This study aims to find out the impact of the credibility and content quality of social media influencers on the various stages of the customer's journey and the intention to choose a destination for the Saudi tourist. The target segment was Saudis in general, who are 18 years or above. To conduct this study, 618 usable questionnaires were collected. This study tested twenty-two hypotheses. The result of this study showed that the relationship between content quality, expertise, and similarity was significantly positive with the tourist's desire and information searching. As well, the relationship between the tourist's desire and information searching was significantly positive with the intention of choosing a destination. Conservatism, engagement, and gender were tested as moderators. Conservatism was not significant while the engagement was significant. Gender was only significant in the relationship between content quality and the tourist's desire. This study contributes to information and knowledge in the fields of tourism, hospitality, travel, marketing, tourist behavior, information science, and social media. Researchers and those interested in tourist and customer behavior can benefit from the results of this study. In the industrial field, this study will be very useful to the Saudi government, which has recently begun to rely …

Very few studies have examined information sentiment and explored other factors that contribute to health information dissemination and sharing. In particular, there is a lack of studies that performed these combined analyses in the modern social network environment during the disease outbreaks, such as with zika, ebola, SARS, or COVID-19. This study aimed to fill the gap in the literature by investigating what drives social media users to widely disseminate health-related information during a pandemic. Diffusion of innovation theory and theory of planned behavior were the basis of the theoretical approach utilized to answer the research questions. The two theories identified antecedents of sharing online health information. Data was collected through an online survey distributed to students in a higher education institution in the United States of America. The study revealed the extent of the relationships between the four major factors derived from the previous literature—attitudes toward sharing, beliefs toward source, peer influence, and information sentiment—and the behavioral intention to share information. The results would support the information science literature by offering and testing a new model that identifies the factors that affect users' intentions to share health information in the social network environment. This study will further the understanding …

The research examines the relationship between cyber addiction (excessive use of the Internet, CA), information overload (IO), and assesses their impact on workplace productivity. A multi-methods approach is used employing the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and a quantitative survey design to assess and test the stated hypothesis. The study used random sampling methods targeting 150 respondents from different information technology departments of various organizations. The study hypothesizes that CA and IO have a reciprocal association, which adversely affects workplace productivity and employee performance. From the findings, IAT scores increase with an associated possibility of reporting burnout, fatigue, and other components associated with CA and IO. Also, CA and IO were significantly correlated, as evaluated by the chi-square test, although the same approach did not yield significant associations between CA and perceived internet dependence. Other findings CA components, such as social media use, significantly associated with task postponement and burnout. As well, CA affected IO with substantial impacts on workplace productivity. The paper highlights managerial aspects that organizations should consider in optimizing the output of their staff. Recommendations include wellness programs, altering the leadership and management styles, and sensitizing the employees on the adverse effects caused by the two variables.

This study aims to investigate college students' security awareness of using social media in sharing information. The two theories that have guided this study are the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data was collected from both undergraduate and graduate students from the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton. The total responses included 380 students from different majors with 291 valid responses for data analysis; The structural equation model (SEM) Lavaan package was used to find out the best fit of the model. A diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) was used to model the variables as ordinal in this study's analysis as ordinal data made the model fit substantially. The study found that 6 factors: attitude (AB), subjective norm (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), perceived usefulness (PU), perceived risks (PR), and security awareness (SA) influenced behavior intention (BI). Also, I found that AB was influenced by PR and SA, as well as SN influenced by SA. Self-efficacy (SE) influenced PBC. On the other hand, the study found that controllability (C) did not influence PBC; perhaps, an individual's skills do not interact with social media security settings. Perceived ease of use (PEOU) did not influence …

No published studies to date examined the practices in creation or adoption of metadata in cultural heritage institutions or evaluated metadata in bibliographic databases in the Arabian Gulf counties and assessed its potential interoperability in the aggregation that would provide a central point of access to bibliographic databases of cultural heritage institutions. This exploratory study aimed to address this gap with the goal of: (1) developing understanding of the current state of information representation and knowledge organization in cultural heritage collections in Arabian Gulf countries, and (2) exploring perspectives for future developments such as creating regional large-scale portals similar to Digital Public Library of America, Europeana etc. that facilitate discovery by aggregating metadata and possible barriers to these developments.. The study is focused on a Kuwaiti, Qatari, and Omani libraries, museums, and archives. The mixed-methods research combined semi-structured interviews of the bibliographic database managers at 15 cultural heritage institutions and in-depth content analysis of a sample of 412 metadata records that represent items in these bibliographic databases for accuracy, completeness, consistency, use of knowledge organization systems, etc. This study findings make a research contribution important for evaluating the feasibility and planning of future aggregations of cultural heritage bibliographic databases. Results …

