Information Distributors Research Articles

Semantic Networks of Election Fraud: Comparing the Twitter Discourses of the U.S. and Korean Presidential Elections

Traditional news outlets, such as newspapers and television, are no longer major sources of news. These media channels have been replaced by social platforms, which have increased in value as information distributors. This change in communication is an underlying reason for the election fraud controversies that occurred in the United States and South Korea, which hold high standards of democracy, during similar periods. This study investigates a model for sharing political disputes over social networks, especially Twitter, and illustrates the influence of political polarization. This study examines Twitter content around the presidential elections in the United States and South Korea in 2020 and 2022, respectively. It applies semantic network analysis and structural topic modeling to describe and compare the dynamics of online discourse on the issue of election fraud. The results show that online spaces such as Twitter serve as public spheres for discussion among active political participants. Social networks are key settings for forming and spreading election fraud controversies in the United States and South Korea, with differences in content. In addition, the study applies large-volume text data and new analytical methods such as the structural topic model to examine the in-depth relationships among political issues in cyberspace.

Social Network Analysis on Knowledge Sharing in Swiftlet Ranching Industry in Gua Musang

This paper utilizes social network analysis to identify key stakeholders in Gua Musang's Swiftlet Ranching industry, focusing on knowledge shari ng in ranch management. The study underscores the pivotal role of government agencies as information distributors, revealing a modest 39.92% centralization closeness in knowledge sharing among stakeholders. Recognizing these influential stakeholders is crucial for implementing effective policies and information dissemination, essential for the industry's success and increased edible bird's nest production.

Peran Fasilitas dan Mutu Pelayanan terhadap Keputusan Menginap pada Hotel Zest Jemursari Surabaya


 The purpose of this study was to determine the role of facilities and service quality on customer decisions to spend the night at Zest Hotel Jemursari Surabaya. The hotel is part of the service market that provides services to consumers. This research is motivated by the large number of hotels in Surabaya which are not matched by the increase in the number of visitors or tourists that should be. So this can affect the number of guests staying overnight at Surabaya hotels. Hotel service providers must prepare the best strategy to attract customers, because there are new hotels, customers have many other choices. Zest Hotel Jemursari Surabaya is a hotel that is involved in and affected by this imbalance problem. This type of research includes qualitative research. The research subjects were employees of the Zest Jemursari Hotel Surabaya as information distributors. Collecting data in this study using interview methods and in-depth observation. The data analysis method applied is the method of observation, literature study, interviews, and the conclusions obtained. This study proves that facilities and service quality performance have a significant effect on consumer decisions to stay at Hotel Zest Jemursari Surabaya.
 Keywords: Service Marketing, Facilities, Service Quality, Consumer Decisions

How Lecturers, Supervisors, and MGMP PAI Collaborate in Sustainable Professional Development (PKB): an Observation in Sleman Regency

This research aims to illustrate the collaboration of lecturers, students, supervisors, and MGMP in the development of sustainable professional teachers in Sleman Regency. This research uses a qualitative approach with descriptive research types of cooperation among lecturers, students, supervisors, and MGMP in the development of sustainable professional pai teachers in Sleman Regency. Data collection is done through telephone interviews and/or cloud meeting zooms. As well as spreading the questionnaire, it was done using a Google form given to MGMP members through WhatsApp messages. The results showed the importance of collaborating with teachers and supervisors who feel the need for help and competent speakers and lecturers who have funds and expertise for service and develop the quality of education in the local region of their universities. The form of collaboration is the training of PTK, LKPD, and Canva Learning Media Development. The busy schedules of many MP members, limited funds, and poor communication between supervisors, MGMP, and universities are all barriers to collaboration. The supporting factors are the existence of new regulations that encourage the development of kopetensi, the creativity of MGMP supervisors in establishing communication with universities, the allocation of funding from universities, and alumni networks as information distributors or liaisons. This research is expected to provide an overview and a theory about the form of cooperation between lecturers, students, supervisors, and MGMP.

A systematic literature review of frontline employee influence factors

Service research acknowledged that frontline employees have a key role in making service better. Frontline employees have leverage on different aspects of service. In their roles as facilitators, information distributors, and value-co-creators they are, as said by their designation, at the front line with the customer. They are crucial for, among others, word of mouth, customer retention, and service recovery. Therefore, it is worth looking into the negative and positive influence factors. The review results provide the top researched frontline employee influence factors and the correspondent research results. Researchers can draw on the pool of literature, which is provided on every factor and possible measures when designing an empirical study targeting one of the identified research gaps.

