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This study seeks the views of environmental and communication managers in three mining companies on the use of the world wide web for environmental communication.

Interviews were utilised to gather data for this research.

Prior literature on web‐based environmental communication has a primary emphasis on the content of environmental disclosure on web sites. It is highlighted in this paper that one must move beyond merely analysing web sites for environmental information in order to gain an in‐depth understanding of the practice of web‐based environmental communication.

Very few studies to date have sought the opinions of corporate executives on the web‐based environmental communication practice of their companies and this study addresses this gap in the literature.

This study obtains “first hand knowledge” of web‐based environmental communication in Australia's minerals industry through its interviews.

The study provides an in‐depth understanding of current web‐based environmental communication practices in an environmentally sensitive industry and suggests that both technical and socio‐political factors impact current practices. This has implications for the choice of theoretical perspectives for analysing web‐based environmental communication practices.

The unprecedented economic development and increase in the number of global corporations in the Greater China region, comprising the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, have led to more emphasis on corporate leader-stakeholder communication. Bilingual web-based messages posted on corporate websites, which aim to strategically cultivate positive relationships between leaders and stakeholders, have emerged as a primary mode of communication for Chinese corporations. However, a research study investigating the prominent themes and underlying cultural values depicted in leaders’ messages intended for different groups of stakeholders is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the themes and cultural values expressed through corporate leaders’ web-based messages in a non-western context.

Using an inductive approach, open coding and a categorization system, this study analyzed the web-based messages of leading corporations with WordSmith 6.0.

Six prominent themes in leaders’ communication were identified. These themes included, in order of importance: company development, operating philosophy, company profile, business environment, performance, and products and services. It was found that leaders strategically selected certain themes such as focusing on progress and the business environment but omitted others depending on how they wanted to strategically influence their stakeholders’ attitudes. Differences between the cultural values depicted in Chinese and the corresponding English messages could be attributed to leaders’ cultural adaptation of the messages intended for non-domestic stakeholders.

Since this study provides insights into the major themes preferred by leaders of corporations operating in Greater China, it will enable existing stakeholders to understand the main business focus of leaders and offer leaders more information about commonly accepted themes. These possibilities for enhanced knowledge on the part of stakeholders and business leaders, in turn, may potentially increase academic appreciation of the complexities involved in corporate communication. It also informs stakeholders about the variations in the values reflected in the English and Chinese messages of leaders, and, therefore, has a potential to offer value to academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to examine the primary sources and methods of Web-based messaging during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The authors use ethical lens to develop a conceptual framework to inform and reduce conflicts of Web-based messaging associated with COVID-19.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of three different ethical schools and identifies the cohesive theme of common good across them. Common good leading to a greater good serves as the overarching ethical construct for Web-based messages that focus on society and not the singular individual, business or political ideology.

The findings suggest that the ethical construct of common good focuses on prioritizing the society over the individual and draws upon utilitarian principles focused on consequences, Kantian principles focused on intentions and Aristotelian principles focused on the definition of good. Web-based messaging on COVID-19 originates from diverse public and private sources and ethically can be governed by adherence to achieving the greatest good for society. Pervasive conflicts with COVID-19 messaging can be mitigated by pursuing a more ethical agenda with messages.

This manuscript provides a conceptual framework, based on ethical principles, to serve as a blueprint for Web-based messaging during a pandemic. This work offers an ethical perspective for communication during a pandemic and it is original in conceptualizing the components of Web-based messaging and decomposing them into the different levels where conflicts can occur. This article can serve as a template for Web-based communication pertaining to future pandemics and other events that benefit from prioritizing the impact on society over the impact on the individual.

To achieve quality in customer service is to enhance a company’s competitiveness. With the birth of the World Wide Web, the process of making products and services available to customers has changed from traditional communication channels to Web‐based information systems. Consequently, the widely used service quality measurement instrument SERVQUAL, developed for traditional customer service, may require adaptation for use in this information age. The identified general service quality dimensions in SERVQUAL may no longer be appropriate under this new and specific context. Shifts in service quality dimensions are due to the differences between Web‐based and traditional communication as well as the complementary functions of these two channels. A survey was conducted online and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Two new quality dimensions were identified. This information should be useful to Web designers and information service providers.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a model to assess web-based corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure prominence and use this model to explore the prominence of CSR disclosures of listed New Zealand (NZ) companies.

A CSR Disclosure Prominence Indicator Model was constructed using five key elements that include the dissemination medium, accessibility, location, content variety and extent of CSR disclosures. The websites of 65 of the largest listed NZ companies from 11 industry groupings were explored through this model.

A significant proportion (81.5 per cent) of listed NZ companies in the sample were utilising their websites for communicating CSR information to stakeholders. The CSR Disclosure Prominence Indicator Model revealed that companies that have CSR-related disclosures on their websites used multiple dissemination media and locations to enhance prominence of such disclosures. CSR commentary on the webpage was the most prominent dissemination medium due to its ease of accessibility, with a separate CSR webpage being the most prominent location. Environmental performance and society-related issues received the most prominent emphasis. Although companies from “sensitive” industry sectors appeared to disclose their CSR information more prominently, those from “less sensitive” industries also attempted to make their CSR disclosure more prominent and noticeable through strategic placement and through the extent of disclosure.