This study explored issues related to the adoption and implementation of electronic health record (EHR) systems including building the awareness, knowledge, and experience of physicians toward cyber hygiene. This study used a qualitative research method to assess (a) the barriers to EHR systems adoption and implementation in Kuwait and (b) the level of awareness, knowledge and experiences related to cyber hygiene practices in Kuwait. The findings of the study supported the conceptual framework used to guide the research of the factors impacting the adoption and implementation of EHR systems in Kuwait as well as explore the level of awareness, knowledge, and experience of physicians about both EHR systems and cyber hygiene. The results from the systematic literature review analysis identified seven major barriers. These are financial barriers, time, difficulty of using technology, lack of support, negative attitude, legal and ethical (policies), and cultural barriers. The findings from the semistructured interviews supported the literature findings and provided more in-depth insights into the structural and social issues affecting the adoption and implementation of EHR systems. Given that Kuwait is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), the results from the literature analysis showed that the problems in Kuwait are similar to …

Cheating, beguiling, and misleading information exist all around us; understanding deception and its consequences is crucial in our information environment. This study investigates deception in phishing emails that successfully bypassed Microsoft 365 filtering system. We devised a model that explains why some people are deceived and how targeted individuals and organizations can prevent or counter attacks. The theoretical framework used in this study is Anderson's functional ontology construction (FOC). The methodology involves quantitative and qualitative descriptive design, where the data source is the set of phishing emails archived from a Tier 1 University. We looked for term frequency-inverse document frequency (Tf-idf) and the distribution of words over documents (topic modeling) and found the subjects of phishing emails that targeted educational organizations are related to finances, jobs, and technologies. Also, our analysis shows the phishing emails in the dataset come under six categories; reward, urgency, curiosity, fear, job, and entertainment. Results indicate that staff and students were primarily targeted, and a list of the most used verbs for deception was compiled. We uncovered the stimuli being used by scammers and types of reinforcements used to misinform the target to ensure successful trapping via phishing emails. We identified how scammers pick their …

The purpose of the current study was to confirm or dismiss Saudi students' behavioral intention with regard to using smartphone applications for learning purposes. A quantitative, non-experimental survey research design and descriptive research conducted on the determinants -performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence- that predict Saudi students' intention at University of North Texas to use smartphone applications for learning purposes, based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) as the framework. This study aims at filling gap found in understanding of students' intentions and their behaviors regarding the adoption and use of the Smartphone applications. Data was collected by means of an online questionnaire. The hypothesized model validated empirically using data collected from around 234 Saudi students who enrolled at University of North Texas. The model developed from UTAUT explained 50.1% of the variance of behavioral intention, and behavioral intentions explained 13.6% of the variance of usage behavior. The result of this study support that the determinants of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions were the highest predictors of behavioral intentions in using smartphone applications for learning purposes. The results of this study could encourage students, educators, and the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education …

The current research examines the use of social media and its security settings using the Social Exchange Theory (SET) within a Saudi student environment. This research includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, and conclusion with the results section presenting the findings from the three essays. The first essay employs the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) methodology of SET. PRISMA's systematic and exhaustive approach to literature evaluation increases the likelihood of obtaining high-quality, reproducible findings. In the second essay, which focuses on awareness of X's (Twitter) security settings, a quantitative research approach was utilized. A sample of former and current Saudi students (graduate and undergraduate) at the University of North Texas participated in the investigation. This research provides an empirical examination of the use of X (Twitter) and its security features within this community by employing statistical analysis of the data from respondents. Likewise, the same sample of Saudi students from the University of North Texas was used for the third essay in which the use of Facebook's security settings was examined. Having a consistent sample across both studies enables a comparison and a greater understanding of the security awareness and practices of this group across …

When it comes to hospice care, patients and their families residing in rural counties need competent rural community-based hospice social workers on their team. The study of information seeking behaviors of rural community-based hospice social workers during the global COVID-19 pandemic is significant as there is a need to fill gaps regarding how this specific medical discipline performs their job responsibilities when duties become more complicated due to evolving infection control protocols, decreased direct access to patients, and poor internet services. Community-based rural hospice social workers rely on up-to-date information and resources when providing support services to patients and their families. This has become particularly important during the global pandemic COVID-19. Utilizing Chatman's small world theory, this research lends itself to community-based hospice social workers identifying solutions to the challenges of finding timely and accurate COVID-19 information and resources for hospice patients and their families. Purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews, and qualitative social network analysis (SNA) with ATLAS.ti comprise the methodology for this research. The purpose of this study is to investigate the information seeking behaviors of community-based hospice rural social workers in order to understand how they select their COVID-19 information resources.