A systematic literature review of frontline employee influence factors

Service research acknowledged that frontline employees have a key role in making service better. Frontline employees have leverage on different aspects of service. In their roles as facilitators, information distributors, and value-co-creators they are, as said by their designation, at the front line with the customer. They are crucial for, among others, word of mouth, customer retention, and service recovery. Therefore, it is worth looking into the negative and positive influence factors. The review results provide the top researched frontline employee influence factors and the correspondent research results. Researchers can draw on the pool of literature, which is provided on every factor and possible measures when designing an empirical study targeting one of the identified research gaps.

Dynamics of convergence behaviour in social media crisis communication – a complexity perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate communication on Twitter during two unpredicted crises (the Manchester bombings and the Munich shooting) and one natural disaster (Hurricane Harvey). The study contributes to understanding the dynamics of convergence behaviour archetypes during crises.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected Twitter data and analysed approximately 7.5 million relevant cases. The communication was examined using social network analysis techniques and manual content analysis to identify convergence behaviour archetypes (CBAs). The dynamics and development of CBAs over time in crisis communication were also investigated.FindingsThe results revealed the dynamics of influential CBAs emerging in specific stages of a crisis situation. The authors derived a conceptual visualisation of convergence behaviour in social media crisis communication and introduced the terms hidden and visible network-layer to further understanding of the complexity of crisis communication.Research limitations/implicationsThe results emphasise the importance of well-prepared emergency management agencies and support the following recommendations: (1) continuous and (2) transparent communication during the crisis event as well as (3) informing the public about central information distributors from the start of the crisis are vital.Originality/valueThe study uncovered the dynamics of crisis-affected behaviour on social media during three cases. It provides a novel perspective that broadens our understanding of complex crisis communication on social media and contributes to existing knowledge of the complexity of crisis communication as well as convergence behaviour.

Social media and flu: Media Twitter accounts as agenda setters

ObjectivesThis paper has two objectives. First, it categorizes the Twitter handles tweeted flu related information based on the amount of replies and mentions within the Twitter network. The collected Twitter accounts are categorized as media, health related individuals, organizations, government, individuals with no background with media or medical field, in order to test the relationship between centrality measures of the accounts and their categories. The second objective is to examine the relationship between the importance of the Twitter accounts in the network, centrality measures, and specific characteristics of each account, including the number of tweets and followers as well as the number of accounts followed and liked. MethodsUsing Twitter search network API, tweets with “flu” keyword were collected and tabulated. Network centralities were calculated with network analysis tool, NodeXL. The collected Twitters accounts were content analyzed and categorized by multiple coders. ResultsWhen the media or organizational Twitter accounts were present in the list of important Twitter accounts, they were highly effective disseminating flu-related information. Also, they were more likely to stay active one year after the data collection period compared to other influential individual accounts. ConclusionsHealth campaigns are recommended to focus on recruiting influential Twitter accounts and encouraging them to retweet or mention in order to produce better results in disseminating information. Although some individual social media users were valuable assets in terms of spreading information about flu, media and organization handles were more reliable information distributors. Thus, health information practitioners are advised to design health campaigns better utilizing media and organizations rather than individuals to achieve consistent and efficient campaign outcomes.

Brokers’ financial network and stock return

Brokerage firms are usually not only known for trading stocks for their retail clients in return for commission fee but also known for being information distributors of their clients’ investment recommenders. However, only a few studies have examined investors’ trading behaviors within a brokerage firm. This study proposes a financial network model in modeling the information diffusion process of investors within brokerage firms and investigates the potential effect of interconnectedness among brokerage firms on stock returns. We find that the centrality of brokerage firms has strong explanatory power to stock returns even if we control for the Fama–French pricing factors and other characteristics of stock.

Scientific publishing – an unfair playing field

SummaryStandards and the pursuit of excellence are vital in healthcare and scientific investigation. Researchers must seek the most efficient, rigorous and robust methods available. Scientific journals acting as information distributors should only publish quality studies; such an ideal has become increasingly difficult to attain. To compete in the imperfect market of scientific publishing, The Psychiatrist will be open access from January 2014 and articles will be freely available ahead of print. There will be no publication costs to authors for at least the first 12 months and the journal will be re-launched under its old familiar name – the Psychiatric Bulletin.

