Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of Google in everyday online searching activities of Swedish teenagers in different contexts.

The study is qualitative and material has been produced through interviews and observations in two different schools with participants aged 15-16. Goffman’s frame analysis provides the analytical lens for studying how activities are assigned meaning.

Three different framings in relation to using Google and googling are identified in the material: Google and fact-finding, Google as a neutral infrastructure, and Google as an authority. There is an interplay between activity, context, and interaction in defining the role of Google. In relation to school, the fact-finding framing is more pronounced whereas the infrastructure framing comes forth more in their free time activities. The authority framing cuts across both framings and underpins their trust in the search engine.

The study addresses the way that Google is embedded in online activities and how the search engine is viewed in various contexts, as well as how it is made invisible in some contexts. Previous research has not addressed Google’s role in specific in relation to various everyday uses.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse how young people conceptualise online traces of search and what strategies they have for dealing with them.

The topic was investigated through a qualitative and ethnographic approach. Interviews, go-alongs and observations in schools were carried out with nine participants in Sweden.

The findings show that the participants’ main strategy in relation to online traces was to remove items from their search logs. Search logs were a tangible way of conceptualising online traces of search. The participants removed items in relation to an imagined audience which, in the present material, primarily consisted of parents and teachers. The findings also showed that the participants had some awareness of online traces but had difficulties in understanding the way that data flow and the persistence of data. Their strategies were more reactive than proactive in relation to online traces.

The present study contributes with a novel exploration of understandings of online traces of search. Further, it contribute theoretically by investigating the topic through the lens of audience and impression management.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how meaning is assigned to online searching by viewing it as a mundane, yet often invisible, activity of everyday life and an integrated part of various social practices.

Searching is investigated with a sociomaterial approach with a starting point in information searching as entangled across practices and material arrangements and as a mundane part of everyday life. In total, 21 focus groups with 127 participants have been carried out. The study focusses particularly on peoples’ experiences and meaning-making and on how these experiences and the making of meaning could be understood in the light of algorithmic shaping.

An often-invisible activity such as searching is made visible with the help of focus group discussions. An understanding of the relationship between searching and everyday life through two interrelated narratives is proposed: a search-ification of everyday life and a mundane-ification of search.

The study broadens the often narrow focus on searching in order to open up for a research-based discussion in information science on the role of online searching in society and everyday life.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of smartphones among young people in everyday life, focusing on the activity of online search. This paper addresses the following research questions: What framings of the smartphone can be identified in the way that young people use, and describe, smartphones? What is the role of online search within these framings? By elucidating framings of the smartphone, this paper also seeks to discuss why and how smartphone use becomes contested in various contexts and situations.

The material has been produced through ethnographic fieldwork. Focus groups and observations have been carried out with teenagers, age 13–16 years, in three schools in Sweden. In total, 39 pupils participated in the focus groups. Interviews, classroom observations and go-alongs have also been performed.

In this study, three framings of the smartphone are identified: the entertainment framing, the easy-access framing and the challenging co-presence framing. The framings highlight the way that both the smartphone and online search is viewed, and carried out, in various situations. The smartphone is primarily viewed as a tool for entertainment, by adults and young people alike, yet the findings illustrate that the smartphone is used for more activates than what is immediately apparent.

This study contributes to the field interested in bridging the gap between in-school teachings of information literacies and out-of-school activities by showing how online search happens in various situations. Also, to the field concerned with people’s use of general web search engines in everyday life.

This paper explores the relation between online search and smartphones, a topic which has not been in focus in previous research. The topics of online search and smartphone use have primarily been researched separately but are here researched in conjunction.

This paper aims to examine tenure choice in the Swedish housing market with explicit consideration of households’ credit constraints in combination with age and ethnic background.

Observations of some 940,000 households were used to analyse the Stockholm housing market in 2008, prior to the implementation of the mortgage cap. The tenure choice models were estimated using a two-stage instrument variable (IV) logit and probit model with ownership or renting as outcome.

The results suggest, as expected, that being financially restricted is negatively related to owning. In particular, financial restriction is more binding for young households and households with a foreign background than for other types of households. These two sub-groups are also known to have difficulties establishing themselves in the rental housing market, and are therefore specifically vulnerable to further financial constraints such as borrowing restrictions or amortization requirements.

The government in Sweden has become concerned with the rapid growth in household indebtedness. As a response, a 0.85 loan-to-value ratio mortgage cap was introduced in 2010. However, critics are concerned with the effects this may have on the possibility for certain households to purchase a dwelling.

Building on a business network perspective, the paper addresses the following question: Why do firms move between cooperation and competition in the context of high-tech industry? Hence, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the complex cooperation–competition interplay between actors in a business network.

A single case study within the information and communication technology industry is undertaken and illustrates the cooperation–competition interplay in projects of technology.

The authors discuss the implications of interdependence on relationship dynamics. The main argument is that business relationships survive despite periods of competition if interdependence is high. Thus, firms move between a state of cooperation and a state of competition within business relationships, rather than ending the relationships when starting to compete.

This study suggests that managers need to pay attention to how different degrees of interdependence lead firms to be embedded in cooperative or competitive forms of relationships.

The paper contributes to the ongoing debate about cooperation, competition and coopetition within international business and industrial marketing literature. An interesting aspect in the paper is the cooperation–competition interplay, which is associated with positioning. A centrally positioned actor will choose who to bring into the partnership, with positioning concomitantly changing from project to project. The willingness of being a central actor, i.e. a project leader, places traditional buyer–supplier partners in competition. Thus, cooperation and/or competition becomes contextual.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how organisational culture influences the intentions of primary care staff members (PCSM) to engage in research and development (R&D).

