Research on the Impact of Information Quality on Educational WeChat Official Account Users’ Continued Use Intention: Based on the ECM-IS Model

Along with the vigorous development of WeChat official accounts, the number of education WeChat official accounts is increasing day by day. Society’s emphasis on education issues extends to the WeChat Official Accounts and other social networking platforms. How to attract users and maintain the willingness of users to continue to use is an important issue for the operators of such public accounts to consider. Information is the main content of the educational WeChat official account, and the evaluation of its quality will directly affect the perception of the educational WeChat official account and then affect the user\u27s willingness to use it. Therefore, based on the perspective of information quality and the ECM-IS model as the research model, this paper subdivides information quality into five dimensions, including comprehensiveness, timeliness, accuracy, relevance, and perceived interestingness, and establishes a theoretical model of the influence of educational WeChat public account information quality on college students\u27 willingness to continue using. This study will have a certain reference value for the education of WeChat operators\u27 practical operation and user stickiness

Perceived Academic Achievement and Social Integration in the Context of Social Software : a Comparative Study on Canadian and Chinese University Students

Aujourd’hui, les logiciels sociaux sont très populaires parmi les étudiants universitaires en Amérique du Nord (par exemple, Facebook et Twitter) et en Chine (par exemple, QQ, WeChat et Sina Weibo). Ces logiciels sont devenus facilement accessibles partout, en particulier grâce à des appareils mobiles. Il convient de noter que ces modèles d’utilisation de logiciels sociaux et de logiciels sociaux utilisés au Canada et en Chine sont différents les uns des autres. Le but de cette étude est de comparer les similitudes et les différences dans les habitudes d’utilisation des logiciels sociaux entre les étudiants universitaires canadiens et chinois. De plus, comment leurs enseignants utilisent les logiciels sociaux pour promouvoir le succès scolaire de leurs élèves. L’auteur a constaté que les groupes de cours et de class sur Facebook pouvaient promouvoir directement l’intégration scolaire des étudiants canadiens. En outre, les groupes de cours et de cours QQ pourraient jouer un rôle important dans l’intégration sociale des étudiants chinois, ce qui favorise indirectement leur réussite scolaire. Sur la base d’une analyse des données de recherche qualitative, l’auteur espère faire quelques suggestions utiles pour les éducateurs lorsqu’ils conçoivent des curriculums. Au cours des dernières années, de nombreuses universités au Canada ont attiré un nombre croissant d’étudiants internationaux chinois. Les résultats de l’étude peuvent avoir un impact positif sur les stratégies chinoises de recrutement d’étudiants internationaux.Today, social software is very popular among university students in North America (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) and China (e.g., QQ, WeChat and Sina Weibo). This type of software has become easily accessible everywhere, especially through mobile devices. It is noteworthy that specific social software and social software uses in Canada and China are quite different. The purpose of this study is to compare the similarities and differences in social software uses between Canadian and Chinese university students. In addition, this study investigates how teachers use social software to promote the academic integration of the students and to develop information literacy competencies. This study was based on qualitative research. The research data for this study were collected using semi-structured interviews with teachers and students and through observation of social software groups. Six students and four teachers were interviewed, 85 members of social software class groups were observed, and 188 members of social software course groups were observed. The author found that Facebook class and course groups could directly promote the academic integration of Canadian students. In addition, QQ class and course groups could play an important role in the social integration of Chinese students, which indirectly promotes their academic success. Based on an analysis of qualitative research data, the author hopes to make some useful suggestions for educators when they design curriculums. In recent years, many universities in Canada have been attracting an increasing number of Chinese international students. The study results can provide a positive impact for Chinese international student recruitment strategies

Experiencing the academic library in the Digital Age: From information seeking and user experience to human information interaction

The Digital Age, marked by the prevalent usage of digital technologies and explosion of digital information, has changed the way we communicate and interact with information, and prompts us to think about how it is influencing and transforming user experience with and within academic libraries. For academic libraries whilst their relationships with users may have shifted so too have their audiences. Internationalisation in higher education (HE) institutions has brought greater student diversity and requirements that should be understood to improve student experience and satisfaction. At the heart of HE, academic libraries serve a significant role in students’ learning and researching and their experience in the academic library constitutes an essential part of the learning experience. Within an interpretive paradigm, this thesis explores how international Chinese students experience the UK academic library in the Digital Age. Mixed methods research was conducted with a largely qualitative stance to explore the complexity of library user experience and to investigate library service delivery in order to enhance the future library user experience design. Library log analysis investigated what students do in the academic library through looking into their information seeking behaviour; cognitive mapping and semi-structured interviews were used to examine how students think and feel about the academic library by probing into their user experience. Demonstrating the complexity and multi-layered characteristics of context, this thesis proposed separating contexts to analyse and understand students’ library experience in distinct contexts. The findings developed an original framework theory of ‘context-perception-sense-making’ to depict a holistic picture of students’ library experience, identifying two vital elements, context and perception, which trigger, shape and alter students’ library experience. This thesis brings together the essential components of information seeking behaviour and user experience into the context of the academic library and defines students’ relationships with and within the library in new ways