Knowledge flows and insider trading

Much insider trading literature focuses on the redistribution of monetary rents. This focus has led to ambiguous and conflicting results, unable to identify who the clear winners and losers of insider trading legislation are. Lacking any clearly defined beneficiary, an analysis of the origins and continued support of such legislation is lacking. This paper rectifies this omission by reassessing the involved agents not in light of their relationship to a company, but from all roles of the knowledge transmission process: creator, distributor and user. Information distributors—large news companies and investment houses—are argued to be sufficiently well organized to lobby for maintained and strengthened legislation to protect rents that would otherwise be greatly diminished.

Uncreative Destruction: The Misguided War on Vertical Integration in the Information Economy

Are information sectors sufficiently different from other sectors of the economy such that more stringent antitrust standards should be applied to them preemptively? Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu responds in the affirmative in his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Wu proposes preventing vertical mergers in the information economy and the mandatory divestiture of vertically integrated companies. To implement this, Wu proposes a Separations Principle for the information economy, which would segregate information providers into three buckets, which we have labeled information creators, information distributors, and hardware makers. This article outlines Wu’s separations proposal, explains why his fears regarding vertical relationships should be rejected by regulatory and antitrust policymakers, and illustrates the legal and practical problems his Separations Principle poses. Wu justifies his Separations Principle by citing monopolies and market power in the information economy. He also advocates using U.S. antitrust authorities to enforce his Principle. We argue that the antitrust harms he fears are not present, and we highlight scholarship on the accepted benefits of vertically integrated firms. We show that Wu’s remedies are policy preferences wrapped in the language of competition law. In fact, the information economy is largely competitive and does not warrant interventionist regulatory enforcement. Since much of American economic vitality flows from the information economy and technology, policymakers should reject a radical antitrust remedy like Wu’s preemptive Separations Principle.

A comparative study of hype cycles among actors within the socio-technical system: With a focus on the case study of hybrid cars

Many forms of technology cycle models have been developed and utilized to identify emergent technologies and forecast social changes, and among these, the technology hype cycle introduced by Gartner has become established as an effective method widely utilized in the field. However, if the hype cycle indeed exists in the various dimensions that constitute the socio-technical system, those who seek to analyze innovative activities using bibliometrics will be confronted with the new problem of actors' choices and the need to analyze their hype cycles. In seeking to overcome such limitations of conventional studies, this paper analyzes the hype cycles of three actors that constitute the core of the socio-technical system through the case study of the successful market entry of hybrid cars. The hype cycle of the user, the first actor, is analyzed based on the search traffic generated by their web searches, and the hype cycle of the producer or researcher, the second actor, is measured based on the data regarding patent applications. Lastly, the hype cycle of the information distributor, namely individuals constituting the market network, is analyzed by examining the exposure in news reports. The outcomes of this research showed that among the three actors, the consumers and the information distributors exhibited hype cycle patterns (bell curves) that were distinct from the market trend, and that there was a difference in time interval of around five quarters. By contrast, it was found that the hype cycle of the producers reflected a logical response, exhibiting a pattern similar to the S-curve during the market's growth period unlike the pattern found in other actors. In conclusion, this study of the particular case of hybrid cars confirmed that the two components of the hype cycle can be respectively verified using consumer search traffic and the patent applications made by the producers. If in the future, such analyses of the hype cycles of producers and consumers are expanded in application to various other industries, it will be possible to obtain more generalizable research outcomes. This is expected to contribute to determining technological life cycles or hype cycles with greater objectivity and efficacy, and furthermore to facilitate the systematic identification of promising technologies.

The transnational Zapatista solidarity network: an infrastructure analysis

Abstract In this article I present a descriptive and qualitative analysis of the infrastructure of the global Zapatista solidarity network that has emerged since the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico in January 1994. Most studies dealing with this network have looked at it from the outside without specifying what it means to speak about a network with regard to global Zapatista solidarity. I address this lacuna by examining the network from the inside. The analysis focuses on how the infrastructure of the network serves as a computer‐mediated circuit for the circulation of information and identifies five levels of actors according to their roles as either information gatherers, information processors, information distributors or information recipients. I argue that the infrastructure of the networks is not only computer mediated but that it also has a significant physical dimension that stands in a reciprocal relationship with the computer‐mediated dimension.

Markets for Attention: Will Postage for Email Help?

