Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

The role of social media in HIV/AIDS communication: The relationship between perceived need and design utilities

Includes bibliographical references.This study aims to explore the role of social media in HIV/AIDS communication, by investigating the relationship between perceived need utilities of social media and the design utilities of the communication channel. Following the media richness theory (MRT) and channel expansion theory (CET), a model is proposed that suggests that need utilities drive social media utility. It is furthermore suggested that social media utility is positively associated with the design appropriateness of social media to create or consume HIV/AIDS content. The proposed model presents the interpersonal consumer expectations of message control, privacy, trust and endorsement as need utilities, while social media as a place to interact and a place to which to escape, are identified as social media utilities. As a high at-risk HIV- group, the research approach is outlined within the demographic segment of university students in the Western Cape, between the ages of 18 to 24 years. The constructs of social change (communication objective), social capital (product of communication) and social influence (targeted communication), are operationalised within a social media context to explore consumer motivations to interact or escape. The benefits and limitations of using social media for effective HIV/AIDS communication are also assessed, as these practically influence the perception of the role of a communication channel within a particular communication context. The research methodology firstly comprised of six qualitative focus group discussions, which assisted in the generation of the hypotheses and facilitated the formulation of the conceptual model. Secondly, data from 991 online surveys were analysed to quantitatively test the formulated hypotheses and gauge support for the proposed model. The results support the hypotheses and proposed model, by indicating that need utilities drive social media utility, which in turn drive design appropriateness. Furthermore, the results also reveal that the social media utility of being a place to interact is positively associated with the design appropriateness of social media for HIV/AIDS content creation and consumption. The perception of social media as a place to which to escape, however negatively affects the design appropriateness of social media for HIV/AIDS content creation and consumption. The study discusses the implications for health communication from an integrated marketing communications approach and puts forward recommendations for strategy development, as well as monitoring and evaluation. Lastly several recommendations are put forward for future research

Publicidade personalizada e privacidade dos dados no Facebook: o caso de Portugal

The evolution of the technological world has allowed companies and consumers to be increasingly connected, especially due to social networks. Along with the development of social networks, personalised advertising has grown exponentially, becoming the most effective advertising strategy as it allows companies to interact with consumers in a customised way and offer products and services that are in accordance with their profiles. However, although personalised advertising offers benefits to both companies and consumers, in recent years the concern about data privacy has increased. Thus, this research aims to understand the gap existing between personalised advertising and data privacy concerns, since users want to receive ads with high predictive ability of their needs, however the collection and use of their data causes insecurity in relation to their privacy. As a way to achieve this objective, a mixed-methods approach was used by creating a questionnaire based on the existing literature. A total of 583 valid responses were collected and analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 28 software for quantitative data analysis and NVivo Software version 12 for qualitative data analysis The results allowed the support of three research hypotheses and the rejection of four hypotheses. The conclusions obtained indicate that personalised advertising causes data privacy concerns and through the thematic analysis performed to one of the qualitative questions it was possible to determine 17 situations in which respondents stated that this type of advertising threatened their privacy. Furthermore, the statistically significant result of the chi-square test suggests that consumers seek to protect their data on Facebook, not supporting the privacy paradox. Furthermore, this research suggests the existence of a relationship between personalised advertising and cyber-paranoia, as consumers believe they are constantly being ‘listened to’ through their mobile phone’s microphone and that their conversations are used for delivering personalised advertisements, while also believing that everything they do on the Internet is monitored and used for advertising purposes. Finally, since no literature was found on cyber-paranoia and personalised advertising, it can be considered that this study presents an innovative contribution. However, since this investigation is an exploratory study, there is a need for further literature on this subject.A evolução do mundo tecnológico permitiu que as empresas e os consumidores estivessem cada vez mais conectados, especialmente devido às redes sociais. A par do desenvolvimento das redes sociais, a publicidade personalizada cresceu exponencialmente, tornando-se na estratégia de publicidade mais eficaz pois permite às empresas interagir com os consumidores de uma forma customizada e oferecer produtos e serviços que estejam de acordo com os seus perfis. No entanto, apesar de a publicidade personalizada oferecer benefícios tanto para as empresas como para os consumidores, nos últimos anos verificou-se o aumento da preocupação com a privacidade dos dados. Assim, esta investigação tem como objetivo compreender a lacuna que existe entre a publicidade personalizada e a preocupação com a privacidade dos dados, pois os utilizadores querem receber anúncios com elevada capacidade de previsão das suas necessidades, no entanto a recolha e a utilização dos seus dados causa insegurança em relação à sua privacidade. Como forma a atingir este objetivo, foi utilizado um método de investigação misto através da criação de um questionário baseado na literatura existente. Um total de 583 respostas válidas foram recolhidas e analisadas utilizando o software IBM SPSS Statistics versão 28 para a análise dos dados quantitativos e o Software NVivo versão 12 para a análise dos dados qualitativos. Os resultados permitiram o suporte de três hipóteses de investigação e a rejeição de quatro hipóteses. As conclusões obtidas indicam que a publicidade personalizada causa preocupação com a privacidade dos dados, sendo que através da análise temática realizada a uma das perguntas qualitativas foi possível determinar 17 situações em que os inquiridos afirmaram que este tipo de publicidade ameaçava a sua privacidade. Além disso, o resultado estatisticamente significativo do teste qui-quadrado sugere que os consumidores têm comportamentos que visam proteger os seus dados no Facebook, não suportando o paradoxo da privacidade. Ademais, esta investigação sugere a existência de uma relação entre a publicidade personalizada e a ciberparanoia visto que os consumidores acreditam que estão constantemente a ser ‘ouvidos’ através do microfone do seu telemóvel e que as suas conversas são utilizadas para a criação de anúncios personalizados, considerando também que tudo o que fazem na Internet é monitorizado e usado para fins publicitários. Por fim, uma vez que não foi encontrada literatura sobre a publicidade personalizada e a ciberparanoia, pode-se considerar que este estudo apresenta um contributo inovador. Contudo, sendo esta investigação um estudo exploratório, é necessário haver mais literatura sobre este tema.Mestrado em Gestã