Users' trust in information resources in the Web environment: a status report

This study has three aims; to provide an overview of the ways in which trust is either assessed or asserted in relation to the use and provision of resources in the Web environment for research and learning; to assess what solutions might be worth further investigation and whether establishing ways to assert trust in academic information resources could assist the development of information literacy; to help increase understanding of how perceptions of trust influence the behaviour of information users

Digital privacy and new media: an empirical study assessing the impact of privacy seals on personal information disclosure.

Advances in technology have facilitated the rapid growth of a global new media industry. Many new media firms rely heavily on networked technologies to enable a primary income driver based on advertising revenues. This has attracted criticisms from privacy campaigners who argue that elements of the way some of these firms operate constitute an invasion of user’s privacy. Early economic approaches to privacy are primarily informed by the rational choice theory and viewed individuals as utility maximizers when making decisions involving personal information disclosure. Theoretical approaches have since developed to account for factors explored by bounded rationality and behavioural economics where individuals engage in complex trade-offs when making privacy disclosure decisions. Both EU and US regulators believe rapid technological advances have rendered existing regulatory provisions inadequate. In the EU, the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set out to improve ‘information transparency’ and give individuals to exercise greater ‘control’ over their personal data. The regulation set out provisions for the establishment of a privacy seal accreditation scheme. There is little empirical evidence to demonstrate that the use of privacy seals is privacy enhancing. Existing research reveals inconsistent and at times counter-intuitive findings. This research conducted online experimental research to establish if a causal link exists between the presence of a privacy seals and personal information disclose. Experiment results show that contrary to previous research in this area, the presence of privacy seals does not result in lower personal information disclosure. Survey findings also show that the GDPR has failed to expand ‘sensitive’ categories of data in line with both EU and US data subjects expectations. This research makes a number of original contributions to knowledge. Information disclosure is examined in relation to sensitive data categories as defined in the GDPR. Using commercially available privacy seals, it adds to the existing body of literature on the impact of iconography on user behaviour. The findings suggest there is an opportunity for new media firms to use independently accredited privacy seals as a differentiator in this industry sector

Come On Ugzruk, Let Me Win: Experience, Relationality, And Knowing In Kigiqtaamiut Hunting And Ethnography

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2010This ethnography of marine mammal hunting explores linkages between personal experiences and shared understandings of ecological phenomena among a group of Kigiqtaamiut hunters in Shishmaref, Alaska. Specifically it examines the relationships between Kigiqtaamiut hunters' experiences in the world and means by which the experienced world is brought into being through hunters' ways knowing. This work is informed by three spring hunting seasons spent as a member of a familial marine mammal hunting crew and over 20 months of fieldwork. It addresses hunters' ways of learning, knowing and directly experiencing the reality of the phenomenal world. Exploring a multiplicity of modes and facets of experience connected to the relationships between hunters' processual way of knowing bearded seals (Eringathus barbatus) through an experiential ethnographic investigation, I empirically examine the practices of hunting and the ethnography of hunting as linked, reflexive, and ultimately inseparable processes of coming to know. Considering the plausibility that a more rigorous presentation of a way of knowing can be realized through highlighting the reflexive and experiential interactions that shape these two concurrent phenomenological inquiries, this work suggests an "ethnography of knowing" to engage these multiple-linked processes of knowledge construction. It is suggested that separating hunters' ways of being and knowing misconstrues the depth and complexity of local knowledge as actualized in pragmatic decision-making processes in context of hunting. By examining Kigiqtaamiut/bearded seal relations, the set of hunting practices that most significantly shape the hunting mode of being in Shishmaref are explored. Collapsed into this ethnographic and phenomenological analysis of human/bearded seal ecology are the connections between hunters' ways of knowing, local pedagogy, the structure and usage of hunting narratives and topical lexicon to convey information and the significance of place and local histories. Analysis of these intersecting and mutually informative themes highlights how hunters' means of learning and knowing as a continuous process of experience both shape and are shaped by socioculturally mediated experiences with natural phenomena. This work speaks to dimensions of hunters' ways of knowing both manifest in and shaping lived experiences. In doing so, this work furthers regional ethnography, the anthropology of knowledge studies, human environmental relations and understandings of the human condition of being-in-the-world

