Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore very recent data about how large organizations are dealing with a shortage of information and communications technology (ICT) specialists, in terms of its implications for information management.

This paper is based on qualitative interview-based research with 11 large European companies, with an estimated ICT workforce of around 400,000 (about 14 per cent of ICT professionals in Europe), covering hiring, retention and upskilling of ICT staff, and expectations concerning graduates from European universities. These data are combined with International Data Corporation (IDC) analyst reports on the demand for different categories of ICT products and services, and data from the authors’ consulting work.

Larger organizations expect hiring to be a challenge, with strong competition for talent, whether from existing users or from the many rapidly digitalizing companies – digitalizing their organizations; their products and services; and their relationships with customer, suppliers and business partners. Upskilling and retraining workforces is seen by large organizations as a better approach than hiring, allowing them to create the right skills balance and retain their workers better. However, softer skills, such as communication and problem solving, are seen as just as important. ICT workers will benefit from a lifelong approach to learning, acquiring new skills and adapting existing skills. Many ICT companies have created academies for developing employee skills and certifications related to their own technologies, while the education sector has been working on creating curricula (alone or sometimes in partnerships with vendors) to improve graduate employability.

The research is based on a small sample of large companies. The situation may be different in other companies and smaller organizations.

Organizations can cope with the skills shortage by anticipating and working with the market forces rather than trying to oppose them.

ICT employees will show the way for employees in other sectors where skills are scarce, by demonstrating how to reinvent themselves as the skills needed change.

This paper demonstrates that employers have changed their expectations of universities. They expect less that graduates will be ICT-employment ready, and more that they will have the skills to make and keep themselves employment ready. This has significant implications for university course design.

Digital voice assistants use wake word engines (WWEs) to monitor surrounding audio for detection of the voice assistant's name. There are two failed conditions for a WWE, false negative and false positive. Wake word false positives threaten a loss of personal privacy because, upon activation, the digital assistant records audio to the voice cloud service for processing.

This observational study attempted to identify which Amazon Alexa wake word and Amazon Echo smart speaker resulted in the fewest number of human voice false positives. During an eight-week period, false-positive data were collected from four different Amazon Echo smart speakers located in a small apartment with three female roommates.

Results from this study suggest the number of human voice false positives are related to wake word selection and Amazon Echo hardware. Results from this observational study determined that the wake word Alexa resulted in the fewest number of false positives.

This study suggests Amazon Alexa users can better protect their privacy by selecting Alexa as their wake word and selecting smart speakers with the highest number of microphones in the far-field array with 360-degree geometry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate those factors that are associated with the adoption of social networking sites from the perspective of Muslim users residing in Malaysia.

A complete self-administered questionnaire was collected from 223 Muslim users of social networking sites in Malaysia. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to sort the significant items for the constructs and to check the validity. Structural equation modelling was applied in testing the hypotheses and the fitness of the proposed model.

The results of full structural model attest that technological and social factors are the most significant factors behind the adoption of social networking sites. However, this is followed by an educational factor. Among Muslim users in Malaysia, the study does not find significant influence of brand or product communication behind this adoption.

The paper investigates those factors that are considered inevitable in the adoption of social networking sites. Invaluable findings were offered in the form of a structural model for the stakeholders of social networking sties. These findings can be used in planning and making decisions that may benefit all parties associated with it.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss an expansion of the Special Education Bulgaria (SEB) internet community that is required to pilot software created by the European Union's (EU's) Sixth Framework integrated project, TENCompetence.

SEB is the product of a two‐year research project designed to create a sustainable nation‐wide community of practice (CoP) for special education in Bulgaria via the internet. This paper discusses the SEB features consistent with TENCompetence concepts of competency development, lifelong learning, and professional networking. It then describes the additional features needed to prepare a SEB pilot.

SEB was developed throughout three phases of research, which included a needs assessment, formative evaluation, and effectiveness evaluation. Effectiveness evaluation results indicated that though a CoP has begun to coalesce, it remains unclear to what extent SEB helps special educators do their jobs better. In response to this finding, the implementation and testing of e‐portfolios and online courses is proposed. The implementation would employ Moodle for course management, Elgg or Mahara for e‐portfolios, and TENCompetence open‐source software for defining and organizing competencies.

Research outcomes regarding online communities and lifelong competency development may also apply to the professional development of special educators in neighbouring Balkan countries, especially those new to or soon to enter the EU.

Internet‐based competency development and lifelong learning for special educators in Bulgaria, one of the EU's newest member countries, is investigated.

Late in 2019, massive protest demonstrations rocked both Chile and Colombia. They were an expression of discontent with the economic model and social policies implemented in both countries in recent decades. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Chilean and Colombian news websites framed these social protests and what aspects of the social movements promoted these media to public opinion.

The methodology of this research is empirical; the authors use quantitative and discourse analysis techniques to study the news published by the top three most visited main news websites in each country and deduce the main frameworks emerging from them. After analyzing the framing of reality by media in 4,252 news items, the authors suggest that the main news portals in these Latin American countries not only portrayed the collective actions but also promoted interpretations that did not necessarily reflect the demands of the demonstrations.

The findings were that in the 2019 protests in Chile and Colombia, the media approach to collective action was not necessarily positive for the activists. This was mainly because framing in the Chilean and Colombian websites had to do with negative aspects of the movements, such as violence or economic costs.

The originality and value of this research is that despite the fact that there are abundant case studies on the relationship between social movements and media framing in the literature, this study adds to the current knowledge because it compares two Latin American countries and focuses on Web news portals.

Although increasing numbers of users have begun to use social networking sites (SNSs), the user growth of a few SNSs continues to decrease. Therefore identifying factors that influence users' intention to adopt and continuously use a particular SNS is a critical issue. To explore the factors, this study aims to apply the theories of reasoned action, uses and gratifications, and innovation diffusion to explain why people continue to join SNSs.

