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This study aims to investigate barriers and enablers of social media usage by zooming on one specific type of domain: disaster management. First, by systematically reviewing previous studies using a typology to social media usage, this study identifies the challenges often faced. Second, the results are visualized by qualitatively analyzing the focus group discussion data.

This paper opted for an inductive thematic approach of grounded theory, including focus group discussion with ten participants from diverse backgrounds working in the disaster domain. The data is transcribed verbatim and coded using Atlas.ti software.

The findings suggest that the vogue of social media significantly ascends its usage in disaster management. Regulatory, software, physical, authenticity, cultural and demographic rose as challenges for social media usage in disaster management. Findings further indicate enablers as the rise in mobile penetration, democratic participation, increase in living standards, two-way real-time communication, global reach, expeditious decision-making, no space-time constraint and cheaper source of information. Social media, compared to traditional media, is explored. This study has practical implications in helping authorities understand the barriers and enablers for social media usage in disaster management.

Qualitative data analysis of social media usage for disaster management has received scant attention. The main takeaway of this research is to offer clear findings of the purview of social media usage for disaster management. It demonstrates the challenges and enablers of disaster management using social media in the Indian context. Results indicate that leveraging social media for disaster management can extend decision-making for effective disaster management.

This chapter analyzes the link between the digital divide, infrastructure regulation, and disaster planning and relief through a case study of the flood in San Jose, California triggered by the Anderson dam’s overtopping in February 2017 and an examination of communication failures during the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California. This chapter theorizes that regulatory decisions construct social and disaster vulnerability. Rooted in the Whole Community approach to disaster planning and relief espoused by the United Nations and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, this chapter calls for leadership to end the digital divide. It highlights the imperative of understanding community information needs and argues for linking strategies to close the digital divide with infrastructure and emergency planning. As the Internet’s integration into society increases, the digital divide diminishes access to societal resources including disaster aid, and exacerbates wildfire, flood, pandemic, and other risks. To mitigate climate change, climate-induced disaster, protect access to social services and the economy, and safeguard democracy, it argues for digital inclusion strategies as a centerpiece of community-centered infrastructure regulation and disaster relief.

This study argues that online user comments on social media platforms provide feedback and evaluation functions. These functions can provide services for the relevant departments of organizations or institutions to formulate corresponding public opinion response strategies.

This study considers Chinese universities’ public opinion events on the Weibo platform as the research object. It collects online comments on Chinese universities’ network public opinion governance strategy texts on Weibo, constructs the sentiment index based on sentiment analysis and evaluates the effectiveness of the network public opinion governance strategy adopted by university officials.

This study found the following: First, a complete information release process can effectively improve the effect of public opinion governance strategies. Second, the effect of network public opinion governance strategies was significantly influenced by the type of public opinion event. Finally, the effect of public opinion governance strategies is closely related to the severity of punishment for the subjects involved.

The theoretical contribution of this study lies in the application of image repair theory and strategies in the field of network public opinion governance, which further broadens the scope of the application of image repair theory and strategies.

This study expands online user comment research to network public opinion governance and provides a quantitative method for evaluating the effect of governance strategies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-05-2022-0269

The purpose of this study is to extensively explore the vehicular network paradigm, challenges faced by them and provide a reasonable solution for securing these vulnerable networks. Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication has brought the long-anticipated goal of safe, convenient and sustainable transportation closer to reality. The connected vehicle (CV) paradigm is critical to the intelligent transportation systems vision. It imagines a society free of a troublesome transportation system burdened by gridlock, fatal accidents and a polluted environment. The authors cannot overstate the importance of CVs in solving long-standing mobility issues and making travel safer and more convenient. It is high time to explore vehicular networks in detail to suggest solutions to the challenges encountered by these highly dynamic networks.

This paper compiles research on various V2X topics, from a comprehensive overview of V2X networks to their unique characteristics and challenges. In doing so, the authors identify multiple issues encountered by V2X communication networks due to their open communication nature and high mobility, especially from a security perspective. Thus, this paper proposes a trust-based model to secure vehicular networks. The proposed approach uses the communicating nodes’ behavior to establish trustworthy relationships. The proposed model only allows trusted nodes to communicate among themselves while isolating malicious nodes to achieve secure communication.

