The Adoption of social media analytics for crisis management – Challenges and Opportunities

We live in a time when anyone can change from a passive bystander to an active communicator during a crisis. This makes user-generated content a potentially valuable source of information for emergency management agencies. However, at present, agencies still hesitate to use social media during crises. This research seeks to identify the challenges emergency management agencies face in using social media analytics within their organisations. We conducted a systematic literature review and interviewed ten emergency management professionals across six expert interview sessions. Afterwards, we used the Technology-Organization-Environment Framework to conceptualise our findings. Our study reveals fruitful opportunities for the continuous collaboration of both information systems research and emergency management agencies. Accordingly, information systems research can support emergency management agencies in using social media data for efficient crisis management by enhancing awareness of the benefits of social media analytics and helping to overcome organisational and technological challenges

Crisis Analytics: Big Data Driven Crisis Response

Disasters have long been a scourge for humanity. With the advances in technology (in terms of computing, communications, and the ability to process and analyze big data), our ability to respond to disasters is at an inflection point. There is great optimism that big data tools can be leveraged to process the large amounts of crisis-related data (in the form of user generated data in addition to the traditional humanitarian data) to provide an insight into the fast-changing situation and help drive an effective disaster response. This article introduces the history and the future of big crisis data analytics, along with a discussion on its promise, challenges, and pitfalls

Digital communities: context for leading learning into the future?

In 2011, a robust, on-campus, three-element Community of Practice model consisting of growing community, sharing of practice and building domain knowledge was piloted in a digital learning environment. An interim evaluation of the pilot study revealed that the three-element framework, when used in a digital environment, required a fourth element. This element, which appears to happen incidentally in the face-to-face context, is that of reflecting, reporting and revising. This paper outlines the extension of the pilot study to the national tertiary education context in order to explore the implications for the design, leadership roles, and selection of appropriate technologies to support and sustain digital communities using the four-element model

Moving forward: Emerging themes in financial services technologies’ adoption

© 2015 by the Association for Information Systems. Financial services technologies (FST) are core to the continuous transformation of financial services organizations (FSO). To date, however, there has been a lack of empirical research into FST adoption against the backdrop of the recent financial crisis. In this paper, we re-examine how FSO are currently positioned to take advantage of emerging FST. Note that, in this paper, we look forward rather than provide a commentary on the state of the art in technology adoption research. We conducted this research by applying an exploratory qualitative study method: we analyzed interview transcripts from thirty recent interviews of FSO technology executives and CIOs by using a thematic network analysis tool. This analysis uncovered nineteen basic, eight organizing, and two global FST adoption research themes along with their links to FST adoption objectives, challenges, customer centricity, human resources, outsourcing, and overall IT strategy maintenance. This research has both practical and theoretical research implications and serves as a resource base for FSO and researchers to set future research priorities and directions. We intend for the emerging themes that we present in this paper to facilitate research directions by shedding light on the areas of greatest value and potential return in FST adoption

The Status of Adoption of Social Media Analytics: Three Cases in South African and German Government Departments

Lack of access to technologies and quality data are key challenges for reducing the digital divide and developing digital citizens to support Smart City initiatives. This paper reviews efforts towards Smart Cities and access to smart technology and Open Data in developed economies globally and in South Africa. Reviews of literature and websites were conducted and the Qualitative Content Analysis method was used to analyse the data. The contributions are the commonalities and differences between Smart City initiatives in developed economies and in South Africa. The findings revealed that in developed countries the focus was mainly on e-services, citizen engagement, Intelligent Transport Systems and energy systems. They provided city-wide connectivity and addressed integration and interoperability challenges. The technologies included large IoT sensors and WiFi in-motion networks incorporating internationally accepted standards. Initiatives in South Africa were less mature, mostly in the initial stages and are not addressing other more urgent needs of the country such as water, food, shelter and education. Collaboration with best practice Smart Cities is needed to provide support to current and future initiatives in South Africa and for the development of African digital citizens

The Technology, Organization, and Environment Framework for Social Media Analytics in Government: The Cases of South Africa and Germany

This paper investigates factors influencing the adoption of social media analytics (SMA) for citizen relationship management (CzRM). Three real-world cases of government departments, two in South Africa and one in Germany, were investigated, and focus group discussions were conducted. The technological, organizational, and environmental (TOE) theory and qualitative content analysis guided the data analysis. The findings revealed that in all cases, staff usually conducted a manual analysis of social media and SMA had not been implemented sufficiently to realize its full potential. Insights were obtained from TOE and factors were identified that should be considered for improving the planning of SMA adoption in government. Data quality, methods and tools for SMA, and resources (e.g., skills and budget) were the most important factors identified for achieving success in SMA projects in government. The contribution is an improved understanding of the adoption of SMA for CzRM and can lead to effective monitoring of social media posts by citizens to improve service delivery and, hence, lead to more citizen-centric government

Big Data: Concept, Potentialities and Vulnerabilities

The evolution of information systems and the growth in the use of the Internet and social networks has caused an explosion in the amount of available data relevant to the activities of the companies. Therefore, the treatment of these available data is vital to support operational, tactical and strategic decisions. This paper aims to present the concept of big data and the main technologies that support the analysis of large data volumes. The potential of big data is explored considering nine sectors of activity, such as financial, retail, healthcare, transports, agriculture, energy, manufacturing, public, and media and entertainment. In addition, the main current opportunities, vulnerabilities and privacy challenges of big data are discussed. It was possible to conclude that despite the potential for using the big data to grow in the previously identified areas, there are still some challenges that need to be considered and mitigated, namely the privacy of information, the existence of qualified human resources to work with Big Data and the promotion of a data-driven organizational culture