Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Houston Police Department (HPD)’s public engagement efforts using Twitter during Hurricane Harvey, which was a large-scale urban crisis event.

This study harvested a corpus of over 13,000 tweets using Twitter’s streaming API, across three phases of the Hurricane Harvey event: preparedness, response and recovery. Both text and social network analysis (SNA) techniques were employed including word clouds, n-gram analysis and eigenvector centrality to analyze data.

Findings indicate that departmental tweets coalesced around topics of protocol, reassurance and community resilience. Twitter accounts of governmental agencies, such as regional police departments, local fire departments, municipal offices, and the personal accounts of city’s police and fire chiefs were the most influential actors during the period under review, and Twitter was leveraged as de facto a 9-1-1 dispatch.

Emergency management agencies should consider adopting a three-phase strategy to improve communication and narrowcast specific types of information corresponding to relevant periods of a crisis episode.

Previous studies on police agencies and social media have largely overlooked discrete periods, or phases, in crisis events. To address this gap, the current study leveraged text and SNA to investigate Twitter communications between HPD and the public. This analysis advances understanding of information flows on law enforcement social media networks during crisis and emergency events.

The purpose of this study is to examine the quality of information in articles in the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, as perceived by readers and content contributors. This study explored several dimensions and characteristics of information presented in Wikipedia by identifying new emerging dimensions in terms of readers’ perceptions of the quality of online information.

Two rounds of online surveys were conducted using a mixed-method approach. In the first survey, the authors conducted content analysis on 197 participants, and in the second survey, the authors conducted factor analysis on 107 study participants. The authors used Qualtrics Panel Services to recruit individuals who read and/or edited the English version of Wikipedia articles and resided in the United States.

The mixed-method approach employed in this study to explore the quality of online information had three core components: users’ perceptions of information quality, content analysis, and exploratory factor analysis of the perceived information quality structure. The study found a new information quality category, social aspect quality. Dimensions include fun, goodness, empowering and user generated.

The results demonstrate the emergence of novel quality attributes for information quality presented online, particularly in social media. Moreover, this study is one of the rare studies to employ a mixed-method approach that offers diverse but reliable perspectives on information quality as perceived by everyday users of Wikipedia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine collegiate information barriers and perceptions of academic library climate among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) college students in the USA.

The primary method used for this investigation was an online crowdsourced survey of 105 participants who attended two and four-year colleges in the USA. The questionnaire used free word association where participants shared information barriers encountered on colleges’ campuses. Responses from each questionnaire were interpreted using open coding.

Information barriers around sexuality continue to be a challenge for non- heteronormative information seekers on college campuses. One-third of students had distinctive information needs around their sexuality and experienced information barriers from both the institution and social stigma. The study reveals an evolution in sexual minority students’ sense of self, which has moved beyond the binary identity of gay/lesbian explored in previous studies; students identified bisexuality as a salient information need, and described a campus environment that often erased bisexuality. The academic library was described as an information barrier due to inadequate sexual minority-related resources.

Academic librarians as well as higher education professionals, such as recruitment/admissions officers, student counseling services, student health and student affairs, can leverage the results of this study to help establish a more inclusive and welcoming information environment that empowers students for academic and personal success.

A limited number of studies in information science have focused on sexual minority college students’ information behaviors and even fewer on information barriers. This study presents new insight and deeper understanding of the collegiate information environment of LGBT identified students in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to examine motivators that drive Black Wikipedia contribution. The authors explore motivations around content contribution, effects of gender on motivations and self-perceptions of Black Wikipedia labor.

A total of 318 Black American Wikipedia contributors completed an online survey. The authors employed both quantitative and qualitative methods in the study including descriptive statistics, multivariate (MANOVA) and univariate (ANOVA) analysis of variance to examine gender differences in Wikipedia content contribution. In addition, open-ended responses were evaluated, through content analysis, to make inferences on their perceptions of Wikipedia labor.

This paper identifies racial identity and perceptions of information quality as strong motivators in content contribution among Black Wikipedians. Motivators are gender variant; men are more motivated than women with the lone exception being racial identity. Additionally, the study identifies Wikipedia as a contested space among Black contributors and is a site of resistance.

