Journal Self-Citation VIII: An IS Researcher in the Dual Worlds of Author-Reader and Author-Institution

This paper responds to the question of whether it is ethical for a journal editor to request an author to cite papers from a journal to which one is submitting an article. To craft a response to this question, two sets of relationships are explored. The first set is an author-reader relationship, and the second set is an author-institution or community relationship. In these dual relationships, the author is considered to be an IS researcher who publishes and disseminates knowledge through the channel of research journals. The reason for articulating these twofold relationships is to go beyond the common belief that the author is the sole and autonomous source of knowledge creation and distribution. We posit that: (1) an author cannot exist isolated from the reader, and (2) an author exists only as a part of an institutional system which opens and at the same time constrains an author’s knowledge production. In other words, an author is destined to create knowledge within the constrained system. For that very reason, it is important to understand the author as a function of conditional discourse of a specific institution. We conclude that editors’ requests for an author to cite papers from a journal to which one is submitting an article is ethically critical to: (1) build a good author-reader relationship, and (2) produce rich and plural knowledge which is “good” for advancing learning in the global community

Collective Sense-Making through the Twitter Service during the 2011 Egypt Revolution

This study explores the role of Twitter during the 2011 Egypt revolution. Drawing on the body of literatures on collective behavior in general and social movement in particular, we investigate the concept of sense-making which is considered as a key aspect of collective behavior. Our special focus will be placed on analyzing the changing patterns of hashtags by applying the Markov-Switching Model. The analysis of hashtags is expected to explicate (1) how the collective sense-making process emerges over time through Hashtags, and (2) what the implications of those sense-making processes are in the particular situation of the 2011 Egypt revolution. A few theoretical and practical implications will be discussed

Choice of Information: A Study of Twitter News Sharing during the 2009 Israel-Gaza Conflict

The study explores determinants of the prominence of public information sources in Twitter. Twitter users are conceptualized as the “gated” who play an active role in selecting and distributing news sources through their Twitter messages. Using Twitter data on the Israel-Gaza conflict, the study identifies three determinants that characterize information sources: whether they are produced by mainstream media, whether they are filtered through aggregator services, and the number of in-links to the source media generated by the online public

AN EXPLORATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EXTREME EVENTS: RUMOR THEORY AND TWITTER DURING THE HAITI EARTHQUAKE 2010

Due to its rapid speed of information spread, wide user bases, and extreme mobility, Twitter is drawing attention as a potential emergency reporting tool under extreme events. However, at the same time, Twitter is sometimes despised as a citizen based non-professional social medium for propagating misinformation, rumors, and, in extreme case, propaganda. This study explores the working dynamics of the rumor mill by analyzing Twitter data of the Haiti Earthquake in 2010. For this analysis, two key variables of anxiety and informational uncertainty are derived from rumor theory, and their interactive dynamics are measured by both quantitative and qualitative methods. Our research finds that information with credible sources contribute to suppress the level of anxiety in Twitter community, which leads to rumor control and high information quality

A Sociotechnical View of Information Diffusion and Social Changes: From Reprint to Retweet

This research in progress study explores the role of Twitter during the 2011 Egypt revolution. Drawing on a research method of historians who investigated the role of print technology during the Protestant Reformation in Western Europe during the early 16th century, we explicate the socio-technical implications of information diffusion through retweeting during radical social changes. Through retweet analysis, we identify inseparable dynamics of (1) existence of a few opinion leaders, (2) a large number of supporting individuals, and (3) the emergence of attendant collective sense-making process as a critical antecedent of radical social changes

Audience Gatekeeping in the Twitter Service: An Investigation of Tweets about the 2009 Gaza Conflict

Twitter is a social news service in which information is selected and distributed by individual members of the tweet audience. While communication literature has studied traditional news media and the propagation of information, to our knowledge there have been no studies of the new social media and their impacts on the propagation of news during extreme event situations. This exploration attempts to build an understanding of how preexisting hyperlink structures on the Web and different types of information channels affect Twitter audiences’ information selection. The study analyzes the concentration of user-selected information sources in Twitter about the 2009 Israel-Gaza conflict. There are three findings. First, a statistical test of a power-law structure revealed that, while a wide range of information was selected and redistributed by Twitter users, the aggregation of these selections over-represented a small number of prominent websites. Second, binomial regression analyses showed that Twitter user selections were not constituted randomly but were affected by the number of hyperlinks received and the types of information channels. Third, temporal analyses revealed that sources via social media channels were more prominently selected especially in the later stages of the news information lifespan

An Exploration of Collaboration over Time in Collective Crisis Response during the Haiti 2010 Earthquake

In 2010, Haiti was struck by the worst natural disaster in 200 years. The work of first responders was helped by micro-blogging services and crisis mapping systems that were deployed for rescue missions. In this research-in-progress paper, we focus on a participatory and collaborative crisis mapping system known as Ushahidi. We explore how the Ushahidi mapping system was utilized for collaboration in collective crisis response. Second, we suggest that two dimensions of the information quality framework are paramount in such crises: uncertainty reduction and urgency. This paper therefore is a step toward understanding the interplay of information quality measures (urgency reduction and uncertainty) in collective crisis response situations. We also suggest implications for emergency responders to better manage voluntary online citizens by reducing uncertainty at the right time

Beyond the Review Sentiment: The Effect of Review Accuracy and Review Consistency on Review Usefulness

To date, most of the online review usefulness studies have examined how the non-verbal features (e.g., review rating) or verbal features (e.g., review sentiment) of online review affect review usefulness. However, the idea that online reviews as data products of online reviewers should meet some quality metrics is not well explored in prior research. To fill this theoretical gap, drawing upon Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and data quality literature, this study examines the effect of argument quality on review usefulness. For this examination, we build and operationalize two variables (i.e., review consistency and review accuracy) as two dimensions of argument quality. We find a positive effect of review accuracy on review usefulness, but, opposite to our hypothesis, we find a negative effect of review consistency on review usefulness. We also find that elite-badge members write more accurate and more consistent reviews compared to non-elite badge members

Community Intelligence and Social Media Services: A Rumor Theoretic Analysis of Tweets During Social Crises

Recent extreme events show that Twitter, a micro-blogging service, is emerging as the dominant social reporting tool to spread information on social crises. It is elevating the online public community to the status of first responders who can collectively cope with social crises. However, at the same time, many warnings have been raised about the reliability of community intelligence obtained through social reporting by the amateur online community. Using rumor theory, this paper studies citizen-driven information processing through Twitter services using data from three social crises: the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008, the Toyota recall in 2010, and the Seattle café shooting incident in 2012. We approach social crises as communal efforts for community intelligence gathering and collective information processing to cope with and adapt to uncertain external situations. We explore two issues: (1)　collective social reporting as an information processing mechanism to address crisis problems and gather community intelligence, and (2)　the degeneration of social reporting into collective rumor mills. Our analysis reveals that information with no clear source provided was the most important, personal involvement next in importance, and anxiety the least yet still important rumor causing factor on Twitter under social crisis situations