The appraisal of Facebook online community: An exposition of mobile commerce in social media reviews

Peer reviewe

Transforming Governance and Organizational Form in Collaborative E-government

The increasing digitalization in the process and the end-result of public service, a phenomenon widely known as e-government, is changing the range and ways of collaboration among governments and their stakeholders. Especially with the pervasive use of social media for knowledge sharing, today’s local governments are teaming up with their non-government stakeholders in an unprecedented width and depth to exchange knowledge and resources to build digital public services together. While these collaborative initiatives benefit from the complementation of knowledge and resources that are associated with extensive participation, these initiatives also exist under a shadow of confusion and conflict when organizing the changing range and relationships of stakeholders, aligning technology uses with divergent objectives of knowledge sharing, as well as coordinating different distributions of decision-making power and accountability. To tackle these issues, in this dissertation I develop an understanding of the co-evolution of governance, organizational form of e-government collaboration through the mediation of social media. Here I define governance as the attempts to address the issue of coordination, and organizational form as the structural features of the e-government collaboration. And I define social media as the Internet-based collaborative technologies that are accessible to both government and non-government stakeholders for creating, circulating, sharing and exchanging knowledge. My primary research inquiry is thus how do the governance and organizational form of e-government collaboration occur through the mediation of social media? To pursue this line of inquiry, I further explore the relationship between social media and the governance and organizational form of e-government collaboration. Specifically, I ask: • How does the governance of e-government collaboration occur through the mediation of social media? • How does the organizational form of e-government collaboration occur through the mediation of social media? Conceptually I take an ensemble view to understand the relationship between social media and organizational changes (i.e., governance and organizational form) and argue that while social media has the potential to change social arrangements, these arrangements also influence the use of social media. In particular, I use the technology enactment framework as a conceptual map to identify the embeddedness of technology adoption in institutional, organizational and cognitive arrangements. Furthermore, I complement the framework with the theory of institutional logics, technology frames of references, and temporary organization, to operationalize the understanding of the institutional, organizational as well as cognitive arrangements. I choose e-government in China as the empirical setting to address the research questions for its unique environment, including its recent strong policy push for e-government initiatives and public-private collaboration, its complex public administration environment, as well as the pervasiveness of social media (i.e., WeChat) for work communication in both public and private spheres. Such an environment provides a good number of e-government collaboration cases that are characterized by the heterogeneity of stakeholders, mediation of social media, innovative administration arrangements, and that can be followed and studied from their early stages. The dataset for this dissertation is collected from four cases of e-government collaboration in China. To better understand the development of e-government collaboration through the mediation of social media over time, I conducted a longitudinal study on one of the cases, of which the communication between the stakeholders is primarily mediated through the Chinese social media WeChat. For data collection, I used qualitative methods including interviews, participant observations, as well as document analysis. For the first research question, the findings indicate the key dimensions in the governance of e-government collaboration center around the distribution of decision-making power and accountability between government and non-government stakeholders. And social media, as a knowledge-sharing platform, is crucial for achieving balances as such in an undefined collaboration, as it provides ambiguity between stakeholders’ interests and needs, while still allowing stakeholders to develop a sense of consensus and informedness. For the second research question, the findings indicate that e-government collaboration can be organized differently through the mediation of social media. Nevertheless, a long-term examination shows the organizational form of e-government collaboration has to accord with the institutional logics at play. The form changes as the dynamics of institutional logics change. During the transition of these organizational settlements, social media plays an important role as a sandbox for experimenting with configurations of organizational structures, as well as a repository for shared knowledge and experiences. This dissertation makes three central contributions: First, it contributes to the conceptualization of governance in the era of e-government by highlighting the role of social media and its enactment in the occurrence of governance, and proposing an empirically driven typology of adaptive governance. Second, it contributes to the understanding of the organizational form of e-government collaboration by identifying the social media mediated hybridization process, and the characteristics of a social media enabled organizational form. Third, the findings extend the understanding of social media adoption in the context of e-government collaboration by providing a longitudinal account of social media enactment, and insights in the relationship between social media and government transformation

Digital Platform Regulation

This Open Access volume provides an in-depth exploration of global policy and governance issues related to digital platform regulation. With an international ensemble of contributors, the volume has at its heard the question: what would actually be involved in digital platform regulation?’. Once a specialised and niche field within internet and digital media studies, internet governance has in recent years moved to the forefront of policy debate. In the wake of scandals such as Cambridge Analytica and the global ‘techlash’ against digital monopolies, platform studies are undergoing a critical turn, but there is a greater need to connect such analysis to questions of public policy. This volume does just that, through a rich array of chapters concretely exploring the operation and influence of digital platforms and their related policy concerns. A wide variety of digital communication platforms are explored, including social media, content portals, search engines and app stores. An important and timely work, ‘Digital Platform Regulation’ provides valuable insights into new global platform-orientated policy reforms, supplying an important resource to researchers everywhere seeking to engage with policymakers in the debate about the power of digital platforms and how to address it

University students' perceptions of social networking sites (SNSs) in their educational experiences at a regional Australian university

