Adversarial Cross-domain Community Question Retrieval

Community Q&A forum is a special type of social media that provides a platform to raise questions and to answer them (both by forum participants), to facilitate online information sharing. Currently, community Q&A forums in professional domains have attracted a large number of users by offering professional knowledge. To support information access and save users’ efforts of raising new questions, they usually come with a question retrieval function, which retrieves similar existing questions (and their answers) to a user’s query. However, it can be difficult for community Q&A forums to cover all domains, especially those emerging lately with little labeled data but great discrepancy from existing domains. We refer to this scenario as cross-domain question retrieval. To handle the unique challenges of cross-domain question retrieval, we design a model based on adversarial training, namely, X-QR , which consists of two modules—a domain discriminator and a sentence matcher. The domain discriminator aims at aligning the source and target data distributions and unifying the feature space by domain-adversarial training. With the assistance of the domain discriminator, the sentence matcher is able to learn domain-consistent knowledge for the final matching prediction. To the best of our knowledge, this work is among the first to investigate the domain adaption problem of sentence matching for community Q&A forums question retrieval. The experiment results suggest that the proposed X-QR model offers better performance than conventional sentence matching methods in accomplishing cross-domain community Q&A tasks.

Correlates of Older Adults’ E-Health Information-Seeking Behaviors

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> The Internet is an important source for health information and a medium for older adults’ empowerment in health decision-making and self-caring. Therefore, we aimed to identify the potential motivators and probable barriers of e-health information-seeking behaviors (e-HISB) among older Iranian adults. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> A cross-sectional study assessed the usefulness of self-efficacy, perceived encouragement, positive attitude toward e-HISB, perceived usefulness, challenges of being visited by physicians, and perceived barriers in predicting e-HISB in a sample of 320 older adults in Tabriz, Iran. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The self-efficacy for online information seeking, positive attitude toward e-HISB, and perceived usefulness increased the odds of e-HISB by 12.00%, 24.00%, and 15.00%, respectively. In addition, e-health literacy, conflicting information, distrust of online information, and web designs that were not senior-friendly were the major barriers to e-HISB. <b><i>Discussion/Conclusion:</i></b> The theoretical and practical implications of the motivators and barriers of e-HISB can be instrumental in designing and executing programs aimed at improving e-health literacy among older adults especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mobile app users' privacy concerns: different heuristics for privacy assurance statements in the EU and China

PurposeAs mobile apps request permissions from users, protecting mobile users' personal information from being unnecessarily collected and misused becomes critical. Privacy regulations, such as General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union (EU), aim to protect users' online information privacy. However, one’s understanding of whether these regulations effectively make mobile users less concerned about their privacy is still limited. This work aims to study mobile users' privacy concerns towards mobile apps by examining the effects of general and specific privacy assurance statements in China and the EU.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on ecological rationality and heuristics theory, an online experiment and a follow-up validation experiment were conducted in the EU and China to examine the effects of privacy assurance statements on mobile users' privacy concerns.FindingsWhen privacy regulation is presented, the privacy concerns of Chinese mobile users are significantly lowered compared with EU mobile users. This indicates that individuals in the two regions react differently to privacy assurances. However, when a general regulation statement is used, no effect is observed. EU and Chinese respondents remain unaffected by general assurance statements.Originality/valueThis study incorporates notions from fast and frugal heuristics end ecological rationality – where seemingly irrational decisions may make sense in different societal contexts.

Critical Quality and Readability Analysis of Online Patient Education Materials on Parotidectomy: A Cross-Sectional Study

Purpose: Complications related to parotidectomy can cause significant morbidity, and thus, the decision to pursue this surgery needs to be well-informed. Given that information available online plays a critical role in patient education, this study aimed to evaluate the readability and quality of online patient education materials (PEMs) regarding parotidectomy. Methods: A Google search was performed using the term “parotidectomy” and the first 10 pages of the search were analyzed. Quality and reliability of the online information was assessed using the DISCERN instrument. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) and Flesch-Reading Ease Score (FRE) were used to evaluate readability. Results: Thirty-five PEMs met the inclusion criteria. The average FRE score was 59.3 and 16 (46%) of the online PEMs had FRE scores below 60 indicating that they were fairly difficult to very difficult to read. The average grade level of the PEMs was above the eighth grade when evaluated with the FKGL. The average DISCERN score was 41.7, which is indicative of fair quality. There were no significant differences between PEMs originating from medical institutions and PEMs originating from other sources in terms of quality or readability. Conclusion: Online PEMs on parotidectomy may not be comprehensible to the average individual. This study highlights the need for the development of more appropriate PEMs to inform patients about parotidectomy.

