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Social media platforms can be a promising tool for retailers’ marketing campaigns. Especially for the purpose of new product introductions, social media may facilitate social interaction and online word-of-mouth and therefore, may broaden the reach and accelerate the diffusion of information about the new product. The impact of online word-of-mouth communication and social interaction on consumer behavior has been extensively analyzed in previous research. However, little knowledge exists so far on the influence of social media campaigns on new product introductions. Therefore, the goal of this study is to analyze the impact of a social media campaign on the success of a new product introduction by using survey as well as behavioral data. The data stems from an online community related to a social media tryvertising campaign implemented to promote the introduction of new high-end binoculars. The results of a mediation analysis show that campaign-related factors positively influence consumers’ attitude toward the new product, which in turn mediates the positive influence on purchase intention and recommendation behavior. Furthermore, a post-hoc analysis shows the importance of community members’ activity on the success of the new product introduction.

Over the past 30 years, the economies in Europe have undergone major transformations that have been powered by diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT), intensification of innovation, and reforms in the financial sector to support innovative endeavors. The primary objective of this study was to examine the causal relationships among ICT diffusion, innovation diffusion, venture capital investment, and economic growth for 25 countries in Europe for the period from 1989 to 2016. Using a vector error‐correction model, the study examines the underlying short‐run and long‐run relationships for the above variables. The empirical analysis shows that in the long run, venture capital investment, ICT diffusion, and innovation diffusion have significant impacts on economic growth in Europe. However, in the short run, the direction of the causality varies depending on the specific measures of ICT diffusion and innovation diffusion that are utilized. Results from this study provide valuable insights into the types of policies that will contribute to sustainable economic growth in Europe.

The prior work reports conflicting evidence on the information content of industry returns for the market index return. We reexamine the out of sample predictive ability of industry returns by considering several relatively advanced methods from the statistical learning literature. We show that when the random forest method, which accounts for both linear and nonlinear dynamics, is used for regression, industry returns indeed contain significant out of sample forecasting power for the market index return. Moreover, our analysis also presents evidence for lead-lag relations among individual industry returns. The reported findings are consistent with the implications of the gradual diffusion of information hypothesis.

South Africa's unique flora and extensive use of African traditional medicines has created a unique research opportunity on medicinal plants for local and international scientists. In this paper, submitted to a special issue of South African Journal of Botany(SAJB) dedicated to “sub-Saharan Ethnobotany”, we aim to explore the research landscape on medicinal plant research as published in SAJB. A bibliometric assessment (1982–2017) showed that medicinal plant research represents 24% of the published volume in SAJB and that contributions on this topic are increasing exponentially. Although most papers are broad-basedinvitro screening studies, the range of topics covered is impressive. Antimicrobial (41%) and anti-oxidant (21%) studies dominate the research space with fewer studies focusing on diseases highly relevant to the African continent, e.g. malaria (3%) and tuberculosis (2%). Although the SAJB has contributed greatly to disseminating knowledge on important species (e.g. Aspalathus and Cyclopia) several taxa of potential economic relevance remain poorly investigated (e.g. Adansonia, Bulbine etc.). The citation footprint and authorship networks which have been established attest the pivotal role the SAJB has played to build research capacity and create awareness in this important field of research.

Analysis of policy options is often unavailable or only available from non-governmental research organizations (“think tanks”) that may have explicit or implicit political biases. This paper experimentally examines how voters respond to policy analysis and how the response varies when the analysis is produced by a nonpartisan organization versus a liberal or conservative organization. The key result is that individuals, on average, are responsive to all types of analysis, but most strongly responsive to analysis produced by nonpartisan organizations. Analysis from an ideologically slanted organization is less effective because individuals tend to ignore analysis that is produced by a partisan organization that does not share their own ideology. The results suggest that increasing the amount of information that the public receives based on nonpartisan analysis may increase the diffusion of information on policy features into the public and reduce polarization in public opinion.