The paper highlights the importance of managing web-based CSR disclosure prominence, thereby highlighting its significance in communication of CSR information.

Prominently placed CSR disclosures could be a significant platform for companies to strategically manage their image and identity. The CSR Disclosure Prominence Indicator Model could be utilised by companies to effectively assess and manage the prominence of CSR disclosures on their websites for more effective communication with stakeholders.

The paper complements earlier studies on CSR disclosures by constructing and applying a model to assess the prominence of web-based CSR disclosures.

Keeping track of users' communication activities in web‐based environments has always been considered a complex task. It requires tracking systems that are capable of efficiently tracking users' activities and producing tracking data that can be useful to various users. The objectives of this paper are two‐fold: to present an approach for better observing the different levels of human and computer interactions (HCI) during a computer‐mediated communication (CMC) activity; and to present the technical aspects of a web‐based tracking system for communication tools such as discussion forums.

The research applications are applied to educational settings. Three cases of experiments with result analysis will also be presented. The paper studied different CMC tools. With the participation of researchers from different disciplines, including HCI and e‐learning specialists, we adopted the 5W1H method (When, Where, Who, What, Why, and How) and a participative method to build the approach. The result of the experiments and users' feedback allowed us to evaluate the approach.

An approach for efficiently tracking users' communication activities on CMC tools, by looking very closely at the different levels of HCI is shown. This paper demonstrates how useful it is to have tracking data with finer granularity and to provide significant data indicators to the participants in the learning process.

The data indicators shown in this paper are computed based on the real needs of the participants in the learning process. The proposed approach can be implemented with any conceptual and development languages.

One of the particularities of this research is the approach for efficiently tracking CMC activities on both client and server sides. The quality of the tracking data from the three experiments shows the effectiveness of the system. Another contribution of this paper is a discussion of the important key issues related to the tracking data in learning environments.

While research on brand identity is abundant, an area that is less explored is whether an organisation’s communication about itself directly translates to key stakeholders’ perception of that organisation. The purpose of this study is to explore whether certain Web-based communication strategies are more effective in aligning organisations’ communicated identity (CI) with their perceived identity (PI).

This study uses a mixed-methods design in the context of professional football league clubs. The CI was determined through an analysis of the clubs websites (n = 20), and PI was investigated through interviews with spectators (n = 244). Both CI and PI were operationalised using image categories.

Three main strategies of identity communication are observed. The results show that the strategy focusing on product-related categories leads to discrepancy. WBC with non-product related categories and benefits shows better CI-PI alignment. The study also found that clubs emphasising their CI as local, engaged in community and family-friendly are more likely to achieve greater alignment.

The quality of the brand identity depends on the discrepancy or congruence of brand image categories. Best practices are observed for brands having largely updated WBC of all categories, attitudes and engagement in the community.

The interrelated nature of brand identity communication and perception makes it necessary to empirically test how the two may be bridged with one. The developed concepts provide insight into which strategies better contribute to a consistent, coherent brand identity.

This study aims to focus on how preservice teachers' academic achievements, their frequencies of connecting to the distance learning management system, their gender and the related sub-scales influence their Web-based self-efficacies (WEB-PCK) and their attitudes towards distance education (WBI).

In the study, the structural equality model was used. In the path analysis, the maximum likelihood estimation method was used to predict the parameters of the model. This method allows determining the highest values for the population and the probability of the sample value to occur.

It was found that the sub-scale of Web communication (WEB-C) had a high level of direct and positive influence on the male preservice teachers' self-efficacy perceptions. As for the female preservice teachers, WEB-C did not have any direct influence on their self-efficacy perceptions. For the male preservice teachers, Web pedagogy (WEB-PC) had positive influence on their self-efficacy perceptions (β = 0.193), while the sub-scale of WEB-PC had a high level of influence on the female preservice teachers' self-efficacy perceptions (β = 0.534).

In the study, the purpose of was to examine the effects of the attitudes of the preservice teachers towards Web general (WEB-G), Web-Communication (WEB-C), Web pedagogical knowledge (WEB-PK), Web pedagogical self-efficacy (WEB-PCK) and Web-based instruction (WBI) with the help of the structural equation model with respect to gender, frequency of connection to the internet and academic achievement grades.

We present the development of a Web‐based remote‐monitoring system as an attractive alternative to the manual task of security surveillance. The system has built‐in human motion analysis that can alert the security personnel when suspicious activities are detected at the monitored sites. In this paper, our focus is on the architectural design of such a system. We discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of three different architectural approaches: centralized, distributed and hybrid, and conclude that a hybrid approach is most appropriate. Our Web‐based system has been implemented for monitoring elevators (lifts) within a university environment. Objective and subjective tests have validated the effectiveness of our system. The Web‐based implementation enhances ease of operation and allows users to connect to the system via a Web browser.