“YouTube’s predator problem”: Platform moderation as governance-washing, and user resistance

YouTube experienced large-scale criticism in early 2019 for predatory behavior toward children on the platform. To address concerns about children’s safety, YouTube acted quickly by demonetizing and deactivating comments on videos featuring minors. In this paper, we analyze both the company’s response to this scandal and how users received that response. We argue that YouTube’s reaction was governance-washing, which presents the appearance of vigorous platform moderation and leverages popular perceptions of technology to create the look of authority while deflecting questions about substance. While YouTubers and users did not dispute that the pedophilic comments were heinous, they questioned the effectiveness of the company’s solutions, arguing that YouTube’s platform governance actions did not solve the problem. Ultimately, we show that users have cogent critiques of governance policies that pretend to be comprehensive but fail to solve what they purport to address, and offer up the term “governance-washing” as a useful framework to make sense of such cases.

Immunizing with information – Inoculation messages against conversational agents’ response failures

Conversational agents (CAs) are often unable to provide meaningful responses to user requests, thereby triggering user resistance and impairing the successful diffusion of CAs. Literature mostly focuses on improving CA responses but fails to address user resistance in the event of further response failures. Drawing on inoculation theory and the elaboration likelihood model, we examine how inoculation messages, as communication that seeks to prepare users for a possible response failure, can be used as an alleviation mechanism. We conducted a randomized experiment with 558 users, investigating how the performance level (high or low) and the linguistic form of the performance information (qualitative or quantitative) affected users’ decision to discontinue CA usage after a response failure. We found that inoculation messages indicating a low performance level alleviate the negative effects of CA response failures on discontinuance. However, quantitative performance level information exhibits this moderating effect on users’ central processing, while qualitative performance level information affected users’ peripheral processing. Extending studies that primarily discuss ex-post strategies, our results provide meaningful insights for practitioners.

The relation between project team conflict and user resistance in software projects

This study aims to explore the relation between conflict in the project team and user resistance to change in software projects. Following a cross-sectional research design, a survey was conducted among 1,000 largest companies in Slovenia (N = 114). The results of PLS-SEM analysis indicate that task and process conflicts in the project team are associated with user resistance. This study is among the first to associate conflict within the project team and user resistance in the implementing organization. It is also one of the first studies to investigate the relations between different types of conflict and user resistance. Project managers may invest resources into adequately managing conflicts within the project team related to tasks in which the project team interacts with users of developed software to lower user resistance. Project with poorly defined roles (e.g., agile and information security projects) may be more prone to user resistance than projects with clearly defined roles.

CONSTRUCTING CONTEMPORARY PARENTHOOD IN DIGITAL SPACES: A WALKTHROUGH OF INFANT FEEDING APPLICATIONS

Infant feeding and baby tracking apps remain extremely popular mobile applications, downloaded by millions of parents to facilitate the feeding and care of children in their first year of life. These applications are commonly considered as part of a wider ecology of apps to manage reproductive health, which are typically gendered in design. Unsurprisingly, research on infant feeding apps to date has focussed on analysing these applications through a critical feminist lens, problematising the surveillance and disciplining of women’s bodies, since the tracking of infant care tracks the caregiver as much as the baby. These issues relate to broader societal trends around the datafication of family life, as well as participatory and co-surveillance practices, which ultimately support data-dependent surveillance capitalism. Yet, the predominant focus on critical perspectives on these technologies tends to construct their uses as disempowering, and their users as lacking agency. This work-in-progress paper explores how contemporary parenthood is constructed and mediated through the functionalities and technological design of infant feeding apps. It employs a feminist lens, while striking a balance between critical analysis and the identification of opportunities for user resistance, agency and empowerment. The app walkthrough method was used to examine two infant feeding applications, the commercial Feed Baby and the public health-oriented mum2mum. The study’s findings indicate that infant feeding applications are diverse in design and functionalities, providing opportunities for resistance and empowerment, that complicate and challenge understandings of parenting apps as (dis)empowering technologies.