The Chinese Seal in the Making, 1904-1937

Seals are hand-held printing blocks inscribed with some pattern, generally text. They were objects of immense power and prestige in imperial China. This dissertation examines the modern afterlife of inscribed seals against the backdrop of the decline and collapse of an imperial era order of knowledge and social status, the rise of modern consumer markets and mass culture, and the local accommodation of modern disciplines that promoted new ways of classifying and engaging the material world. In late imperial China (ca. 1600s-1800s), seals legitimized the rule of the emperor and his civil servants and marked the taste and erudition of the literati elite. As hand-held printing blocks that replicated in ink small textual signs, they produced authorizing marks of personhood and office and attracted elite collectors as calligraphic compositions of antiquarian interest. In modern China, seals proliferated within the cosmopolitan material culture of cities like Hangzhou and Shanghai. As the seal was transformed following the disintegration the imperial system, its multifaceted meanings and functions were increasingly subsumed under a monolithic category of "Chinese seal" as art object. The making of the "Chinese seal" as a representative fine art and marker of a distinctive Chinese culture evolved out of the diverse ways in which the carvers, consumers, scholars, and users of seals defined the object's significance in a modern world. This dissertation is thus structured around the new social venues in which the seal emerged in the first four decades of the twentieth century, from the final years of imperial rule through the period of the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937). The seal in premodern China was not an unchanging part of a traditional material culture. Its uses and significance had already undergone dramatic, historically contingent, transformations before the twentieth century. Chapter one broadly examines the multifaceted functions of the seal through Chinese history, and explains the emergence of the seal as an object of literati fascination in the late imperial period. The relationship between seal carving and the literati way of life would have to be at least partially displaced for seal carving to survive China's transition to a more mass-oriented society. Chapter two demonstrates how members of the Xiling Seal Society (founded 1904), the first-ever specialized institution devoted to seal carving and inscriptions celebrated literati values of amateurism and exclusivity while simultaneously contributing to the commodification, public visibility, and transformation of literati seal carving. The Xiling Seal Society, as a modern heritage institution based in Hangzhou, had a commercial counterpart in Shanghai with a national and international consumer base. Chapter three uses catalogues of this business and its offshoots as evidence of the crucial role of the market in transmitting and modifying seal carving and related aspects of elite material culture after the collapse of the imperial order. While the Shanghai Xiling Seal Society positioned itself against a vulgarization of seal carving in contemporary society, it incrementally detached the seal from a broader framework of imperial era knowledge production and ultimately marketed it as a customizable commodity suitable to the needs of the modern consumer. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the emerging categorization of the seal as a fine art object. Through an examination of how-to manuals published during the Republican period, chapter 4 focuses on the ways in which practitioners characterized their expertise and how their practical instruction aimed at a general reader marked a transformation of the concept of amateurism. Chapter 5 looks at the seal's incorporation into state-sponsored national exhibitions of fine art held in 1929 and 1937 and the tensions produced by the collision of connoisseurship culture with the mass pedagogy of "aesthetic education." The categorization of seal carving as fine art can be understood as the grafting of an exogenous classification system onto a local practice. But this new categorization did not only transform the seal, it also transformed the very category of "fine arts" as it was understood in China. The final chapter examines the seal as an object of scholarly inquiry and the relationship between seals, seal carving, and an indigenous field of metal and stone inscription study (jinshi). The second director of the Xiling Seal Society, a scholar named Ma Heng, incorporated seals into his vision of metal and stone inscription study as a sub-discipline of modern historical scholarship. Ma Heng judged seal carving not by the aesthetics of the seal composition, but by the integrity of the archaic text as an accurately rendered play upon epigraphic models. His insistence that seal carving be understood as an expression of scholarship serves as a reminder of how awkwardly imperial era practices of connoisseurship and knowledge production mapped onto a modern field of disciplines, with their hardened boundaries between the arts and the sciences. Today, the Chinese government promotes seal carving as a representative part of an ancient and enduring Chinese culture. As examined in the dissertation's epilogue, the People's Republic of China has succeeded in having "the art of Chinese seal engraving" inscribed on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. The seal has now come into the purview of the contemporary state's heritage politics. This has only been possible because the seal proved useful, significant, and accessible to people in the early twentieth century even after the imperial system that had accounted for the object's former prestige was torn asunder