Cloud-based assistants like the Google Home and the Amazon Alexa have become ubiquitous in our homes. Users can simply communicate with the devices using a smartphone application. There are privacy concerns associated with cloud-based assistants. For example, users do not know what type of information is being sent to the device manufacturer, if the device is stealthily listening to conversations, data retention, or who else has access to the data. Privacy is about perception. The goal of this study is to determine user privacy concerns regarding cloud-based assistants by adopting a quantitative research method. The study used a privacy decision framework that lists three core components, which are technology controls, understanding user privacy preference, and government regulations. The research used Dervin's sensemaking model to describe users' privacy perception using the privacy decision framework and improved on a privacy perception survey instrument from previous dissertations. An understanding of user privacy concerns with cloud-based assistants is required to provide a comprehensive privacy guidance to stakeholders. The significance of this study is in the identification of the privacy perception of users of cloud-based assistants and the extent to which the components of the theoretical framework can impact user privacy perception. The results of …

Research in scholarly communication is usually limited to the use and dissemination of scientific material by scholars. This excludes the transfer of knowledge from research producers to service providers. Some may argue the primary function of science is to investigate the conditions in the lab so everyday interactions with the environment are more effective and efficient. This is the underlying philosophy of the science of behavior analysis. Comprised of a basic science, an applied science and a philosophy the field of behavior analysis relies on research developments to inform effective practice. Guided by dissemination processes studied in information science, this investigation revealed the content layer in behavior analysis is primarily comprised of journal articles. Ninety four percent of the research artifacts cited in the current content layer are from journal articles. Other dissemination channels used to develop the behavior analytic content layer included scientific magazine articles, oral reports, dissertations and theses, and unpublished manuscripts. The information use environment for professionals in this field is very different than that of the scholars; most professionals do not have access to a university library. Therefore, the research producers are disseminating developments via communication channels some service providers cannot access. This investigation reveals the …

The goal of this work is to improve the robustness and generalization of deep learning models, using a similar approach to the unsupervised "innate learning" strategy in visual development. A series of research studies are presented to demonstrate how an unsupervised machine learning efficient coding approach can create filters similar to the receptive fields of the primary visual cortex (V1) in the brain, and these filters are capable of pretraining convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to enable faster training times and higher accuracy with less dependency on the source data. Independent component analysis (ICA) is used for unsupervised feature extraction as it has shown success in both applied machine learning and modeling biological neural receptive fields. This pretraining applies equally well to various forms of visual input, including natural color images, black and white, binocular, and video to drive the V1-like Gabor filters in the brain. For efficient processing of typical visual scenes, the filters that ICA produces are developed by encoding natural images. These filters are then used to initialize the kernels in the first layer of a CNN to train on the CIFAR-10 dataset to perform image classification. Results show that the ICA initialization for a custom made CNN …

When people access online health information, unfortunately, they have access to both clinically accurate and inaccurate information that they may then utilize to make informed personal health decisions. This research fills a gap in the literature of online health communities as they relate to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The conduct of this research required a multi-phased and multi-method approach, best presented in three distinct essays. In Essays 1 and 2, data gathering within two online health communities specific to COPD allowed this study to address three research questions: (1) what are the information needs of COPD patients that result in their participation in online health communities; (2) what are the information sources offered to the participants in these online communities; and (3) is the information obtained via those communities credible. Essay 1 harvested data from a moderated website hosted by a non-profit organization for patients with COPD and Essay 2 harvested data from a non-moderated Facebook group also serving this unique group. Data Miner, a Chrome extension designed to extract data, was used to collect data, key words and themes which brought an understanding of the health information needs of participants and identified what health information sources were preferred. …

