially inform new ICT-based designs.     

Towards management of software as assets: A literature review with additional sources

How should and how can software be managed? What is the management concept or paradigm? Software professionals, if they think about management of software at all, think in terms of Configuration Management. This is not a method for over-all software management; it merely controls software items’ versions. This is much too fine a level of granularity.Management begins with accurate and timely information. Managers tend to view software as something (unfortunately) very necessary but troubling because, they have very little real information about it and control is still nebulous, at best. Accountants view software as an incomprehensible intangible, neither wholly an expense nor really an asset. They do not have, nor do they produce information concerning it. Their data concerning software barely touches on direct outlays and contains no element of effort.Part of this disorientation is the basic confusion between “business software” and “engineering software”. This “Gordian Knot” must be opened; it needs to be made much more clear. This article shows a direction how such clarity may be achieved.     

Design of adaptive hypermedia learning systems: A cognitive style approach

In the past decade, a number of adaptive hypermedia learning systems have been developed. However, most of these systems tailor presentation content and navigational support solely according to students’ prior knowledge. On the other hand, previous research suggested that cognitive styles significantly affect student learning because they refer to how learners process and organize information. To this end, the study presented in this paper developed an adaptive hypermedia learning system tailored to students’ cognitive styles, with an emphasis on Pask’s Holist–Serialist dimension. How students react to this adaptive hypermedia learning system, including both learning performance and perceptions, was examined in this study. Forty-four undergraduate and postgraduate students participated in the study. The findings indicated that, in general, adapting to cognitive styles improves student learning. The results also showed that the adaptive hypermedia learning system have more effects on students’ perceptions than performance. The implications of these results for the design of adaptive hypermedia learning systems are discussed.     

Learner modeling for adaptive scaffolding in a Computational Thinking-based science learning environment

Learner modeling has been used in computer-based learning environments to model learners’ domain knowledge, cognitive skills, and interests, and customize their experiences in the environment based on this information. In this paper, we develop a learner modeling and adaptive scaffolding framework for Computational Thinking using Simulation and Modeling (CTSiM)—an open ended learning environment that supports synergistic learning of science and Computational Thinking (CT) for middle school students. In CTSiM, students have the freedom to choose and coordinate use of the different tools provided in the environment, as they build and test their models. However, the open-ended nature of the environment makes it hard to interpret the intent of students’ actions, and to provide useful feedback and hints that improves student understanding and helps them achieve their learning goals. To address this challenge, we define an extended learner modeling scheme that uses (1) a hierarchical task model for the CTSiM environment, (2) a set of strategies that support effective learning and model building, and (3) effectiveness and coherence measures that help us evaluate student’s proficiency in the different tasks and strategies. We use this scheme to dynamically scaffold learners when they are deficient in performing their tasks, or they demonstrate suboptimal use of strategies. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a classroom study where one group of 6th grade students received scaffolding and the other did not. We found that students who received scaffolding built more accurate models, used modeling strategies effectively, adopted more useful modeling behaviors, showed a better understanding of important science and CT concepts, and transferred their modeling skills better to new scenarios.