Information technology & media sociology in a (still) pandemic world

The current period of disruptive social change is inextricably bound up with new means and modes of communication, information, and media streams. The Communication, Information Technologies & Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS) locates these factors at the center of our collective interests, investigating them through a plethora of methods, theories, and empirical cases. Each year, CITAMS runs a special issue in ICS showcasing select works presented at the previous year's American Sociological Association conference and the affiliated Media Sociology preconference. Papers in the 2022 CITAMS Special Issue reflect a social context defined by a prolonged global pandemic and wrought by democratic uncertainty. Across these social circumstances, technology and media loom large. Simultaneously, everyday life continues and classic CITAMS scholarship sustains relevance for the ways people interact, construct identity, consume, and mobilize. All of this and more are contained in the pages of this year's Special Issue, from which readers can get a sense of what CITAMS has to offer and consider how their own work may fit within the broad CITAMS umbrella. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Supplier change, market competition and enterprise innovation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study enterprise innovation in the perspective of external supplier relationship. On this purpose, this paper examines the impact of supplier change on enterprise innovation with the moderating role of market competition.Design/methodology/approachUsing 2012–2020 empirical data of Chinese listed manufacturing enterprises, this paper investigates the relationship among supplier change, market competition and enterprise innovation through a two-way interaction model.FindingsThe results show that supplier change has a negative impact on enterprise innovation. And market competition intensifies the negative relationship between supplier change and enterprise innovation. Additional analyses indicate that the main effect and the moderating effect are more significant when the enterprise is non-state-owned or has lower ownership concentration.Originality/valueThis paper studies enterprise innovation from the perspective of external stakeholders. It focuses on supplier relationship in a dynamic variation view, instead of the traditional static ones. Moreover, this paper explores the contingency effect of market competition and gives practical implications for managers to adjust innovation strategy flexibly.

Research on the classification of CT images of COVID-19 by pre-training model based on self-attention mechanism

Nowadays, with the outbreak of COVID-19, the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 has gradually become the focus of social disease prevention, and most patients are also more concerned about the symptoms. COVID-19 has symptoms similar to the common cold, and it cannot be diagnosed based on the symptoms shown by the patient, so it is necessary to observe medical images of the lungs to finally determine whether they are COVID-19 positive. As the number of patients with symptoms similar to pneumonia increases, more and more medical images of the lungs need to be generated. At the same time, the number of physicians at this stage is far from meeting the needs of patients, resulting in patients unable to detect and understand their own conditions in time. In this regard, we have performed image augmentation, data cleaning, and designed a deep learning classification network based on the data set of COVID-19 lung medical images. accurate classification judgment. The network can achieve 95.76% classification accuracy for this task through a new fine-tuning method and hyperparameter tuning we designed, which has higher accuracy and less training time than the classic convolutional neural network model. © 2023 SPIE.

Application of information visualization design in the popularization of the knowledge of medical waste

With the continuous improvement of living standards, people pay more attention to the knowledge of medical health than before. The knowledge also brings the popularity and development of medical information. However, in the information age of today, tedious and redundant information floods people's lives make it impossible for people to quickly understand and grasp the content they need. Especially after the outbreak of the COVID-19, apart from the epidemic, the large amount of generated medical waste has become an issue of concern, but the current publicity of related knowledge is difficult to resonate with people. After collecting and reconstructing the knowledge about medical waste, a visual information hierarchy design is established to reflect the hierarchical relationships between different medical waste information intuitively and clearly through such a visual presentation. Thus, people better understand and learn them. At the same time, it helps people to put into action together for the disposal of medical waste and provide solutions for the visualization design of rapid and professional sorting and treatment of the increasing amount of medical waste. © 2023 Author(s).

Establishment of medical service protocols in large public hospitals for the prevention and control of coronavirus disease 2019.

Coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) poses a challenge to hospitals for the prevention and control of public health emergencies. As the main battlefield of preventing and controlling COVID-19, large public hospitals should develop service protocols of diagnosis and treatment for outpatient, emergency, hospitalization, surgery, and discharge. The construction of medical protocols should be based on the risk factors of key points and focused on pre-inspection triage and screening, to establish a rapid response mechanism to deal with exogenous and endogenous risk factors. Implementation of all-staff training and assessment, strengthening the information system, and use of medical internet service are important. This study explores the construction of medical protocols in large public hospitals during the pandemic, and provides a reference for the orderly diagnosis and treatment in hospitals during the pandemic.Copyright © 2021, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. All rights reserved.

The evolution of consumers' demand for hotels under the public health crisis: opinion mining from online reviews

This research aims to grasp the evolution of consumer demand and improve the resilience of the hotel industry under the public health crisis (COVID-19). Online reviews of 7,679 hotels in 10 cities were collected from Ctrip, China's major online hotel platform. Then, we applied opinion mining and time evolution to mine the change in consumer demand before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings show that some consumer demands (e.g. epidemic safety) will change during the outbreak period. However, during the nonoutbreak period, users were more concerned about their own check-in experience (e.g. hotel facilities, front desk services). This article provides new ideas for identifying the dynamic value of online reviews. We suggest that businesses focus on ensuring hotel safety during the crisis period. The results contribute essential theoretical and practical significance to the hotel industry's crisis management during public health crises.

Sustainable Enterprise Development in the Manufacturing Sector: Flexible Employment and Innovation in China

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the scope and market size of flexible employment in sustainable enterprise development have significantly increased worldwide, yet academic literature offer little information about the outcomes and moderators of flexible employment in China. The paper advances current knowledge and empirically addresses this gap by examining the effects of flexible employment on enterprise innovation input and output, with information technology capability and labor regulation as unexplored moderators. Based on data from 1179 manufacturing enterprises in China, this paper uses the OLS method to conduct empirical tests. The results show that (1) flexible employment has positively contributed to sustainable enterprise development by facilitating innovation inputs and outputs;(2) superior enterprise information technology capabilities and strict labor regulations were significant moderating factors in this relationship. The findings provide credible evidence for enterprises to pursue flexible employment as an inexhaustible impetus for sustainable economic and enterprise development.

ICT Transformation in Education: Its Impact on Language Teachers' Professional Identities

Rapid and continuous changes in digital technologies have changed both classroom practices and teacher profiles in education. It can be argued that a new context of teaching may lead some teachers to develop a different teacher identity in order to meet the needs of the era. Within this perspective, this case study attempts to explore the impacts of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) revolution in education on teachers' professional identity through the lens of three English instructors from three different contexts in Turkey. The study particularly focuses on reflections of teachers during the pandemic. As a theoretical framework, the study adopts Wenger's (1997) social theory of learning and, within this framework, it discusses these teachers' professional identities in relation to their ICT usage. In particular, three modes of belonging, Engagement, Imagination and Alignment, are underlined. A qualitative approach is employed based on the written history documents of the participants and semi-structured interviews as data collection tools. The findings are gathered with a deductive thematic analysis, and they illustrate that teachers have some external and internal difficulties regarding their ICT usage, and they form a new shape of professional identity mainly through collaboration, community expertise and contributing new ideas in their school contexts. Although the use of new digital technologies mostly enables them to adopt a positive and modern teacher identity in their teaching contexts, it also leads some of them to sometimes question their teacher identity due to their limited ICT knowledge and competence. Thus, the study suggests some implications both for language teachers to invest in their digital identities, and for school administrations to create a friendly atmosphere where the community of expertise can be shared freely among teachers.

