Sustainability analysis on Urban Mobility based on Social Media content

Urban transport became an important element in the promotion of strategies towards sustainability, in fact one of the challenges posed by booming urban populations is the question of mobility. Traditional travel survey methods used to study urban mobility are very expensive, and the data collected are of poor quality. This is mainly explained because of the difficulty of getting a representative sample of the population, and the lack of motivated participants. Therefore, travel surveys are carried out less and less frequently, and the result is that good travel data is not available to develop mobility and travel behaviour studies. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offer the opportunity to improve traditional travel survey methods, decreasing bias in the data, reducing respondent burden, and increasing data quality. On the other hand, nowadays the User Generated Content (UGC) is growing very fast in Internet. Social media have become a valuable source for knowledge but there is a big gap in the automatic Sentiment Analysis with Semantic taxonomy annotation of online textual content. The aim of this research is to identify sustainability issues related to urban mobility based in the perceptions and experiences that underlie in the UGC. The methodology follows a quantitative and qualitative content analysis using Sentiment Analysis techniques. This paper demonstrates empirically the feasibility of the automatic identification of the Sustainable Urban Mobility problems in the discourses generated by the UGC, through a powerful ad-hoc software combining Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis field tools. The main contribution of this work is the development of a tool and methodology on sustainability analysis on urban environment. Our approach enriches the data of the traditional surveys, extends traditional analysis with Big-Data methods, using data mining algorithms and Natural Language Processing techniques to extract urban mobility information from Social Media data. These data include important information about activities and travels, and can help to improve our understanding of urban mobility

A Regional Power Promoting Democracy? India’s Involvement in Nepal (2005–2008)

According to the theory of “democratic peace,” India, as the largest democracy in the world and as South Asia’s predominant regional power, should be expected to promote democracy in neighboring countries. However, New Delhi lacks any official democracypromotion policy, and its past record on democracy in the region is mixed at best. Against this background, the paper analyzes the substantial role India came to play in the peace and democratization process in Nepal in the years 2005–2008, asking whether this constitutes a departure from New Delhi’s traditional policy of noninterference in its neighbors’ internal affairs and a move towards a more assertive approach to democracy promotion. The analysis shows that India’s involvement in Nepal was the product of short-term stability concerns rather than being an indicator of a long-term change in strategy with the intention of becoming an active player in international democracy promotion.democracy promotion, India, Nepal, regional power, peace process, democratization

Persuasion: an analysis and common frame of reference for IS research

Information Systems (IS) researchers persistently examine how Information and Communications Technology (ICT) changes attitudes and behaviours but rarely leverage the persuasion literature when doing so. The hesitance of IS researchers to leverage persuasion literature may be due to this literature’s well-documented complexity. This study aims to reduce the difficulty of understanding and applying persuasion theory within IS research. The study achieves this aim by developing a common frame of reference to help IS researchers to conceptualise persuasion and to conceptually differentiate persuasion from related concepts. In doing this, the study also comprehensively summarises existing research and theory and provides a set of suggestions to guide future IS research into persuasion and behaviour change

Asian Regional Institutions and the Possibilities for Socializing the Behavior of States

Departing from the traditional yardsticks for measuring the performance and effectiveness of regional institutions, this paper proposes a new framework to investigate their effect in the socialization (i.e. internalization of group norms by newcomers) of new members. Called Type III internalization, it represents a middle ground between Type I (i.e. member states simply acting according to group expectations, even if they may not agree with them), and Type II (i.e. states transforming themselves by adopting the interests and identities of the group) internalization. In Type III internalization, states act both instrumentally and normatively. While their interests and values do not change permanently, there is enough change to induce substantially new kinds of cooperative behavior, in trade and security. Type III internalization is non-legalistic and consensual, moving at a pace in which everyone is comfortable, but there is no danger of backtracking. New members moderate their competitive instincts and pursue common objectives. The impact of institutional norms such as “open regionalism” and “cooperative security” transmitted through institutions such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the ASEAN Regional Forum on Viet Nam, India, and the People's Republic of China attests to the existence of a Type III internalization.Asia; regional institutions; Asian regional institutions; constructivism; socialization; institution-design; multilateralism

The Diffusion of Disability Rights in Europe

This article examines the spread of disability rights across European countries. Existing theoretical explanations of rights diffusion are unable to account for the pattern of adoption of disability equality norms across Europe over the last twenty years. The article argues top-down explanations need to be complemented by agent-centered approaches to convincingly account for the case of disability rights in Europe. Engagement with social movement theory that takes domestic activists and the meanings they attribute to rights seriously offers a better understanding of how and why we might see the rise of rights in one case and their rejection in another