Offering entertainment, discussion, and information, social media provides users with a stimulating online experience. Within the last five years, it has also become an increasingly popular medium for the consumption of news. News outlets publish articles and reports through social media, and by doing so influence their users in a way that corresponds with the outlet’s political leaning. Because social media outlets provide users with tailored content, the prevalence of biased news reporting reinforces the user’s political values and polarizes their beliefs. This thesis attempts to examine the relationships that give rise to this political polarization in social media and discusses possible opportunities to mitigate it.

The publishing industry is a vast system whose elements form a metaphorical ecosystem with knowledge flowing through connections between heterogeneous elements. In this paper we seek a more robust understanding of different types of literature, and whether and how they support one another in the diffusion of knowledge. We analyze a corpus comprising professional electronic media in US dentistry and its relation to the peer reviewed journal literature. Our corpus includes full text from magazines, news sites and blogs that provide information to clinicians. We find links to research are made through several mechanisms: articles describing new clinical guidelines, referencing, summaries of recently published journal articles and crossover authoring. There is little to no apparent time lag in the diffusion of information from research literature to professional media.

The objective of this manuscript is to analyze the effects, in terms of diffusion of information, of negative events in the cruise sector, in two scenarios: one in which responsibility for the event is mainly attributed to the cruise company and the other in which the company cannot be held responsible. This theme is relevant because, in recent years, disasters or mishaps have affected the cruise industry, attracting the attention of global media and communities and stimulating the adoption of different crisis communication strategies by the cruise lines affected. Moreover, most extant literature focuses on corporate messages intentionally sent by organizations after a negative event, and not on the spontaneous diffusion of information that is generated by stakeholders' reactions. In particular, the aim of the article is to explore how the perceived responsibility of the company may have an impact on the diffusion of information, and to understand whether a previous excellent corporate reputation could have a moderating role on this phenomenon. Input data from an online questionnaire have been employed to build a bottom-up agent-based simulation model that, being based on individual agents' behavior, investigates the role of the two aforementioned variables in the aggregate diffusion of information about the negative event. The simulation showed that a perception of responsibility translates into higher and faster spontaneous information diffusion among the public. Moreover, it showed that a former excellent reputation mitigates the spread of news. Based on the results, some practical implications are provided for managing crisis communication strategies when a negative event occurs.

A necessidade de alcançar uma maior eficiência na utilização dos recursos hospitalares torna necessária a sincronização dos processos internos. Para tanto, é essencial a aproximação entre os fluxos físicos e de informação envolvidos nos processos, como, por exemplo, a gestão da alta hospitalar. Essa aproximação é apoiada pela difusão de Tecnologias da Informação e pela contínua adoção dos conceitos de Sistemas Ciber-Físicos. Neste contexto, o presente artigo tem por objetivo propor e analisar políticas de sincronização dos processos internos de gestão da alta hospitalar, por meio da adoção de Sistemas Ciber-Físicos inteligentes. Para isto, após realizar uma proposição do estado futuro almejado, um modelo de simulação foi construído para apoiar sua comparação com o estado atual do processo. Assim, foi possível evidenciar possíveis ganhos de eficiência na utilização dos recursos hospitalares, bem como redução do tempo de permanência dos pacientes.Palavras-chave: Alta hospitalar. Gestão hospitalar. CPS - Cyber-Physical Systems. Simulação. Sincronização.ABSTRACTThe need for better utilization of hospital instigates the synchronization of internal processes. For that, it is essential to approximate the physical and information flows involved in the processes, such as hospital discharge management. This approach is supported by the diffusion of information technologies and by the continuous adoption of the concepts of Cyber-Physical Systems. In this context, the aim of this article is to propose and analyze new policies for synchronization of internal hospital discharge processes management, made possible by the adoption of intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems. To this, a simulation model was elaborated to support its comparison with the current state of the process. Thus, it was possible to show possible gains in efficiency in the use of hospital resources, as well as reduction of patients' time of permanence.Keywords: Hospital discharge. Hospital management. CPS - Cyber-Physical Systems. Simulation. Synchronization.