Despite the benefits offered by V2X networks, they have associated challenges. As the number of CVs on the roads increase, so does the attack surface. Connected cars provide numerous safety-critical applications that, if compromised, can result in fatal consequences. While cryptographic mechanisms effectively prevent external attacks, various studies propose trust-based models to complement cryptographic solutions for dealing with internal attacks. While numerous trust-based models have been proposed, there is room for improvement in malicious node detection and complexity. Optimizing the number of nodes considered in trust calculation can reduce the complexity of state-of-the-art solutions. The theoretical analysis of the proposed model exhibits an improvement in trust calculation, better malicious node detection and fewer computations.

The proposed model is the first to add another dimension to trust calculation by incorporating opinions about recommender nodes. The added dimension improves the trust calculation resulting in better performance in thwarting attacks and enhancing security while also reducing the trust calculation complexity.

This study aims to investigate the effect of social media use on healthcare workers’ psychological safety and task performance and the moderating role of perceived respect from patients during public health crises.

To test the proposed moderated mediation model, a survey was conducted in 12 Chinese medical institutions. A total of 637 valid questionnaires were collected for data analysis.

The results revealed that psychological safety mediated the relationships between task-related social media (TSM) use and social-related social media (SSM) use and task performance. In addition, perceived respect from patients moderated the relationship between TSM use and psychological safety, as well as the indirect relationship between TSM use and task performance through psychological safety.

This study sheds new light on understanding how different types of social media use influence task performance in the context of public health crises. Furthermore, this study considers the interactions of healthcare workers with colleagues and patients and examines the potential synergistic effects of these interactions on healthcare workers’ psychological state and task performance.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not a foodborne infectious disease, but it has dramatically impacted food safety practices worldwide due to its potential for transmission through contaminated surfaces and food. Accordingly, the Omicron variant seems to have affected food-related activities and behaviours and disturbed food supply networks since its appearance in November 2021. Hence, this paper aims to assess how the Omicron variant impacted food safety knowledge, attitudes and practices amongst adult consumers in five countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Russia.

The study is based on an online survey. The questionnaire was developed and revised based on previous research on the impact of previous COVID-19 waves on food-related activities in several countries. The questionnaire was distributed through the SurveyMonkey platform from January 15 to February 25, 2022. It consisted of 29 multiple-choice and one-option questions organised into three sections. A total of 6,483 valid responses were received. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0 was used to analyse the survey results.

According to the survey findings, food safety practices evolved during the Omicron wave in the studied countries. Firstly, less than half of the sample used a face mask whilst purchasing food. Secondly, regarding food safety knowledge, the survey results suggest that there is still a lack of knowledge in the studied countries. Thirdly, the survey indicates a lack of knowledge amongst the respondents regarding food safety attitudes. For instance, more than a third of the sample (34.4%) are unsure whether the COVID-19 virus can be transmitted through food. These results are surprising and alarming, especially considering that our sample has a higher education than the population of the studied countries.

The main limitation of this research is the sample bias. Survey participants were randomly chosen, enrolled voluntarily and not rewarded. As a result, the questionnaire was self-administered and completed exclusively by people motivated by an interest in the topic. Consequently, our survey does not represent the general population of the studied countries. People with a high degree of education and women, for example, were overrepresented in our sample.

This study is unique in that it is the first to gather information and analyse people’s perceptions of the effects of the Omicron variant on food safety. As a result, the findings of this survey offer a solid basis for future investigations into the impact of the pandemic on food safety in the Balkan region and Russia. This study can help further understand the changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides crucial insights that can be used to guide future decision-making and policy development regarding improving food safety practices. This and other future studies will be a foundation for organisational and government readiness for future shocks, crises and pandemics. The effects of the present Ukrainian conflict on agricultural systems and supply chains throughout the globe (e.g. increased food prices) show that this is timely, urgent and highly required.