Indigenous communities around the world are losing their languages at accelerating rates to the effects of the climate crisis and global capitalism. To preserve samples of these languages facing endangerment and extinction, samples of language use (e.g., audio-video recordings, photographs, textual transcriptions, translations, and analyses) are created and stored in language archives: repositories intended to provide long-term preservation of and access to language materials. In recent years, archives of all kinds are considering their origins and audiences. With the emergence of the community paradigm of archiving framework, the roles of archivists, communities, and institutions are under re-examination. Language archives too are reflecting this trend, as it becomes more common for speakers of Indigenous languages (also known as language communities) to document and archive their own languages and histories. As the landscape of language archiving expands, we now see increased emphasis on the re-use of archival material, particularly to support language revitalization—efforts to increase and maintain the use of the language. There are calls for language documentation (and, by extension, language archiving) to prioritize revitalization efforts. This dissertation is a case study of one language archive collection: the Boro Language Resource in the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive. …

In this research the focus is on data-centric AI with a specific concentration on data quality evaluation and improvement for machine learning. We first present a practical framework for data quality evaluation and improvement, using a legal domain as a case study and build a corpus for legal argument mining. We first created an initial corpus with 4,937 instances that were manually labeled. We define five data quality evaluation dimensions: comprehensiveness, correctness, variety, class imbalance, and duplication, and conducted a quantitative evaluation on these dimensions for the legal dataset and two existing datasets in the medical domain for medical concept normalization. The first group of experiments showed that class imbalance and insufficient training data are the two major data quality issues that negatively impacted the quality of the system that was built on the legal corpus. The second group of experiments showed that the overlap between the test datasets and the training datasets, which we defined as "duplication," is the major data quality issue for the two medical corpora. We explore several widely used machine learning methods for data quality improvement. Compared to pseudo-labeling, co-training, and expectation-maximization (EM), generative adversarial network (GAN) is more effective for automated data augmentation, especially …

In the traditional agenda-setting theory, the agenda-setters were the news media and the public has a minimal role in the process of agenda-setting, which makes the public a passive receiver located at the bottom in the top-down agenda-setting dynamics. This study claims that with the development of Information communication technologies, primarily social media, the networked public may be able to set their own agendas through connective actions, outside the influence of the news media agenda. There is little empirical research focused on development and dynamics of public agenda-setting through social media platforms. Understanding the development and dynamics of public agenda-setting may be key to accounting for and overcoming conflicting findings in previous reverse agenda-setting research. This study examined the public agenda-setting dynamics through a case of gun violence prevention activism Twitter network, the #MarchForOurLives Twitter network. This study determined that the agenda setters of the #MarchForOurLives Twitter network are the key Never Again MSD student leaders and the March For Our Lives. The weekly reflected important events and issues and the identified topics were highly co-related with the themes examined in the tweets created by the agenda setters. The amplifiers comprised the vast majority of the tweets. The advocates and …

Relevance is a core concept in the field of Information Science and a common term in everyday vernacular that generally refers to the usefulness of information. However, relevance has not been sufficiently or consistently defined or explored in the information science literature. Relevance criteria are the factors that information users employ when determining whether information they encounter is relevant. Identifying relevance criteria is a crucial step to understanding relevance. Relevance criteria employed with newer information formats like online video are especially important to study. Online video is now widespread, and people are increasingly likely to rely on video for information. This study identifies relevance criteria employed during relevance assessments of online video through a explanatory sequential mixed-methods study of frequent online video users including students, faculty, librarians, and video professionals. Methods included an online survey and interviews.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), patients and providers do not understand the Health Information Privacy and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Non-compliance with HIPAA is primarily due to confusion, along with insufficient understanding. HSS has taken measures to simplify the language they use to communicate HIPAA, however, they have not taken steps that consider if one's culture, religious and social perspectives, institutional training, credentials, and comprehension of legal terminology affects medical providers and non-clinical administrative personnel's abilities to understand HIPAA. This research uses bibliometrics to examine the literature from January 2010 – September 2020 that addresses HIPAA's use of legal terminology, literacy level, and institutional training, along with religious and social perspectives, and credentials of medical providers and non-clinical administrative personnel. A total of 107 articles were examined, 42 were assigned article influence scores with values that were less than 1.00, which is a below-average influence score for the article. There were 29 articles with values equal to or above 1.00, which translates to an equal or above-average influence score. The remaining 36 articles did not have article influence scores and were assigned values as not available. Results of the review of the literature indicate that …

