E-Voting in an ubicomp world: trust, privacy, and social implications

The advances made in technology have unchained the user from the desktop into interactions where access is anywhere, anytime. In addition, the introduction of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) will see further changes in how we interact with technology and also socially. Ubicomp evokes a near future in which humans will be surrounded by “always-on,” unobtrusive, interconnected intelligent objects where information is exchanged seamlessly. This seamless exchange of information has vast social implications, in particular the protection and management of personal information. This research project investigates the concepts of trust and privacy issues specifically related to the exchange of e-voting information when using a ubicomp type system

7 Social Media Lessons To Make Your Corporate Communications Trustworthy

Do your corporate communications suffer from a lack of trust by your target audience? If so, your marketing professionals can benefit from these seven social media lessons that help guide you towards making your communications more trustworthy.

Using Ubicomp systems for exchanging health information : considering trust and privacy issues

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and ubiquitous computing allow us to consider a future where computation is embedded into our daily social lives. This vision raises its own important questions and augments the need to understand how people will trust such systems and at the same time achieve and maintain privacy. As a result, we have recently conducted a wide reaching study of people’s attitudes to potential AmI scenarios. This research project investigates the concepts of trust and privacy issues specifically related to the exchange of health, financial, shopping and e-voting information when using AmI system. The method used in the study and findings related to the health scenario will be discussed in this paper and discussed in terms of motivation and social implications

Internet as Preferred Health Information Source: An Information Foraging Perspective

This study provides a model for assessing the likelihood of preferring internet as a health information source from a theoretical lens of information foraging using the HINTS 2014 data. Essentially, this study tries to answer the key question – When do patients prefer to use internet for health information over other sources such as government agencies, physicians etc.? This study focuses on preference to internet for health information by patients suffering from cancer. This paper contributes to the growing literature on health information seeking by providing a theoretical model to identify the organic antecedents of preference to internet sources for health information by users. The findings of the study provide a deeper understanding of the relationships between information seeking preferences of cancer patients and trust in various sources of health information as well as perceived value and search costs associated with the information foraging behavior

An Empirical Study of Consumer Satisfaction with Online Health Information Retrieval

This research examines the area of Online Consumer Health Information Retrieval (HIR) as: “a field of study that pertains to consumers’ use of the Internet to locate and evaluate health related information, for the purposes of self education and collection of facts to enable informed decision making.” A research model exploring the antecedents of consumer satisfaction with online HIR is developed by using the constructs quality, trust beliefs and satisfaction. This model for consumer satisfaction with online HIR is quantitatively validated using structural equation modeling techniques. The findings of this research provide evidence that content quality, technical adequacy and trust beliefs explain a large proportion of the variance in satisfaction with online HIR for consumers

Antecedents of Citizen Self-Disclosure on Social Media Health Platforms: Towards an Improved Understanding (1)

Social media platform usage and online community participation has increased to a near ubiquitous level, (Pew Research Centre, 2016). However, to date, much attention has focused on the factors that influence individual’s trust and adoption of social media networks and online communities in general. In contrast, research on the factors that influence trust and self-disclosure on social media health platforms and associated online health communities remains remarkably limited. This is particularly surprising as adoption and usage of these health platforms remains comparatively constrained, thereby limiting potential social and health benefits to consumers, whilst also being an issue of concern to those who develop and design these platforms. This paper examines the extant literature on the factors that influence usage and participation in social media platforms and online communities and which are therefore likely to be relevant to examinations of self-disclosure in an online health context. In doing so, it contributes to technology adoption research in the area of user trust and self-disclosure on social media health platforms and online health communities

Online Trust and Health Information Websites

This study develops and tests a model of online trust of a health care website. The model showed a statistically strong fit to the data (N=176). Trust was significantly explained by perceptions of credibility, ease of use, and risk. Perceived ease of use was a direct predictor of trust and an indirect predictor through credibility. Credibility was both a direct predictor of trust and an indirect predictor through risk

Health websites visual structure: the necessity of developing a comprehensive design guideline

Using health-related websites and their information increasingly develops and some concerns on its quality arise as well. Different factors affect the quality of health websites which visual structure is one of the most important factors. The aim of the current study is to explain the role of health websites` visual structure in users’ views on their quality and reliability as well as its role in obtaining health information by users. Furthermore, the need for a comprehensive guideline for designing such websites is discussed. The review showed that health website’s appearance has an important role in users view on its credibility. Furthermore, it was revealed that there is no comprehensive national or international guideline to health websites design. Considering the importance of visual structure of health websites, there is an emergent need to develop a national guideline to obviate the problems of non-consistent, poor or personalized design of health websites.