THE MEDIATION OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN ADVOCACY

This article aims to study mediation and its various approaches and forms of action, to identify its applicability in the professional legal arena. It has been with the assumption the existence of an apparent conflict that permeates this profession whose human actions already are established, but that have been impacted by the actions not human (technology) based on the economics of information and knowledge. It is questionable C atom to Information mediation can act in the transformations suffered by law in face of the changes that the Information and Communication Technologies-ICT have caused in society. We opted for research of an applied nature, contemplating intervention in social reality, with a qualitative approach, with an exploratory objective, whose method is the inductive one, as the general conclusion is based on a set of particular observations from the literature. As a result, important theoretical elements were identified for the debate on mediation and its ability to lead in the transformation processes of advocacy.

Research and Development, Testing, and the Economics of Information, 1937–63

American mathematicians’ contributions to the engineering and production of equipment in World War II included the exploration of ways to improve choices between competing designs and maximize the value of experimental testing of prototypes. After the war, these contributions were extended, particularly at the RAND Corporation. Working on such matters, Kenneth Arrow took a keen interest in testing as a paradigm for information gathering in economic decision-making and in encouraging investment in R&D as an information-gathering exercise essential to making informed choices in military systems acquisition. He later extended insights about the shortcomings of information gathering as a market activity to his touchstone analysis of disparities of information between physician and patient as a crucial aspect of the economics of medical care. While it is difficult to trace the precise influence of the work of Arrow and others around him on engineering and R&D management, the issues they grappled with have remained relevant for more than half a century.

Online Reviews of Credence Service Providers: What Do Consumers Evaluate, Do Other Consumers Believe the Reviews, and Are Interventions Needed?

Consumer-generated online reviews of credence service providers, such as doctors, have become common on platforms such as Yelp and RateMDs. Yet doctors have challenged the legitimacy of these platforms on the grounds that consumers do not have the expertise required to evaluate the quality of the medical care they receive. This challenge is supported by the economics of information literature, which has characterized doctors as a credence service, meaning that consumers cannot evaluate quality even after consumption. Are interventions needed to ensure that consumers are not misled by these reviews? Data from real online reviews shows that many of the claims made in real reviews of credence service providers focus on experience attributes, such as promptness, which consumers can typically evaluate, rather than credence attributes, such as knowledge. Follow-up experiments show that consumers are more likely to believe experience claims (vs. credence claims) made by other consumers, claims that are supported by data, and longer reviews even if they are not more informative. The authors discuss implications for consumers and credence service providers and possible policy interventions.

Information Economics Aspires

Researchers in the economics of information come from a variety of disciplines. While most economics of information research appears in economics and in the library and information science, Machlup and Mansfield in The Economics of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages note contributions from other fields including psychology, sociology, linguistics, communication, engineering, computer science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics. In this article, some important issues will distinctly be represented. Thus anybody can know about information economics and many data.