Higher education institutions, and the way education is delivered and supported, are being transformed by digital technologies. Internationally, institutions are increasingly incorporating online technologies into delivery frameworks and administration – both through internal learning management systems (LMS) and external social networking sites (SNSs). This study aims to explore how higher education students in a regional Australian dual-sector institute use and manage SNSs for personal and study-related activities and their perceptions of how this impacts their educational experiences. This mixed-methods study involved a quantitative and qualitative survey of 355 vocational training and higher education students and in-depth focus groups with ten higher education students. Four key themes were identified through thematic analysis: SNSs as a tool for fostering peer connectedness with fellow students; deliberate and distinct variation between personal and educational use of SNSs; resistance to external SNSs within education settings; and, need for a balance between digital and face-to-face learning and connectedness. Implications for curriculum design and delivery, and development of support for students in diverse learning contexts, are considered

Usable Security Heuristics for Instant Messaging Application Development

As instant messaging (IM) applications have become more popular, the privacy and security concerns associated with their usage has become ever more relevant. As with many software programs, IM applications have a history of security vulnerabilities. Although IM application usage is globally increasing, it has been found that currently no generally recognised standards exist to aid IM application developers when developing the usability of the security features they implement. The problem is further exacerbated as research suggests that typical users have neither the requisite understanding of the available IM security features, nor the capacity to make full use of those protection features. The primary objective of this study is to create a set of usable security heuristics to assist developers of instant messaging applications to consider the usability of the security features implemented in these applications. This primary objective is further divided into several secondary objectives, which collectively aim to address the proposed problem. Therefore, the secondary objectives are to determine IM security risks and their related implications on users; to identify and investigate existing security and usability heuristics, guidelines, standards and best practices for mobile application development; to map the identified security and usability heuristics, guidelines, standards and best practices to IM applications; and to develop a prototype to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed usable security heuristics to a typical IM application. First, a comprehensive literature study is used to determine and understand the information security threats relevant to IM applications, how IM applications operate, the security features implemented by IM applications and the potential impact the relevant information security threats could have on IM application users. Thereafter, a further literature review and content analysis are used to identify and investigate existing heuristics, guidelines, standards, and best practices for mobile application development. The findings from the content analysis, in combination with the previously identified threats to IM applications, are then mapped to IM applications, and a preliminary set of usable security heuristics for IM application development is established. This preliminary set of usable security heuristics undergoes multiple iterations of refinement to establish the proposed set of usable security heuristics for IM application development. Furthermore, an expert review is conducted to validate the proposed set of usable security heuristics from the perspectives of security, usability, and mobile application development. In addition, the expert review was also used to determine the efficacy, utility, and quality of the proposed usable security heuristics. To further validate the proposed heuristics, a proof-of-concept prototype is used, in addition to the expert review, to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed set of usable security heuristics to a typical IM application. Such a set of usable security heuristics would be useful for IM application developers and would result in the vi improved implementation of usable security, leading to an improvement in the security of IM applications. The proposed set of usable security heuristics therefore adds a further contribution to this research area, providing a solid foundation for future research.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment, and Technology, 202

INNOVATIVE DIGITAL START-UPS AND THEIR VENTURE CREATION PROCESS WITH ENABLING DIGITAL PLATFORMS

Start-ups have gained media attention since Google, Facebook and Amazon were launched in the 1990s. The book Lean Start-up, published in 2011, was another important milestone for digital start-up literature. As unicorn companies emerge around the world, topics highlighted in the news include the vast amount of capital that digital start-ups are raising, the ways in which these digital ventures are disrupting industries, and their global impact on digital economy. However, digital start-ups, digital venture ideas, and their venture creation process lack a unified venture creation model, as there is a gap in the re-search on entrepreneurial processes in a digital context. This research is an explorative study of the venture creation process of innovative digital start-ups that examines what is missing from entrepreneurial process models in a digital technology context and investi-gates how early stage digital start-ups conduct the venture creation process, starting with the pre-phase of antecedents and ending with the launch and scaling of the venture. The research proposes a novel process model of innovative digital start-up venture crea-tion and describes the nature and patterns of the process. A conceptual model was devel-oped based on the entrepreneurship, information systems, and digital innovation litera-ture and empirically assessed with a multi-method qualitative research design. The data collected from semi-structured interviews, internet sources, and observation field notes covered 34 innovative digital start-ups and their founders. Interviews were conducted in-ternationally in high-ranking start-up ecosystems, and the data were analysed with the-matic analysis and fact-checked by triangulating internet data sources. The contribution to entrepreneurship theory is a new illustrative model of the venture creation process of innovative digital start-ups, including the emergent outcome of the process having a digi-tal artefact at its core (e.g., mobile apps, web-based solutions, digital platforms, software solutions, and digital ecosystems). Digital platforms and their multiple roles in the process are presented, as well as the role of critical events as moderators of the process which trigger new development cycles. During the venture creation process, the recombining of digital technologies, modules, and components enabled by digital infrastructures, plat-forms, and ecosystem partners represent digital technology affordances. This recombina-tion provides opportunities for asset-free development of digital venture ideas