Telemedicine in the Era of Covid-19: Teleconsultation Architecture Platform

Teleconsultation is a type of medical practice similar to face-to-face consultations, and it allows a health professional to give a consultation remotely through information and communication technologies. In the context of the management of the coronavirus epidemic, the use of teleconsultation practices can facilitate healthcare access and limit the risk of avoidable propagation in medical cabinets. This paper presents the monitoring of international teleconsultation referrals in the era of Covid-19 to facilitate and prevent the suspension of access to care, the most common architecture for teleconsultation, communication technologies and protocols, vital body signals, video transmission, and the conduct of teleconsultation. The aim is to develop a teleconsultation platform to diagnose the patient in real time, transmit data from the remote location to the doctor, and provide a teleconsultation. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

An integrative framework for building organizational resilience through environmental scanning: a view of organizational information processing theory: MRN

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the impact of environmental scanning on organizational resilience through the mediation of organizational learning and innovation based on organizational information processing theory (OIPT) within Egyptian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a cross-sectional design to collect the data used to carry out mediation analysis. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample consisting of 249 Egyptian SMEs. The smart partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was adopted to test the hypotheses.FindingsEnvironmental scanning does not have a direct effect on organizational resilience. However, organizational learning and innovation fully mediate the relationship between environmental scanning and organizational resilience.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample size was small, covering only Egyptian manufacturing SMEs. The results may differ in the service sector and other countries. The study was cross-sectional which is limited to tracing the long-term effects of environmental scanning, organizational learning and innovation on organizational resilience. Accordingly, a longitudinal study may be undertaken.Practical implicationsManagers in Egyptian SMEs should use signals from environmental scanning activities as input for learning and transforming business processes through innovation to develop organizational resilience.Originality/valueThis study is the first to investigate the role of environmental scanning in building organizational resilience through organizational learning and innovation based on the perspective of OIPT within Egyptian SMEs during the COVID-19 crisis.

Use of information technology and problems faced by students in the teaching-learning process in higher education during the 2019 Covid pandemic

The 2019 Covid pandemic has changed the interaction of human life in the education sector. The teaching-learning process in higher education uses online communication techniques more, both synchronous and synchronous. Various information technology-based applications are used for students learning to obtain learning resources and to conduct teaching-learning interactions. This is useful, but there are also many problems faced by students. This study aims to explore online communication techniques and the problems that arise in using these techniques. The research object included 80 students of the master's program. The research design used mixing methods, supported by google form as a data collection technique. Descriptive statistics were used for qualitative data analysis. The results showed that widely used online techniques by students were Google Meet, WhatsApp, Google Search, Google Scholar, Zoom Meeting, Sipejar, YouTube, and Scopus.Com. Meanwhile. Problems were related to the use of Zoom Meeting, Sipejar, Google Meet, WhatsApp, Scopus.Com, YouTube, Google Scholar, and Google Search. The source of these problems included network problems, mastery of applications, ease of use, costs, the amount of data, the troubles in the using process, and so on. Based on these problems, effective strategies for using online communication techniques are suggested. © 2023 Author(s).

