Design Teams as Change Agents: Diplomatic Design in the Open Data Movement

Designers and developers who want to participate in the open data movement should be more than technical experts; they should also be change agents. Realizing open data’s promise of innovation and entrepreneurialism requires the support of diverse stakeholders. Government agencies must release accessible and useful data; developers must use the data to build tools; and citizens must adopt the technology. The interests of one group may come at the expense of another. For this reason, we examine the usefulness of a diplomatic design approach, which focuses on the art and practice of conducting negotiations using specialized techniques. We conducted an exploratory case study on a national nonprofit fellowship program as it worked to design not only technology but also organizational and social change in the context of a digital government engagement

Characterizing Communication Networks Associated with Political Hashtags.

Among the diverse forms of communication and information networks found in the Web 2.0 environment, “social” and “informational” communication networks have been characterized in terms of their network metrics. Although Twitter is partly based on relationships between actors, activity has been shown to reflect characteristics of information networks. This study examines activity in Twitter within spaces defined by hashtags on political topics. We gathered our own data on a hashtag associated with the 2012 Hawaii senatorial race and compared our results to those from other political hashtag networks, and to typical social and information networks as well as random graphs. Results show that hashtag-centered reply and retweet networks in this domain do not fall clearly into the social or informational categories. There appears to be a third kind of network associated with political debate. More generally, it may be productive to conceive of communication networks in terms of multidimensional characteristics rather than categories

Hybrid media consumption: How tweeting during a televised political debate influences the vote decision

An increasing number of people are using microblogs to broadcast their thoughts in real time as they watch televised political events. Microblogging social network sites (SNSs) such as Twitter generate a parallel stream of information and opinion. It is presumed that the additional content enhances the viewing experience, but our experiment explores the validity of this assumption. We studied how tweeting, or passively observing Twitter during a debate, influenced affect, recall and vote decision. For most measures, participants’ average feeling and recall toward the candidates did not depend on Twitter activity, but Twitter activity did matter for vote choice. People who actively tweeted changed their voting choice to reflect the majority sentiment on Twitter. Results are discussed in terms of the possibility that active tweeting leads to greater engagement but that it may also make people more susceptible to social influence

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

"Social Watching" to Learn About and Discuss Civic Issue: How Receiving Positive Social Media Feedback While Watching a Broadcast Instills a Sense of Community

Ph.D. University of Hawaii at Manoa 2016.Includes bibliographical references.People increasingly turn to social media to augment their broadcast viewing experience with a parallel stream of information and opinion. Known as “social watching,” the practice of integrating broadcast media and social media has become routine for people tracking live events and breaking news. Researchers have studied the phenomenon through content analysis and social network analysis, but few have used experimental methods. This empirical study examines how different levels of interactivity and types of opinions on social media influence the way people think and feel about civic issues. The findings make several contributions to the literature on social watching. Firstly, the results suggest that receiving positive feedback to social media posts instills a sense of community in the poster. The group of participants who received this validation reported feeling a significantly stronger sense of group membership, mutual influence, needs fulfillment and emotional connection. The second major contribution of the study is a better understanding of conformity during social watching. People who viewed a social media feed containing negative posts developed significantly more negative attitudes toward a civic issue compared to people who viewed posts that were supportive or balanced. The third contribution of this work is a deeper understanding of the types of thoughts and emotions associated with social watching in civic contexts. An inductive analysis of retrospective thought-listing data suggests users thought about Emotion (My Emotions and Their Emotions), Metacognition (Knowledge Level and Questions), Narratives (My Story and Their Story), Judgments (My Future, Their Future, Evaluating Arguments and Action) and Media (Session Media, General Media and Tweeting). The themes emphasized the critical role emotions and stories play in making sense of social media related to civic issues, as well as the way people empathized with the experiences of other citizens. The research addresses a gap in the media effects literature, which has focused on the effects of receiving a message, rather than the effects of sending a message on the sender. More specifically, it examines how receiving positive feedback when discussing a civic topic influences the way people relate to each other and connect around a civic issue

Conformity Behavior in Group Playlist Creation

A strong research record on conformity has evidenced that individuals tend to conform with a group’s majority opinion. In contrast to existing literature that investigates conformity to a majority group opinion against an objectively correct answer, the originality of our study lies in that we investigate conformity in a subjective context. The emphasis of our analysis lies on the concept of “switching direction” in favor or against an item. We present first results from an online experiment where groups of five had to create a music playlist. A song was added to the playlist with an unanimous positive decision only. After seeing the other group members’ ratings, participants had the opportunity to revise their own response. Our results suggest different conformity behaviors for originally favored compared to disliked songs. For favored songs, one negative judgement by another group member was sufficient to induce participants to downvote the song. For originally disliked songs, in contrast, a majority of positive judgements was needed to induce participants to switch their vote