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Since Jan. 1, 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) rule requiring hospitals publish their “standard charges” (also called “charge description masters” or “chargemasters”) in a public, machine-readable format has been in effect. The research at hand assesses hospital compliance with the federal regulation. In addition, a sentiment analysis of the chargemaster webpages compared to hospital homepages is performed to assess the consumer friendliness of the content in terms of language usage. A stratified sample of 212 hospitals was used to conduct observations. Strata were based on patient satisfaction scores drawn from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of health care Providers and Systems survey, and controls for hospital bed size and geographic US census region were utilized from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey. Descriptive statistics are presented, and chi-square testing is used to test for statistically significant differences. Key results are presented for compliance and sentiment. Most hospitals' websites are not presenting chargemaster data in a way that is readily collectable or comparable to other facilities. In addition, the tone of language used on chargemaster transparency webpages is generally more negative than that of hospitals' homepages. In particular, the messaging on transparency pages routinely suggests consumers to not use the data for decision-making purposes.

Purpose — Ranking is a natural task for a search engine; a search engine result page is the most common example. This chapter aims at illustrating the motivations and the concepts of rank correlation in a practical way for the researchers active in the different domains of search engines.

Methodology/approach — To this end, this chapter provides a survey according to a topic-oriented basis of the search engine evaluation literature specifically devoted to or based on rank correlation; the chapter explains and illustrates how statistics is the only approach to rank correlation.

Findings/research limitations/implications — The chapter introduces the pros and cons of rank correlation measures through a light-weight formal description and a number of concrete examples to find the measure that better fit a context.

Practical implications — This chapter provides a blueprint for the application of rank correlation within scientific experimentation or item/service recommendation.

Social implications — Rank correlation analyses impact on the success or failure of a search engine in performing the tasks for which it has been designed and hence on the people's daily life activities.

Originality/value of paper — This chapter places rank correlation within a scientific research perspective and in particular connects to and complements documentation on search engine evaluation.

Purpose – This chapter examines how sentiment analysis and web-crawling technology can be used to conduct large-scale data analyses of extremist content online.

Methods/approach – The authors describe a customized web-crawler that was developed for the purpose of collecting, classifying, and interpreting extremist content online and on a large scale, followed by an overview of a relatively novel machine learning tool, sentiment analysis, which has sparked the interest of some researchers in the field of terrorism and extremism studies. The authors conclude with a discussion of what they believe is the future applicability of sentiment analysis within the online political violence research domain.

Findings – In order to gain a broader understanding of online extremism, or to improve the means by which researchers and practitioners “search for a needle in a haystack,” the authors recommend that social scientists continue to collaborate with computer scientists, combining sentiment analysis software with other classification tools and research methods, as well as validate sentiment analysis programs and adapt sentiment analysis software to new and evolving radical online spaces.

Originality/value – This chapter provides researchers and practitioners who are faced with new challenges in detecting extremist content online with insights regarding the applicability of a specific set of machine learning techniques and research methods to conduct large-scale data analyses in the field of terrorism and extremism studies.

This study aims to analyse the extent of online social responsibility (SR) information disclosure by Portuguese municipalities and to identify related determinant factors, based on Institutional Theory and Legitimacy Theories.

A content analysis was performed on webpages from 60 sampled municipalities, and an information disclosure index was created.

Descriptive statistics obtained indicate the Total Disclosure Index (TDI) value was 0.46. The Economic Information sub-category exhibits the highest value (0.66), followed by the Social and Environmental Information categories (0.61 and 0.36, respectively).

The multivariate analysis results indicate that LA21 implementation the existence of tax burdens, the characterisation of a municipality as urban and environmental/SR certification application positively influence SR information disclosure. TDI is negatively affected by the existence of an inactive population (i.e. by the percentage of individuals ≤19 and ≥65 years of age).

Numerous studies have investigated the customer’s expectations and satisfaction. Due to the prevalence of e-commerce, this study attempts to take a further look at how the design of webpages could influence consumers’ expectations and satisfaction. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are utilized. The customers of TGI Friday’s are selected for empirical validation. The findings show that there was a gap between what consumers actually perceived in the restaurant and the information presented on the website. Marketing implications for restaurateurs along with suggestions for future research are provided in the conclusion section.

Numerous travel websites have become popular in the past decade. Some destination websites allow travelers to book flights, hotels, restaurant visits, and tours. They also provide a great way for other tourists to leave feedback on the visits they had to specific travel destinations and provide other customers with reliable accounts. In this case, the theory proposes that unique offerings on a website have a greater affect on getting website visitors who are potential tourists to actually visit the website's destination. The findings show that interactive tourism websites that keep up with current technology will translate into attracting the most visitors to that specific city location. This study is unique and valuable as the analysis of the three tourism websites indicates the uniqueness of each of the three specific cities located on the Mediterranean Sea: Valencia, Marseille, and Genoa. This study provides a detailed analysis of each of the three cities’ travel websites and ranks each of the websites to evaluate which is the most reliable and most appealing to today's busy travelers. Valencia's tourism website earns “Best” of the three tourism destination websites. Marseille and Genoa's website do not offer the same caliber of information and lack the detail of Valencia's website. Valencia's website is easy to use, has the most up-to-date technology sources, and is physically the most appealing.

Given the growth in use of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) in reproductive medicine, most fertility clinics have developed websites describing the benefits of PGD. This chapter examines the media frames employed on 372 U.S. fertility clinic websites marketing PGD to consumers and how these frames promote biomedicalization.

Evaluation of website discourse was conducted with the use of frame analysis, a research methodology for examining the way media frames bind together claims, judgments, and value statements into a narrative that guides readers’ interpretation of an issue.

Findings show that website discourse frames PGD in terms of the attainment of reproductive normality, the management of reproductive risk, and the achievement of technological progress. These discursive frames contribute to the ongoing biomedicalization of reproduction by re-naturalizing conception as a choice rather than a natural fact, by promoting preoccupation with biomedical risk, and by affirming new forms of technological power and expertise.

Examination reveals the ways in which PGD has developed its own system of representations, notions of exchange, and epistemic forms, and highlights the important ethical issues leveraged on fertility clinic websites marketing PGD.

As one of the first attempts to systematically analyze media frames that depict PGD on fertility clinic websites, this study contributes to medical sociology by advancing theoretical and empirical understanding of the media processes shaping accounts of reproductive technologies. Findings also provide a foundation for further analysis of the social norms and bioethical standards arising from consumer marketing of reproductive technologies.