Black Wikipedians information activity is a relatively new and understudied phenomenon. This paper presents new insight and a deeper understanding of Black Wikipedians’ motivations for information sharing behaviors in the most popular encyclopedia on the internet.

The Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 1031 provides that ‘no gain or loss shall be recognized on the exchange of property held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment if such property is exchanged solely for property of like kind which is to be held either for productive use in a trade or business or for investment’. 26 USC $1031(a)(1). This provision has particular utility for entities taxed as C‐Corporations, in that they do not enjoy a preferential tax rate on the sale of capital assets and IRC 1221 assets. It also has utility for real estate investment trusts (REITs) not wishing to pass through recognition of gains resulting from necessary redeployment of capital in other real estate sectors or geographic regions. This paper will explore the fundamental issues in accomplishing a successful exchange of real property and in adopting a programmatic approach to a series of exchanges. While it contains a brief summary of authority, the same is provided not as legal advice, but as context for the administrative aspect of an exchange programme, which is the topic of the paper. This paper should not be construed as legal advice. Before commencing or not commencing an exchange or series of exchanges, consult your tax counsel or adviser.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of reciprocity in privacy settings on the compromises and losses in utility encountered by users. The authors base our study on WhatsApp because of the inherent reciprocity in its privacy settings to understand users’ preferences and reasoning in choosing a particular setting in light of its reciprocal consequence.

The authors present a qualitative study whereby we conducted a series of in-depth interviews with 15 individuals, representing a range of ages, nationalities, work experience and WhatsApp usage frequency. The interviews were semi-structured and thematic analysis was employed.

The results showed that reciprocity has a strong influence on privacy choices, and users over time adjusted their settings continuously in various ways to balance the overall utility of the application and their privacy. Type of contacts, usage frequency and underlying intent in using the application significantly impact privacy choices.

The findings recommend improved design for Mobile Instant Messaging that enables flexible privacy configurations that can be controlled separately for different groups and for individual contacts.

The paper provides original insights into how reciprocity affects the utility of the application and the privacy choices of the users. The investigation is unique in that the authors know of no other study that looked into the notion of reciprocity and how it affects users’ privacy choices and preferences when built in to Mobile Instant Messaging applications. Overall, the authors believe that this paper adds significantly to a growing body of research on privacy and social media.

Radical reform of the health and community care sectors has been a major undertaking of recent Conservative governments. The 1989 White Papers Working for Patients and Caring for People, together with subsequent development, have introduced a significant restructuring of both services. The essence of this is the creation of what has been variously called a planned market (Saltman and Von Otter, 1992), a quasi‐market (LeGrand). This in turn reflects a wider trend in redefining the role and nature of the welfare state within western democratic societies. This is captured by notions of “enabling” and “contracting” — hence the term “the contract state”.

Considers what the NeXT computer can offer libraries as an alternative to conventional mainframe‐PC‐terminal systems for sorting, storing, and displaying bibliographic information. Discusses the NeXT computer hardware, software, the idea of a library workstation, and the promise of the Digital Librarian utility. Surmises that, despite criticisms of cost, NeXT offers the possibility of a transformation in the way bibliographic information is handled by both patrons and staff.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the organizing practices of a Lakota Sun Dance, and to contribute to the literature on rituals and ceremonies in organizational culture.

The researcher acted as participant-as-observer during this extended ceremony. Fieldnotes capturing observations and informal interviews with Lakota elders were the source of data as recording devices were not permitted on the Sun Dance grounds. Observations were conducted for approximately 45 hours over the course of five days.

The Lakota Sun Dance can be understood through organizational theory, particularly through a unique integration of the concepts of agency, loosely coupled systems, and just-in-time organizing. The current research highlights the role of agency in organizational ceremonies.

This research offers a thick description of the organizing practices of an extended Lakota ceremony. The integration of traditional Lakota organizing principles with modern organizational theory is absent from the literature, and offers a unique perspective on organizing from a non-Western perspective.