This study aims to explore the dissemination and evolutionary path of online public opinion from a crisis management perspective. By clarifying the influencing factors and dynamic mechanisms of online public opinion dissemination, this study provides insights into attenuating the negative impact of online public opinion and creating a favorable ecological space for online public opinion.

This research employs bibliometric analysis and CiteSpace software to analyze 302 Chinese articles published from 2006 to 2023 in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database and 276 English articles published from 1994 to 2023 in the Web of Science core set database. Through literature keyword clustering, co-citation analysis and burst terms analysis, this paper summarizes the core scientific research institutions, scholars, hot topics and evolutionary paths of online public opinion crisis management research from both Chinese and international academic communities.

The results show that the study of online public opinion crisis management in China and internationally is centered on the life cycle theory, which integrates knowledge from information, computer and system sciences. Although there are differences in political interaction and stage evolution, the overall evolutionary path is similar, and it develops dynamically in the “benign conflict” between the expansion of the research perspective and the gradual refinement of research granularity.

This study summarizes the research results of online public opinion crisis management from China and the international academic community and identifies current research hotspots and theoretical evolution paths. Future research can focus on deepening the basic theories of public opinion crisis management under the influence of frontier technologies, exploring the subjectivity and emotionality of web users using fine algorithms and promoting the international development of network public opinion crisis management theory through transnational comparison and international cooperation.

This study demonstrates how becoming a high-reliability institution in health care is a priority, given the high-risk environment in which an error can result in harm. Literature conceptually supports the need for highly reliable health care facilities but does not show a comprehensive approach to operationalizing the concept into the daily workforce to support patients. The Veterans Health Administration closes the gap by documenting a case study that not only demonstrates specific actions and functions that create a high-reliability organization (HRO) for safety and improvement but also created a learning organization by spreading the knowledge to other facilities.

The authors instituted a methodology consisting of assessments, training and educational simulations to measure, establish and operationalize activities that identified and prevented harmful events. Visual communication boards were created to facilitate team huddles and discuss improvement ideas. Improvements were then measured and analyzed for purposeful outcomes and return on investment (ROI).

HRO can be operationalized successfully in health care systems. Measurable outcomes verified that psychological safety was achieved through the identification and participation of 3,184 process improvement projects over a five-year period, which yielded a US$2.8m ROI. Documented processes and activities were used for educational teachings, which were disseminated to other Veteran Affairs Medical Center’s through the Truman HRO Academy.

This case study is limited to one hospital in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) network. As the VHA continues to deploy the methods outlined to other hospitals, the authors will perform incremental data collection and ongoing analysis for further validation of the HRO methods and operations. Hospitalists can adapt the methods in the case study for practical application in a health care setting outside of VHA. Although the model is rooted in health care, the methods may be adapted for use in other industries.

This case study overcomes the limitations within literature regarding operationalizing HRO by providing actual activities and demonstrations that can be implemented by other health care facilities.

This chapter seeks to understand the intersection between eGovernment, social media, and digital inequalities by examining the disparate flow of information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed economies are increasingly transitioning to digital interfaces for information dissemination and provision of services. The authors explore the potential of, and challenges facing eGovernment by looking at the use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter employs a case study approach to probe the dynamics of government-initiated efforts at information dissemination through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website and social media account on Twitter. The analysis in this chapter uses NodeXL to examine communication roles played by government and non-governmental actors within this slice of the Twittersphere centered around CDC@gov. As the findings demonstrate, non-governmental actors played key roles in the dissemination of public health messaging. The authors analyze these data with an eye to the potential of social media for public health communication and extrapolate that understanding to the use of digital access and social media for the provision of accurate, official information in other circumstances. While the COVID-19 pandemic was a global health crisis, individuals and households face individual or local crises every day. This angle of vision allows the chapter to conclude with recommendations pertaining to government-led information dissemination for the public good during crisis and non-crisis situations alike. In the concluding section, the authors probe the degree to which eGovernment can also address digital inequalities including connectivity, device, and literacy gaps. The authors offer solutions needed for eGovernment initiatives in light of challenges posed by digital inequalities to ensure that digital information sharing and services are accessible to all.