Students' Online Purchase Intentions at Eight National Universities in Beijing, China

This research investigates the factors that have a relationship with online purchase intentions. This article focuses on online purchase intention among students at eight universities in Beijing, China. The One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlation coefficient, and Spearman correlation coefficient were used for analyzing the hypotheses in this study. All the factors (variables) considered in this research, namely, perceived price, perceived ease of use, website quality, website brand, and customer value and trust have positive relationships and were found to have an important effect on purchase intention. Several recommendations were made with a view to increase the number of omline shopping customers

Limited Information and Quick Decisions: Consumer Privacy Calculus for Mobile Applications

Mobile applications (also known as “apps”) have rapidly grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. Because they are available through devices that are “always on” and often with the user, users often adopt mobile apps “on the fly” as they need them. As a result, users often base their adoption and disclosure decisions only on the information provided through the mobile app delivery platform (e.g., the Apple App Store™ or Google Play™). The fact that using a mobile app often requires one to disclose an unprecedented combination of personal information (e.g., location data, preferences, contacts, calendars, browsing history, music library) means that one makes a complex risk/benefit tradeoff decision based on only the small amount of information that the mobile app delivery platform provides—and all in a short period of time. Hence, this process is much shorter and much riskier than traditional software adoption. Through two experiments involving 1,588 mobile app users, we manipulated three primary sources of information provided by a platform (app quality ratings, network size, and privacy assurances) to understand their effect on perceptions of privacy risks and benefits and, in turn, how they influence consumer adoption intentions and willingness to pay (WTP). We found that network size influenced not only perceived benefits but also the perceived risks of apps in the absence of perfect information. In addition, we found that integrating a third party privacy assurance system into the app platform had a significant influence on app adoption and information disclosure. We also found that a larger network size reduces LBS privacy risk perceptions, which confirms our information cascade hypothesis. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice

Time domains of hypoxia responses and -omics insights

The ability to respond rapidly to changes in oxygen tension is critical for many forms of life. Challenges to oxygen homeostasis, specifically in the contexts of evolutionary biology and biomedicine, provide important insights into mechanisms of hypoxia adaptation and tolerance. Here we synthesize findings across varying time domains of hypoxia in terms of oxygen delivery, ranging from early animal to modern human evolution and examine the potential impacts of environmental and clinical challenges through emerging multi-omics approaches. We discuss how diverse animal species have adapted to hypoxic environments, how humans vary in their responses to hypoxia (i.e., in the context of high-altitude exposure, cardiopulmonary disease, and sleep apnea), and how findings from each of these fields inform the other and lead to promising new directions in basic and clinical hypoxia research

Preliminary Study of Validating Vocabulary Selection and Organization of A Manual Communication Board in Malay.

An integral component of a language-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system is providing vocabulary typical of fluent native language speakers. In the absence of reliable and valid research on Malay vocabulary for AAC, this descriptive study explored the validation process of vocabulary selection and organization for a 144-location manual communication board. An hour of aided language samples (talking while pointing to a prototype display) followed by self-administered surveys were gathered from four typical native Malay speakers (n=4), aged between 22 to 36 years at the University of Pittsburgh. Vocabulary frequency analysis, word commonality, and overall perceptions and feedback on the prototype display were compiled and analyzed. A total of 1112 word tokens and 454 word types were analyzed to support preliminary validation of the selected vocabulary and word organization of the prototype. Approximately 40% of the words on the display were used during the interview and the top 20 words were reported. Findings also suggest the importance of morphology and syntax considerations at early design stages. The positive overall perception of the display including vocabulary selection, the cultural and ethnicity appropriateness, and suggestions for system improvement were confirmed by the usability survey. Minimal rearrangement of the icon display needs to be performed to improve the usability of the system. Thus, the study findings support the early Malay manual communication board for AAC intervention. However, the limitation of the sample size and additional research is required to support a final display that optimizes vocabulary and morphosyntactic organization of a manual communication board in Malay