The success of economic policy often hinges on the diffusion of information on its existence and nature through social networks. Informing all potential beneficiaries directly is costly, hence policymakers may prefer to inform a few key agents instead. Existing approaches typically select such injection points based on network centrality measures, and propose informing the most centrally located agents. This does not account for overlap in information diffusion, and can inhibit diffusion to the periphery. This note proposes a method to optimally select injection points accounting for overlap in information diffusion. The approach is based on that of Banerjee et al. (2013) and involves solving a mixed integer program. For large networks, a convex relaxation of the mixed integer program is more computationally tractable.

The Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative, administered by USDA-NIFA, is the major federal funder of organic agricultural research. Analysis of 733 publications produced dur...

This paper seeks to identify the practices of information accuracy in the tourism information environment by adapting the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method. The SLR method consists of revie...

Self-reflection on knowledge generation in sport management is essential for continued growth and remains a prevailing topic for recipients of the Earle F. Zeigler Award. To date, two perspectives ...

This extension activity aimed to encourage the use of green leisure spaces by parents and children as a strategy for the promotion of health and well-being. From this purpose, the project worked in two fronts: realization of workshops in the Ecological Municipal Park Professor David Ferreira Lima (Florianopolis) and diffusion of information through Internet channels. The activities were carried out between April 2016 and March 2017 and involved 80 participants — including 41 children — in practical activities. The project also reached 5.648 people through the contents published in a social network and in the page of the Environmental Psychology Laboratory at UFSC. It is considered the project has achieved the objectives of awareness and dissemination of the theme about the benefits of natural environments for human development, interaction between people and connection with nature.

El ritmo del cambio en el área de la información de los últimos tiempos y en especial del último año que nos sorprendió inmersos en una pandemia, ha superado los conceptos de independencia y autosuficiencia. Las Bibliotecas y Centros de Documentación e Información de hoy operan dentro de un complejo universo de información, cuyas partes muchas veces no existen dentro de una misma institución, ni tampoco dentro de un mismo país. La frase impresa en la alfombra de una biblioteca pública australiana “Google puede darte 100.000 respuestas, pero un bibliotecario te dará la respuesta correcta”, parece sintetizar lo que la Alianza SIDALC puede ofrecernos a partir del conocimiento organizado en las bibliotecas del hemisferio sur. EEA Anguil Fil: Epuñan, Flavia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Anguil; Argentina Fil: Bonomo, Adriana Julia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Gerencia de Informática y Gestión de la Información; Argentina

International audience; Researchers have studied the diffusion of information technology (IT) mainly as a process of adoption. However, the practices of supply-side agents of diffusion are just as critical to guaranteeing the adaptation of technology to the changing needs of the adopters. The execution of these practices over time and across multiple supply-side agents is both complex and understudied. Therefore, this study investigates IT diffusion practices from the perspective of supply-side agents. Drawing from a longitudinal case of development, sale, and institutionalisation of a healthcare information system, this article proposes a model of the supply side of technology diffusion. The model shows that diffusion depends on supply-side agents engaging in practices that are both demanding and possibly misaligned with traditional agent practices. Accordingly, the study provides an additional explanation for the complexity of technological diffusion and extends the theoretical framework of technology diffusion by adding supply-side dynamics.

In light of the unprecedented growth of the aging population in Hong Kong, coupled with the massive diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT), the issue of the best approach to adopting ICT for solving aging problems has become a hot topic among stakeholders from industry, the academy, government, and elsewhere. Considering that older adults always exhibit a relatively low level of technology usage, product-service systems (PSS) could be an appropriate way of facilitating their acceptance of ICT. However, research on this topic is diverse and fragmented in conception and literature review. It is therefore necessary to conduct a systemic overview of the subject and propose a broader vision of PSS for ICT. This study reviews the recent progress of ICT for aging and its integration of pertinent product-service system as the basis for a roadmap which provides insights into future trends and challenges for the development of ICT-oriented PSS.