THE SWEDISH OSTEOARTHRITIS REGISTRY. TRENDS IN SWEDISH OSTEOARTHRITIS HEALTH CARE BETWEEN 2008- 2021

BackgroundIn 2012 the Swedish national guidelines for osteoarthritis (OA) were published. The guidelines implicit that all patients with OA should obtain information and supervised exercise as first-line intervention and that OA is a clinical, not radiological diagnosis. The Swedish OA registry contains data which measure compliance to the guidelines since 2008 [2].ObjectivesTo describe the trends over time from 2008 to 2021 for patients who have received first-line interventions for hip and knee OA in Sweden and adherence of the healthcare staff to the national guidelines.MethodsDescriptive registry-based study including patients with hip or knee OA who participated in first-line interventions including education and exercise. Data were extracted from the Swedish OA registry between January 1st, 2008, and December 31, 2021. The registry contains patient-reported outcomes and physiotherapist-reported outcomes. In this study the following physiotherapist-reported outcomes were described over time: radiological examination before first-line intervention, if the first-line intervention was given the first time the patient seek health care caused of OA, which explanation patients had been given about their disease, intake of painkillers before the start of first-line intervention and the percent who got supervised exercise >10 times according to the guidelines of OA in Sweden. The following patient-reported outcomes were described over time: mean BMI at the first visit, and mean age at the first visit. To be included in the study, participants had to meet the following criteria: i) clinical diagnosis of OA, with hip or knee OA as the most symptomatic joint, ii) provided 3-month follow-up.ResultsA total of 175 764 participants with hip or knee OA were included in the study.The trends from 2008-2021 showed that the proportion of patients who had a radiological examination before entering the first-line intervention decreased from 97 % to 65 % in men and from 95% to 62 % in women. The proportion of patients who get assess to first-line intervention the first time they seek for their symptoms increased from 4 % to 10 % both in men and women. People that get the correct information about OA increased from 15% to 40 %, and patients that get the explanation that OA was a tear and wear disease decreased from 30 % to 5%. The mean BMI (28) is unchanged over time. The mean age increased from 64 years to 67 years between 2008-2020 but decreased during the covid-19 pandemic to 64 years. The percentage that was given supervised exercise more than 10 times was constant between 2012-2020 at 30 % but decreased during the covid-19 pandemic to 20%.ConclusionThe results implicit that the implementation of a supported OA self-management program in Sweden has been successful and changed the care given to patients with OA in Sweden. However, the national guidelines for OA, have still not been fully implemented. We need to keep implementing the guidelines so all patients with OA get the first-line intervention at the right time.References[1]Anon. (2012). Nationella riktlinjer för rörelseorganens sjukdomar 2012 - stöd för styrning och ledning. Socialstyrelsen.[2]Thorstensson CA, Garellick G, Rystedt H, Dahlberg LE. Better Management of Patients with Osteoarthritis: Development and Nationwide Implementation of an Evidence-Based Supported Osteoarthritis Self-Management Programme. Musculoskeletal Care. 2015 Jun;13(2):67-75. doi: 10.1002/msc.1085. Epub 2014 Oct 24. PMID: 25345913.Acknowledgements:NIL.Disclosure of InterestsNone Declared.

Evaluation on College Students' Anxiety and Social Media Usage during Shanghai Closure

As COVID-19 mutates, the highly infectious omicron mutants (BA. 5.2., BF. 7) tension shrouded China. Given the internet information explosion and youth social media addiction, observing the mental impact on college students during the 2022 Shanghai closure is worthwhile. A pilot survey study was conducted to explore the anxiety levels of college students during the closure. The sample size was limited to 101 second-year college students. In addition to demographics, the survey involved the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, self-perceived COVID-19 anxiety, frequency of COVID-19 information reception, number of social media accounts, and number of electronic devices. Though 68.4% of students equipped with two electronic devices (N = 95) exceeded the students with only one electronic device, a Chi-square test showed that students with only one electronic device had the highest anxiety index (mean = 50). Further, the Kruskal-Wallis test indicated that the number of electronic devices affected the students' anxiety level (p = 0.027) while social media membership did not (p = 0.565). As a result, it was suggested that social media usage and pandemic information inputs among college students were significant concerns that required special attention from the government, schools, teachers, and families.

Design and Implementation of Intelligent Truck Based on Azure Kinect

In recent years, due to the impact of COVID-19, the market prospect of non-contact handling has improved and the development potential is huge. This paper designs an intelligent truck based on Azure Kinect, which can save manpower and improve efficiency, and greatly reduce the infection risk of medical staff and community workers. The target object is visually recognized by Azure Kinect to obtain the center of mass of the target, and the GPS and Kalman filter are used to achieve accurate positioning. The 4-DOF robot arm is selected to grasp and transport the target object, so as to complete the non-contact handling work. In this paper, different shapes of objects are tested. The experiment shows that the system can accurately complete the positioning function, and the accuracy rate is 95.56%. The target object recognition is combined with the depth information to determine the distance, and the spatial coordinates of the object centroid are obtained in real time. The accuracy rate can reach 94.48%, and the target objects of different shapes can be recognized. When the target object is grasped by the robot arm, it can be grasped accurately according to the depth information, and the grasping rate reaches 92.67%. © 2023, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Have students' perceptions of online education changed with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions?