What Determines User Attitudes in IS Research? A Meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling Approach

While research in general has extensively studied the coherence between attitude and behavior, Information Systems (IS) research has paid little attention to the antecedents of attitude. Using the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) as theoretical basis, we focus on the factors that determine attitudes in IS research. We apply a meta-analytic structural equation model based on major IS-adoption models that focuses on classifying the antecedents of attitude in the studies of our meta-analysis according to the central and peripheral route of information processing proposed by the ELM. The results indicate that affect and cognition as representatives for the central route are less important as attitudinal antecedents in the IS context compared to external factors that represent the peripheral route of information processing

The Revolution of Mobile Phone-Enabled Services for Agricultural Development (m-Agri Services) in Africa: The Challenges for Sustainability

The provision of information through mobile phone-enabled agricultural information services (m-Agri services) has the potential to revolutionise agriculture and significantly improve smallholder farmers’ livelihoods in Africa. Globally, the benefits of m-Agri services include facilitating farmers’ access to financial services and sourcing agricultural information about input use, practices, and market prices. There are very few published literature sources that focus on the potential benefits of m-Agri services in Africa and none of which explore their sustainability. This study, therefore, explores the evolution, provision, and sustainability of these m-Agri services in Africa. An overview of the current landscape of m-Agri services in Africa is provided and this illustrates how varied these services are in design, content, and quality. Key findings from the exploratory literature review reveal that services are highly likely to fail to achieve their intended purpose or be abandoned when implementers ignore the literacy, skills, culture, and demands of the target users. This study recommends that, to enhance the sustainability of m-Agri services, the implementers need to design the services with the users involved, carefully analyse, and understand the target environment, and design for scale and a long-term purpose. While privacy and security of users need to be ensured, the reuse or improvement of existing initiatives should be explored, and projects need to be data-driven and maintained as open source. Thus, the study concludes that policymakers can support the long-term benefit of m-Agri services by ensuring favourable policies for both users and implementers

Factors That Influence the Perception of Higher Education Leaders in the Adoption Process of Instructional Technology and Distance Education

The problem addressed by this study was that many administrators at institutions of higher learning are faced with the task of finding ways to provide the latest technologies while being extremely constricted by budgets and the rising cost of education. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that influence the perceptions of higher education leaders in the adoption process of Instructional Technology and Distance Education. This included an examination of the decision-making process and what determined if Instructional Technology and Distance Education were either implemented or upgraded at various higher learning institutions. The researcher implemented a mixed-methods design in order to conduct the research in this case study. Participants completed a survey containing quantitative scaled-style questions and qualitative open-ended questions to obtain their perceptions regarding adoption of instructional technology. For this particular study, purposeful sampling was established by selecting the chief executive officers, chief information officers, chief information security officers, directors of technology, or deans within technology departments of institutions of higher learning as the key participants in this study. The research gave some themes for predominant factors in the decision-making process for Instructional Technology and Distance Education. There was an all-encompassing theme of convenient innovations that enhance education, enduring from the three main themes of flexibility, increased student engagement, and improved time efficiency. Six supporting themes that also entered into the decision-making process included adopting technology that (a) makes education accessible and therefore reaches a more varied student body, (b) provides flexible course delivery formats so that higher education can be fit into busy student schedules rather than vice versa, (c) empowers education through its ability to be personalized, (d) facilitates faculty-student communication, (e) reduces costs, and (f) improves educational quality. Future research directions include (a) having a larger sample size to conduct the survey to be able to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that influence the perception of higher education leaders in the adoption process of instructional technology and distance education and (b) determining if the perception of higher education leaders extends or is affected by other stakeholder groups such as staff, faculty, or vendors

AI Hype: Public Relations and AI's doomsday machine

This chapter broadens current professional debates by highlighting a different but vital relationship between the PR profession and AI, one in which PR professionals – acting as AI cheerleaders – are deeply implicated in generating AI hype. My discussion explores recent market studies research on disruption and hype cycles, before delving into the latest, somewhat disturbing phase in AI’s hype cycle, in which end-of-the-world scenarios are invoked to stimulate a climate of fear around AI. The chapter concludes by exploring some ethical concerns with promoting AI and automation as humanity’s inevitable future