Information Needs and Seeking Patterns of Farmers within the Changing Information Environment: A Case of Sri Lankan Vegetable Farmers

Information plays a pivotal role in today’s agriculture whilst the ICTs have largely influenced the agriculture information and communication systems. In this context, gaining an in-depth knowledge of farmers’ information needs and seeking patterns is central to designing and executing prolific agriculture information systems. With respect to the vegetable farmers in Sri Lanka, recent and sufficient informational studies have not been carried. Thus, this study sets out to explore information needs and seeking patterns of vegetable farmers within the contemporary information environment. Data were gathered by interviewing 289 vegetable farmers and were analyzed by computing the relevant informational indices. The findings show that the majority of vegetable farmers exhibit a medium to a high level of information needs. Market-related information found to be the most prioritized informational need among vegetable farmers followed by information related to crop production, the environment, climate and policies, new technologies, and training and development, respectively. Furthermore, traditional sources and channels remain the most trusted and adopted sources and channels of the vegetable farmers, while the use of modern means of communication seems remarkably low. In selecting sources and channels, vegetable farmers look for the ones that are capable of delivering specific, localized, credible and up-to-date information in local languages. Keywords: Agricultural information needs, Sources and channels, Information indices, Vegetable farmers, Sri Lank

Understanding Members’ Active Participation in a DAO: An Empirical Study on Steemit

One of Blockchain’s great potential is to enable the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), whose organizational structure and operational mechanism fundamentally distinct from traditional organizations. This revolutionary nature of DAOs will definitely influence peoples’ behavior. Steemit is an online community like Reddit, but it’s a DAO enabled by STEEM blockchain. This nature makes Steemit fans both users and owners. As users, people can enjoy social capital from using Steemit, just like using any other social media. As owners, people can get some economic incentives by earning and holding Steem Power, and Steem Power can be seen a kind of share capital. This paper attempts to explore the participation behavior of people in the Steemit community from two perspectives—social capital and share capital. Social feedback and economic feedback received by members also have an impact on participation behavior

A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW OF SOCIAL MEDIA STUDIES

Social media such as social networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, Wikis, are increasingly and widely used in our daily lives. In the information system (IS) discipline, social media have become a hot research area and draw the attention of many scholars. The paper systematically reviewed social media studies published in Association for Information Systems (AIS) listed top 20 journals from 2009 to 2013. The publication time, journal preferences, research objects and research topics are discussed. Generally, the current social media studies including four areas, namely user, management, technology and information. Each area has distinct focuses and topics. By thoroughly analyzing the research topics, the authors formulate our projections and recommendations for future social media studies

Understanding the Determinants of Review Helpfulness in Online Review Sites: An Empirical Study

Online review websites play an important role in customer’s purchase decision-making process for the useful product knowledge contained in the customer-generated reviews. However, the increasing information volume also makes it difficult for customers to identify and consider those attributes relevant to their decision. Based on Information Processing Theory (IPT) and Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment Model (MPAAM), we proposed three characteristics of online reviews affecting review helpfulness (e.g., attractiveness, representational sufficiency and functional sufficiency) and examined the moderating influences of information volume on these relationships. A large-scale review dataset from Yelp.com are collected and text analysis technique are applied to validate our research model. Our work, which illustrates the disturbance effect of information volume, has implications for both online word-of-mouth and information processing research

Using Socialization and Personalization Strategies to Mitigate Intrusiveness of Social Network Advertising

As the rapid expansion of social network advertising (SNA), advertising intrusiveness becomes a constant challenge to marketers, platforms and users. Normally, socialization (i.e., anthropomorphism cues, reference group cues and social endorsement cues) and personalization advertising strategies are employed to minimize SNA intrusiveness. However, limited theoretical insights have been provided by prior research. Hence, this study aims to shed light on the influence of socialization and personalization from a information processing perspective. A 4 × 2 experiment was designed and conducted on the self-developed system. By doing these, this study significantly advances the literature on socialization and personalization in the context of SNA, and provides theoretical and managerial insight

Buffering of pulp pH and its influence on process water chemistry during iron ore flotation

It is inevitable for the occurrences of pulp pH buffering during pH control in flotation as the minerals with acidic/alkali properties tend to interact with pH modifiers and restore the pulp pH. This could result in some disturbing ions and alter the water/pulp chemistry. The purpose of this study was to identify the influences of pulp pH buffering on process water chemistry through a series of pH buffering tests, bench flotation experiments, ore dissolution tests, zeta potential measurement, and Xray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The built-up and distribution of the dominant cations in the process water from different locations in an industrial flotation system of the iron ore were analyzed and recorded by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission (ICP-OES) at a period of about six months when the operations were stable. The data showed that a near five-minute buffer of pulp pH at a range from near 7.9 to 8.9 occurred before it reached a stable value. At this period, the dissolution of Ca/Mg from the iron ore was dominant. And, the pulp pH at a lower value tended to induce more dissolved $Ca^{2+}$ and $Mg^{2+}$ ions. These divalent cations seem to have different influences on the flotation properties of iron oxides at the same concentrations, indicating a positive effect on the recovery of iron oxides with the presence of $Mg^{2+}$ ions but an opposite effect if $Ca^{2+}$ ions occurred. The presence of sulfate, however, tended to restore the floatability of silicate depressed by $Ca^{2+}$ ions

What Motivates People Make Music Playlists? A Social Value Orientation Perspective

Music streaming services have great growth in the past decade with the good development of music streaming functions and social computing. As the main method of consuming music, music playlists contribute more than one-third of the user’s listening time. However, a lack of research examines the motivations of making music playlists when it comes to social influence. Therefore, in this paper, we draw on social value orientation (SVO) theory and literature from online communities and user-generated content, investigate drivers of making personal music playlists from cooperative, individual, and competitive perspectives. To validate the research, data will be collected from a music streaming platform

Antecedents and Impact of Applicants’ Perceived Interactional Justice in AI-based Job Interviews

In recent business practices, artificial intelligence (AI) based job interviews are often used to conduct online preliminary job interviews with applicants. While AI-based job interviews have become a popular trend, applicants’ perceived interactional justice has been challenged. Applicants feel themselves more like “ a number ” than a worthy candidate. However, there is limited understanding of the influencing factors of perceived interactional justice in AI-based job interviews. To fill this gap, this study establishes a theoretical model to explore the antecedents of the applicants ’ perceived interactional justice based on organizational justice theory. Based on literature review, this study tests the impacts of the gender of AI interviewer, linguistic style of AI interviewer, and whether to provide timely and informative feedback on perceived interactional justice of applicants. The effects of perceived interactional justice on overall favorability and organizational attractiveness are also explored