The participants (n=30) were PCSM employed in a care centre in south-western Sweden. The study had an observational design with an ethnographic approach. The data were collected by means of observations, interviews and analysis of documents.

The results revealed the perceptions of PCSM in two domains, research and clinical practice, both of which existed at three different cultural levels: visible (structures and policy), semi-visible (norms and values) and invisible (taken-for-granted attitudes).

It is difficult to conduct a purely objective ethnographic study because the investigation is controlled by its context. However, it is necessary to highlight and discuss the invisible level to improve understanding of negative attitudes and preconceptions related to the implementation of R&D in the clinical setting.

By highlighting the invisible level of culture, the management of an organisation has the opportunity to initiate discussion of issues related to concealed norms and values as well as attitudes towards new thinking and change in the primary health context.

This paper is one of the very few studies to investigate the influence of organisational culture on the intentions of PCSM to engage in R&D.

The purpose of this study is to validate an explanatory structural equation model for the evaluation of territorial branding tourism policies for local development and its application in cities in Mexico and Colombia.

A sample was calculated for finite populations of residents in the municipalities of Girón Santander, Colombia and El Fuerte, Sinaloa, Mexico, of 125 individuals for each locality, in total, 250 individuals. The study includes three latent variables, which in turn constitute three models (Model 1: State and Public Policies; Model 2: Territorial Brand for Development; Model 3: Local Development) to explain the multiple relationships with the observable variables. The results were analyzed by using IBM AMOS software (SPSSS Extension), using the maximum likelihood method.

Multiple relationships between the variables were evident, with excellent to acceptable indices. Model 1 (CMIN/DF = 1.742; CFI = 0.948; RMSEA = 0.057; PClose = 0.059) Model 2 (CMIN/DF = 1.528; CFI = 0.921; RMSEA = 0.073; PClose = 0.044). Model 3 (CMIN/DF = 3.210; CFI = 0.951); RMSEA = 0.057; PClose = 0.049), obtaining an adequate fit. The correlations between the variables reveal that the tourism policy is weak in both contexts, in its implementation in terms of the participation of residents in decision-making with respect to the management of the policy and in the lack of education and training of collaborators/workers to provide a better tourism service.

It was possible to establish that the measurement model is applicable in the municipalities of the two countries by considering the similarities in tourism policies, as well as the differences (social, cultural, political and economic), but with a need for explicit articulation between the pillars of the territorial brand with the legitimized public policy.

This study contributes to the generation of new knowledge in relation to territorial branding from residents, within the framework of a tourism policy, allowing to establish its limitations in terms of implementation.

This article aims to analyze a set of features in the managerial implications of the most-cited business-to-business (B2B) marketing articles which are related to their managerial relevance. The purpose is to further identify which are the most recurrent features of managerial implications, as well as the connections between such features. Finally, the articles aim to verify if these features of managerial implications vary depending on the scientific impact of the article.

The 60 most-cited articles were selected from both generalist and specialized academic journals and a content analysis was conducted. Then the article assesses the formal features (e.g. dedicated space), the language (e.g. consulting or normative), the translation of scientific results (e.g. message efficacy) and such other features as time orientation, specificity and abstraction of the managerial implications in these high-impact articles. The article also analyses patterns and associations between the aforementioned dimensions across the 60 articles, also depending on their level of scientific impact (i.e. their number of citations).

The results point that six out of nine features contributing to managerial relevance are the most frequently present in the implications (dedicated section easy to find, balance between academic and consulting language, partly scientific approach, overlap with scientific findings, message neither too complicated nor too simplistic, and long-term orientation). However, three other features reducing managerial relevance afflict nearly half of the articles: non-normative, generic and abstract implications. The ten articles lacking completely managerial implications are slightly more frequent among highest impact ones, which also often include overly complicated implications; while speculative and overly simplistic implications typically appear more among lowest impact articles which, however, also stand for very specific messages. There seems not to be any statistical correlation between the features contributing to managerial relevance and the scientific impact (number of citations) of an article. Instead, several of these features are correlated among each other, meaning that when one is missing, it is likely that the others also are. Finally, when implications are included in a dedicated section of the article, they tend to be specific and consequently also tend to have the other features favoring relevance.

The article provides an empirically grounded assessment of features that influence the managerial relevance of scientific research in the areas of B2B marketing. Our results are, in fact, grounded in a detailed examination of the managerial implications of 60 high-impact articles in this disciplinary domain.

This paper aims to analyse the effects of events image from host communities’ perspective on the city’s overall image and the intention to recommend the events and the city as a tourism destination.

The research used a bivariate data analysis based on Spearman’s correlation and regression analysis to determine useful variables to predict the intention to recommend the city as a tourism destination. Data collection was face-to-face and online with a non-probabilistic sample of Viseu city residents, the second largest city in the central region of Portugal.

The findings had implications for researchers, governments and stakeholders. From the resident’s point of view, there is a high correlation between the overall city image and the intention to recommend it as a tourism destination. Event image and the intention to recommend the event participation affect the overall city image. Results point out the resident as natural promoters of events and their city if the local events have an appeal that generates their participation. Conclusions indicated that cities need to re-thinking tourism from the citizen’s perspective as staycation is a grown option.

Event image by host-city residents’ perceptions is an underdevelopment theme in the literature, although residents’ participation is essential to the success of most events. Local events can promote tourist citizenship and reinforce the positioning of tourism destinations, associating them with an image of desirable places to visit and live.