This research examines student preference toward online and on-ground (i.e., face-to-face) course delivery methods in higher education as a result of the easing of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Over 130 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in Computer and Information Systems courses at a university located in the northeastern United States were surveyed from April 2021 to May 2022. The study found that with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in Spring 2022, students significantly preferred on-ground over online courses in comparison to their preferences when COVID-19 restrictions were still high in 2021. None of the potential influencing factors contributing to the changed preference, including students' perceptions of online course effectiveness, self-skills supporting online learning (e.g., work independently without supervision, prioritization and time management), and the usefulness of classroom interaction in learning, were found to have significant differences from the time when COVID-19 restrictions were high to the present easing of them. © 2023 Issues in Information Systems. All rights reserved.

Hashtag framing and stakeholder targeting: An affordance perspective on China's digital public diplomacy campaign during COVID-19

Social media platforms such as Twitter provide opportunities for governments to connect to foreign publics and influence global public opinion. In the current study, we used social and semantic network analysis to investigate China's digital public diplomacy campaign during COVID-19. Our results show that Chinese state-affiliated media and diplomatic accounts created hashtag frames and targeted stakeholders to challenge the United States or to cooperate with other countries and international organizations, especially the World Health Organization. Telling China's stories was the central theme of the digital campaign. From the perspective of social media platform affordance, we addressed the lack of attention paid to hashtag framing and stakeholder targeting in the public diplomacy literature. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Information Technology & Politics is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Task-Technology Fit and ICT Use in Remote Work Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study examines the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in remote work practice during the COVID-19 pandemic by integrating task-technology fit theory and the post-acceptance model of IS continuance into a research framework. In addition, it operationalizes the technological characteristics of TTF (task-technology fit) with the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. The methodology to test the research model takes support from the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method using a sample of 320 employees. The results show that TAM significantly explains TTF. Furthermore, there is a positive impact of ICT use on individual and organizational performance. User satisfaction has the most significant effect on individual performance, organizational performance, and IS continuance intention. The authors provide some managerial implications for addressing the challenges of remote work related to ICT disruptions for the post-COVID-19 period.

Development of Teaching Digital Skills: possibilities in Distance Education

The objective of this investigation is to understand how online distance education can contribute to promoting the development of digital skills, in particular, teaching digital skills. Contemporary society increasingly demands the use of digital technologies in the various areas of life, including in the teaching and learning process, even more evident in the pandemic context of COVID-19, which caused the suspension of face-to-face classes worldwide and imposed a new educational model, facilitated by digital technologies and based on online education methodologies, designated as emergency remote teaching. Among the many challenges, teachers had to adapt and reformulate their pedagogical practices and teaching methodologies in a virtual learning environment, often without having fundamental digital skills to promote quality learning. Through a narrative bibliographic review of an exploratory nature and qualitative methodology, studies, programs and models were identified that could be used as a reference to enable training propositions for the development of teaching digital skills, a key factor for pedagogical innovation.

How Trust in Authority and Trust in Networks Relates to Verification and Sharing Behaviours: COVID-19 Health Information Sharing on WhatsApp

Messaging platforms like WhatsApp are some of the largest contributors to the spread of Covid-19 health misinformation but they also play a critical role in disseminating credible information and reaching populations at scale. This study explores the relationships between verification behaviours and intention to share information to users that report high trust in their personal network and users that report high trust in authoritative sources. The study was conducted as a survey delivered through WhatsApp to users of the WHO HealthAlert chatbot service. An adapted theoretical model from news verification behaviours was used to determine the correlation between the constructs. Due to an excellent response, 5477 usable responses were obtained, so the adapted research model could be tested by means of a Structural Equation Model (SEM) using the partial least squares algorithm on SmartPLS4. The findings suggest significant correlations between the constructs and suggest that participants that have reported high levels of trust in authoritative sources are less likely to share information due to their increased behaviours to verify information. © 2023 IEEE.