Balancing the needs of information distributors and their audiences has grown harder in the age of the Internet. While the demand for attention continues to increase rapidly with the volume of information and communication, the supply of human attention is relatively fixed. Markets are a social institution for efficiently balancing supply and demand of scarce resources. Charging a price for sending messages may help discipline senders from demanding more attention than they are willing to pay for. Price may also help recipients estimate the value of a message before reading it. We report the results of two laboratory experiments to explore the consequences of a pricing system for electronic mail. Charging postage for email causes senders to be more selective and send fewer messages. However, recipients did not use the postage paid by senders as a signal of importance. These studies suggest markets for attention have potential, but their design needs more work.

Information Economy and Changing Occupational Structure in Singapore

Using population census data since 1921, this article traces changes in employment and occupational structure in Singapore in the past 80 years. This is a follow-up to an earlier paper by Kuo and Chen (1987) that reported the nascent formation of the information society in Singapore till the 1980s. It also makes an assessment of the role of proactive government policies in directing industrial restructuring and occupational changes in this city-state. It is found that the long-term growing trend in information-related occupations has been in tandem and supportive of industrial changes in Singapore. One more wave of growth of information producers (and certainly, innovators) and information distributors is expected in the next couple of decades. The momentum has started, and competition from regional countries similarly aspiring to be information and knowledge economies will quicken the pace. The government has initiated fundamental changes in the educational system to meet the challenges of the knowledge-based economy. The small city-state has also long adopted an adaptive philosophy to be responsive to the ever-changing environment, either in technology or in regional politics. Based on the trend analysis, it is expected that the emergent information society will graduate into full status when Singapore attains a developed country status in the forthcoming decades.

Hybrid solutions to information publishing in the World Office era

Discusses the disadvantages of CD‐ROMs and the Web from the perspective of professional information distributors and proposes an alternative solution. CD‐ROMs cannot easily be updated in a timely and cost‐effective way, whereas the Web compromises quality of graphics, sound and video. The information bottleneck caused by the Internet is predicted to get worse, adding to the problem. Bespoke hybrid CDs which allow updating of some CD‐ROM files by downloading from the Internet on to the local hard disk also have limitations. A new software product, SoftCD, overcomes the problems of bespoke hybrid CD‐ROMs, while retaining their advantages. It is identified as useful and cost‐effective for situations where there is a relatively high volume of volatile data. Potential markets are seen as remote business support, business‐to‐business reference information and computer‐based training updates.

Human resource development for the information society

This paper uses the four occupational categories identified by the OECD ‐ information producers, information processors, information distributors and infrastructure providers ‐ to explore the state of the information economy of countries in the Asia Pacific region. As would be expected, the developed countries in the region have more advanced information economies than the developing countries as measured by the outputs of these four occupational categories. This does not imply that the developing countries in the region are sitting on their hands. Many countries have developed strategies to improve their information technology and telecommunications infrastructure. The paper argues that perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on infrastructure development and not enough on human resource development. It identifies in particular the need to train information processors (i.e. people who use information for the creation of new knowledge, to make decisions or to increase productivity and profit) through the development of information literacy skills, and information distributors, particularly library and information professionals. In connection with the training of information professionals, the writer argues that the current curriculum in many library schools is no longer suitable, and stresses the need to build a curriculum that revolves around the model of the virtual library and the Internet

SOFTCD: SOLVING THE INFORMATION BOTTLENECK

A fundamental dilemma faced by today's professional information distributors is whether to use CD‐ROM or Web site or both. The CD‐ROM, and its successor DVD (Digital Versatile Disk), have the capacity and performance to support the quantity and quality of multimedia demanded by today's ever more sophisticated market. However the CD‐ROM has one fundamental flaw, it cannot easily be updated in a timely and cost effective way.

Cultural Rights and World Trade Agreements in the Information Society

This article argues that the cultural problem of the Information Society can be defined in terms of conditions determining the production, distribution and access to expression. The conceptualization of culture and cultural rights is explored by organizing cultural debates into three models, with a critical common ground then identified in each regarding the significance of the concern for expression. This problematization then serves as a way of addressing a number of critical dimensions in the policy debates of the Information Society emerging in world trade agreements. It is held that cultural rights and the conditions of expression can be articulated as a product of forms of information policy, such as: intellectual property laws, universal service and access to critical features of networks in the production and distribution of expression; the number of information providers, producers and distributors favored by competition policies; and the structure of positive and negative information rights implemented as content regulation under constitutional, statutory and regulatory obligations. The article examines the treatment of this set of information policies in a few emerging world trade agreements for the information sector, and the analysis concludes that the current world trade paradigm of the Information Society stands to transform profoundly the structure of content in the information age in favor of concentration of expression under proprietary governance. The implications of this change and criteria for evaluating cultural rights and information rights are provided.