This study explored a part of our population that can be misunderstood, marginalized, and underserved: veterans who are seeking to transition from the military to employment in North Texas. At the time of this research (before the COVID-19 pandemic), overall unemployment in North Texas was only 3.9%.Veteran unemployment was calculated at approximately the same before considering the underemployed veterans or those who have given up finding employment (and before the COVID-19 global pandemic), and that calculation likely exceeds 16-18% according to the Texas Workforce Commission. By understanding the information-seeking behaviors of the veteran population targeting North Texas for future employment, their ability to find useful information for successful relocation, attainment of employment, and the resources that enables their sense-making processes, the services provided to veterans seeking employment can be improved. Further understanding can be gained by using a qualitative approach that references Dervin's sense making model (SMM) as the framework. The revelations and conclusions can be used to improve existing programs, inspire new programs, and provide answers that are useful to the Veteran's Administration (VA), other veteran-focused organizations, policymakers, non-profits who serve veterans, veterans themselves, and future employers who enable successful transitions by providing satisfying and inclusive employment opportunities for …

This dissertation is organized in a traditional format while including three essays that address specific research questions. Essay 1 examined the relationship between physical activity and community engagement and their effect on mental well-being among older men and women. Data from National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) from 2018 to 2020 were explored and the posited relationships were tested. This essay provides empirical support that older adults who are reasonably active and involved in the community have greater mental well-being than those who isolate themselves. Essay 2 provides insight into older adults' motivation to improve their physical activity through the use of a fitness tracker. The key finding from this study is that wearables, especially fitness trackers, can significantly facilitate increased physical activity. Essay 3 is a mixed-methods study to understand older adults' perception of the usefulness of fitness trackers and interaction with such devices. Findings suggest that to increase the adoption of fitness trackers among older adults, makers could improve the esthetics and quality of the wristband in addition to the battery life of the tracker.

This dissertation examines the impact of trauma on information-seeking behaviors and decision-making processes. Essay 1 includes a qualitative analysis of the transcripts obtained from interviews with four military service members diagnosed with PTSD. The results showed that 75% of this small sample population exhibited addictive behavior that was presented in their information behaviors. All four members indicated that the excessive extent to which they seek information is related to the perceived importance of the information and their level of trust in the sources. Low trust in information sources increases the number of sources searched for validation in this population. Essay 2 involved the collection and analysis of survey data. The results of the stepwise backward regression show that two trauma variables (adult sexual assault, sudden fear) have a significant combined negative effect on decision-making in this population. The analysis and results of a different survey are presented in Essay 3. The stepwise logistic regression analysis results conducted on the summated scales developed showed a strong positive link between trust in scientific experts for scientific information and the dichotomous dependent variable trust in social media for news. The research conducted in this dissertation extends the understanding of how trauma affects people's …

The U.S. National Library of Medicine brought the intensifying interest in open science to national attention when it joined enthusiastic scientists to introduce and host an Amazon-like rating forum on PubMed—the world's largest database of indexed biomedical and life sciences literature. The result was PubMed Commons. In June 2013, the commenting forum was introduced for open discussion about published scientific literature as part of a three-pronged approach to improve research rigor, reproducibility, and transparency. In Feb. 2018, the forum was unexpectedly discontinued. This retrospective explanatory case study research asked the question, "What happened on the way to the forum?" Answers came from a variety of resources using multiple methodologies for data collection and analysis. Historical data from PubMed Commons' 7,629 comments and 1,551 commenters; key informant interviews with PubMed Commons editors; and a systematized search for published articles, gray literature; and social media content about PubMed Commons were analyzed using computer-mediated discourse analysis and a social network analysis. Results from the quantitative content analysis described a forum with little participation, and the qualitative content analysis demonstrated that active forum members were focused primarily on providing links to other information resources and discussing aspects of post-publication peer review. The social network …

Accurately predicting the deck condition rating of a bridge is crucial for effective maintenance and repair planning. Despite significant research efforts to develop deterioration models, a nationwide model has not been developed. This study aims to identify an appropriate machine learning (ML) algorithm that can accurately predict the deck condition ratings of the nation's bridges. To achieve this, the study collected big bridge data (BBD), which includes NBI, traffic, climate, and hazard data gathered using geospatial information science (GIS) and remote sensing techniques. Two sets of data were collected: a BBD for a single year of 2020 and a historical BBD covering a five-year period from 2016 to 2020. Three ML algorithms, including random forest, eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), were trained using 319,404 and 1,246,261 bridge decks in the BBD and the historical BBD, respectively. Results showed that the use of historical BBD significantly improved the performance of the models compared to BBD. Additionally, random forest and XGBoost, trained using the historical BBD, demonstrated higher overall accuracies and average F1 scores than the ANN model. Specifically, the random forest and XGBoost models achieved overall accuracies of 83.4% and 79.4%, respectively, and average F1 scores of …