The study participants were members of Facebook in Taiwan. An online questionnaire was used to conduct empirical research, and the data of 348 respondents were analysed using the partial least squares regression approach.

It was found that the reasons why people continuously use SNSs vary with different innovation diffusion stages. In particular attitude toward SNSs had the strongest direct effect on continuous intention while the impact of social norms was not significant in the different innovation diffusion stages.

From a practical perspective, insights provided by the study can help SNS developers understand user motivation and thus design more effective marketing strategies.

The proposed model provides an improved understanding of the needs of different SNS users, and testing verified the effects of the factors related to gratification and innovation diffusion.

Community‐based business models attempt to profit from the value created by individuals interacting in virtual communities. An interesting variant of this model is the programmable autonomous business. A programmable autonomous business is an automated business built entirely in software, that once developed can profitably operate without any human involvement. We know little about how to systematically design such businesses. Existing research on designing virtual communities does not address how to transform them into autonomous businesses, nor is it clear whether all the design principles for virtual communities are relevant to an autonomous business. The research reported in this paper takes an inductive, business‐centered approach to understanding how to design autonomous businesses. The information activity in a successful, yet basic autonomous business is analyzed and its functions compared with those in a conventional business. From this analysis a set of design guidelines for a prototypical autonomous business are inferred. The paper ends with a discussion of various ways researchers can use a programmable autonomous business as a test bed for consumer‐related e‐business systems.

Voice assistant (VA) technology is one of the fastest-growing artificial intelligence applications at present. However, the burgeoning scholarship argues that there are ethical challenges relating to this new technology, not the least related to privacy, which affects the technology’s acceptance. Given that the media impacts public opinion and acceptance of VA and that there are no studies on media coverage of VA, the study focuses on media coverage. In addition, this study aims to focus on media coverage in Indonesia, a country that has been underrepresented in earlier research.

The authors used critical discourse analysis of media texts, focusing on three levels (text, discourse practice and social practice) to study how VA technology was discussed in the Indonesian context and what power relations frame the representation. In total, 501 articles were collected from seven national media in Indonesia from 2010 to 2020 and the authors particularly focus on the 45 articles that concern ethics.

The ethical topics covered are gender issues, false marketing, ethical wrongdoing, ethically positive effects, misuse, privacy and security. More importantly, when they are discussed, they are presented as constituting no real critical problem. Regarding discursive practices, the media coverage is highly influenced by foreign media and most of the articles are directed to well-educated Indonesians. Finally, regarding social practices, the authors hold that the government ideology of technological advancement is related to this positive portrayal of VAs.

First, to provide the first media discourse study about ethical issues of VAs. Second, to provide insights from a non-Western context, namely, Indonesia, which is underrepresented in the research on ethics of VAs.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the emerging technologies of this time. It has been associated with several trades like business, defense, health and education, but its role in library services will foster intelligent decisions. AI is a widely used technology in library services that can transform the best services in the age of information technology. This paper aims to highlight the use of AI in library operations. Several research have been undertaken on this subject, but that only address a few applications. This paper highlights the pros and cons of AI in library services. AI and libraries have a substantial nexus; nevertheless, the use and awareness of AI in library services are still creating question marks addressed in this paper. This study will help the policy stakeholder, librarians and scholars in the field to address these issues before the deployment of AI in library services.

This study is based on a qualitative method using content analysis techniques. Extant literature was explored on the subject and was analyzed for this study. This study highlights the pros and cons of AI in library services and its possible solutions.

The findings of this study show that AI is a vibrant technology that can be used in library services; however, some obstacles like adequate funds, the attitude of librarians and technical skills are a few obstacles that hamper AI in library operations. The findings also reveal that using AI in library operations will accelerate libraries in the right direction. Furthermore, this study highlights various applications that can be deployed without spending costs.

This study covers the understanding of AI in library services that will help the librarian's information professionals leverage AI in library scenarios. Furthermore, the practical implication of AI in library services will bring positive change in implementing AI. Social implications: This study will motivate library professionals to take advantage of AI in library services and further accelerate library operations in the right direction.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the emerging technologies of this time. AI is a widely used technology in library services that can transform the best services in the age of information technology. This paper aims to highlight the use of AI in library operations. Several research has been undertaken on this subject, but that only address a few applications. AI and libraries have a substantial nexus; nevertheless, the use and awareness of AI in library services are still creating question marks addressed in this paper. This study will help the policy stakeholder, librarians and scholars in the field to address these issues before the deployment of AI in library services.

This study is based on a qualitative method using content analysis techniques. An extensive review of literature on “artificial intelligence”, “smart libraries” was carried to ascertain the emerging technologies in the smart library domain. Literature was searched against various keywords like artificial intelligence, smart technologies, Internet of Things, electronic resource management, data mining and ambient intelligence. This study highlights the pros and cons of AI in library services and its possible solutions.

The findings of this study show that AI is a vibrant technology that can be used in library services; however, some obstacles like adequate funds, the attitude of librarians and technical skills are a few obstacles that hamper AI in library operations. The findings also reveal that using AI in library operations will accelerate libraries in the right direction. Furthermore, this study highlights various applications that can be deployed without spending costs.

This paper may be of interest to academic, librarians, policymakers, researchers and the government to have a perspective on initiatives in the country on application of technology in library services. This study can introduce the current status and potential of this technology to bring the technology revolution in library and information center services.

This study will motivate library professionals to take advantage of AI in library services and further accelerate library operations in the right direction.

This study covers the understanding of AI in library services that will help the librarian’s and information professionals leverage AI in library scenarios. Furthermore, the practical implication of AI in library services will bring positive change in implementing AI.