What determines the progress of online information access to banking corporate governance practices? The case of Paraguay

This paper contributes to the lack of longitudinal studies concerning online information access to corporate governance (CG) practices in the banking sector of Latin American countries. In particular, this study aims to analyze the factors that influence information transparency, both mandatory and voluntary, related to CG practices of banks that operate in Paraguay via their websites from 2016 to 2019. Findings indicate the need to improve the level of information available on websites, with disclosure of voluntary information on CG practices being more prevalent than the disclosure of mandatory information. Likewise, banks that operate in Paraguay have made scant “progress” regarding online access to their governance information over the years analyzed. Moreover, the factors “Bank size” and “listed status” positively influence the information transparency regarding CG practices of Paraguayan banks. In contrast, “leverage,” “liquidity,” “size of the audit firm,” and “credit risk rating” are factors that have a negative relation with the extent of CG disclosure.

Does Journalism Still Matter? The Role of Journalistic and non-Journalistic Sources in Young Peoples’ News Related Practices

In today's hybrid media environment new content creators challenge the status of professionally produced journalism and blur the lines between professional and non-professional content. Growing up in this information landscape, younger generations have developed news-related practices and attitudes that lie in stark contrast to those of previous generations. In addition, discrepancies exist between news definitions and the use practices of young people. We conducted focus groups with German adolescents (15–17 years), young adults (18–24 years) and adults (40–53 years) in August 2020 to uncover young peoples’ orientation toward news and journalism. Our study indicates that the boundaries of what journalism is and what it is not are becoming increasingly indistinct. However, distinctions do emerge between the journalistic and non-journalistic sources that adolescents and young adults use and the functions they associate with them according to their information needs. Differences between the age groups become apparent in their motivations to stay informed which highlights the important role non-journalistic sources play in information behaviour and opinion formation. For teenage participants especially, Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are relevant within these processes, which are linked to a perceived social duty-to-keep-informed. Moreover, findings from the focus groups highlight cohort-specific differences regarding the understanding of journalism and, consequently, differences in the assessment of trust and reliability as well as the verification strategies that are applied. In sum, for young participants journalism is a reliable source of information, especially in the case of current events and for crosschecking online information, while non-journalistic sources fulfil social needs.

Importance of Big Data and Hadoop in E-Servicing

Consumers are spending more and more time on the web to search information and receive e-services. E-commerce, e-government, e-business, e-learning, e-science, etc. reflect the growing importance of the web in all aspects of our lives. Along with the tremendous growth of online information, the use of big data has become a vital force in growing revenues. Consumers are today shopping multiple products across multiple channels online. This transformation is substantial and many of the e-commerce companies have now turned to big data analytics for focused customer group targeting using opinion mining for evaluating campaign strategies and maintaining a competitive advantage, especially during the festive shopping season. So, the role of intelligent techniques in e-servicing is massive. This chapter focuses on the importance of big data (since there is a large volume of data online) and big data analytics in the field of e-servicing and explains the various applications, platforms to implement the big data applications, and security issues in the era of big data and e-servicing.

Information Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In any healthcare crisis, people typically seek out information and news about infections, expert analysis of the situation, government policies, sources of support, and so on. Research on other types of crisis situations have shown how individuals draw on information from official sources, the media, and their own contacts in order to make sense of what is going on, understand the risks, and decide how to respond to the situation at a personal level. This chapter examines what is known about individual information behaviors during a pandemic and the implications of these. The chapter includes consideration of levels, patterns, and changes in information consumption during a pandemic; the links between information consumption and pandemic-related behaviors; information content and messaging styles as tools for achieving pandemic management goals; the role of online information channels in supporting daily life during a pandemic; and technology and access to information in light of the COVID-19 pandemic to support various life activities.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality as Promoters of Better Health Literacy

The present study aims to give insights on how to support patient literacy using AR/VR online solutions and effective communication. The future of healthcare is previewed to be human-centric and use a personalised approach to patient treatment. The study confirms AR/VR patient usage is an emerging topic, when compared with other AR/VR health applications. The analysed solutions which had online information were overall mature and accomplished communication to public. The AR/VR solutions intrinsically help in having a clearer communication; they support assertiveness and positivity and can be a literacy promoter. It is recommended to increase AR/VR patient usage and communication, to promote public/patient knowledge and adoption, with advantages to the patient literacy and healthcare system. The solution usage is relevant to educate public/patients and empower self-care. With correct adoption and scale, it can be an enabler to help reduce pressure in healthcare systems.