Individual and Organisational Level Drivers and Barriers to Building Information Modelling

The diffusion of building information modelling (BIM) has remained slow and the search for a solution to the problems that prevent technology acceleration continues. Although, there is strong evidence that user resistance is a major factor in delaying the adoption of new technologies, little attention has been paid to the drivers of BIM use in literature. Besides, majority of the studies on organisational barriers focus on large firms, despite strong emphasis laid on increased collaboration in the BIM. In the current study, the drivers of and barriers to BIM adoption and implementation are explored at both individual and organisational levels through a survey conducted on 905 industry professionals from the Turkish construction industry. This study further explores differences between groups of firm size in embracing BIM technologies to assess the extent and presence of digital divide. Results reveal that professionals place more value on performance enhancing factors rather than social influence for the adoption of BIM, indicating the role of improved performance as a driver for BIM. The most prominent barriers, on the other hand, appear to be related to the availability of expertise and skills, a problem that seems to exist not solely within companies but also further down the supply chain. Policymakers seeking to disseminate BIM use may address these concerns and consider these insights to revise policies and incentives.

Factors associated with nurses' user resistance to change of electronic health record systems

Background Electronic health record (EHR) systems often face user resistance in hospitals, which results in a failure to acquire their full benefits. To implement the EHR successfully, it is crucial to reduce nurses’ resistance to use the system. This study aimed to investigate the factors associated with nurses’ resistance to use the EHR system. Methods A descriptive correlational study was conducted with nurses working at four university hospitals in Korea using self-administered questionnaires to measure user resistance behavior, resistance to change, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived value, colleagues’ opinions, self-efficacy for change, and organizational support for change. Path analysis was performed to examine direct and indirect association with user resistance behavior. Results A total of 223 nurses completed the questionnaires. All seven factors were found to be significantly associated with user resistance, either directly or indirectly. The total effect on user resistance behavior was highest in resistance to change (0.65), followed by perceived usefulness (− 0.33); both had direct but no indirect effects. Conversely, self-efficacy for change (− 0.25), perceived value (− 0.21), colleagues’ opinions (− 0.16), perceived ease of use (− 0.16), and organizational support for change (− 0.05) had indirect but no direct effects. Conclusions The study examined the factors associated with nurses’ user resistance behavior after the implementation of a new EHR system. These findings could help hospitals develop better EHR implementation strategies to reduce user resistance behavior among the nursing staff.

Analysis of User Resistance Towards Adopting E-Office: A Case from A Governmental Organization

The advancement in information technology is accelerating, affecting many industries. Government entities are one of the industries that have been affected. They adopt information technology (IT) to replace disorganized traditional business processes. This study observes that the IT innovation adoption in an organization will lead to some resistance. We bring a case of IT adoption to replace one part of a manual business process (letter management system) into a digitalized system called E-office in one of Indonesia’s governmental organizations. The adoption of IT causes some resistance within the organization, which motivates us to identify resistances before and during the adoption. We interview a team who oversees handling E-office implementation and discovered two types of resistances in technology adoption: delaying resistances and opposition resistances. Meanwhile, there are two types of behavioral resistances: reluctant compliance resistance and misguided application resistance. This research further provides details on the approaches used by the organization to mitigate resistances before and during the adoption of the E-office project's implementation.

Analysis of User Resistance Towards Adopting E-Office: A Case from A Governmental Organization

The advancement in information technology is accelerating, affecting many industries. Government entities are one of the industries that have been affected. They adopt information technology (IT) to replace disorganized traditional business processes. This study observes that the IT innovation adoption in an organization will lead to some resistance. We bring a case of IT adoption to replace one part of a manual business process (letter management system) into a digitalized system called E-office in one of Indonesia’s governmental organizations. The adoption of IT causes some resistance within the organization, which motivates us to identify resistances before and during the adoption. We interview a team who oversees handling E-office implementation and discovered two types of resistances in technology adoption: delaying resistances and opposition resistances. Meanwhile, there are two types of behavioral resistances: reluctant compliance resistance and misguided application resistance. This research further provides details on the approaches used by the organization to mitigate resistances before and during the adoption of the E-office project's implementation.