In this work, the aim is to study the spread of a contagious disease and information on a multilayer social system. The main idea is to find a criterion under which the adoption of the spreading information blocks or suppresses the epidemic spread. A two-layer network is the base of the model. The first layer describes the direct contact interactions, while the second layer is the information propagation layer. Both layers consist of the same nodes. The society consists of five different categories of individuals: susceptibles, infective, recovered, vaccinated and precautioned. Initially, only one infected individual starts transmitting the infection. Direct contact interactions spread the infection to the susceptibles. The information spreads through the second layer. The SIR model is employed for the infection spread, while the Bass equation models the adoption of information. The control parameters of the competition between the spread of information and spread of disease are the topology and the density of connectivity. The topology of the information layer is a scale-free network with increasing density of edges. In the contact layer, regular and scale-free networks with the same average degree per node are used interchangeably. The observation is that increasing complexity of the contact network reduces the role of individual awareness. If the contact layer consists of networks with limited range connections, or the edges sparser than the information network, spread of information plays a significant role in controlling the epidemics.

Drawing on the awareness of consequence literature, this paper unpacks how the awareness\ud of the consequences of full-sun cocoa production can encourage farmers to adopt shaded cocoa\ud agroforestry that preserves the land and favours better cocoa farm waste management. Using Ghana\ud as a case study, the paper provides distinctive insights on how shaded cocoa agroforestry systems\ud provide sustainable yields in the medium- to long-term, relative to unshaded systems. We also find\ud that cocoa farmers’ awareness of consequences about the effects of undertaking unshaded cocoa\ud production could make individual farmers exhibit pro-environmental behaviour, leading to the\ud adoption of cocoa agroforestry systems that help preserve soil fertility and improve waste management.\ud We recommend that the utilization of awareness of consequence protocols, coupled with the\ud efficient diffusion of information on the benefits of agroforestry in terms of waste management and\ud environmental improvements to the cocoa farmers, could increase the adoption of shaded cocoa\ud production regimes in Ghana.

Introduction: Infodemic, defined as a high flow of information, has a similar behavior to that of viruses, as it quickly spreads from person to person, which represents a new challenge for healthcare authorities. The objective is to analyze fake news published in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: A documentary research was conducted based on the Brazilian Ministry of Health news website titled “Health without fake news”. Coronavirus and COVID-19 were the keywords used to identify news published between December 2019 and March 2020. For data visualization, the content analysis approach developed by Bardin was applied. Results: 66 publications with a total of 92 fake news were identified. The analysis found common characteristics among fake news such as the use of flashy headlines and images, alarming data and circular diffusion. In addition, social networks emerged as an important means of diffusion in which, in order to give a sense of truthfulness to news, it was common to attribute the authorship of fake news to healthcare organizations or professionals. News articles were classified into six thematic groups in which prevention methods (32.6%) and natural history of the disease (28.2%) were the most common topics. Discussion: There is growing interest in topics related to the diffusion of information about coronavirus. Global research points out the importance of identifying and combating fake news by government and healthcare agencies. Conclusions: Fake news related to coronavirus poses a threat to individual and collective health, addresses a variety of issues and carries potential harm to physical and mental health. How to cite this article: Alencar, Nadyelle Elias Santos; Lima, Francisca Fabiana Fernandes; Gouveia, Marcia Teles de Oliveira; Silva, Grazielle Roberta Freitas da. Noticias falsas em tempos de pandemia pelo novo coronavirus: uma analise documental. Revista Cuidarte. 2021;12(2):e1297. http://dx.doi.org/10.15649/cuidarte.1297

The development and diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) increased the availability of a large number of communication channels. Some big problems arise when these new tools operate pervasively in our lives. The evolution of these technologies and their development, with the help of uncountable applications, are influencing and modifying our behavior. Unfortunately the respect of human rights is based again on the application of regulations and laws that are formally structured around the human beings. The application of laws is localized into the domain of the national law systems. Furthermore the distance between the quick evolution of the new technical applications and the slow update of the law systems increases constantly. The artificial tools that compose ICT applications are now again out of any regulatory system. In particular the experiences imposed by the diffusion of COVID-19 virus show the great help given by the application of ICT to contrast and react the pandemic diffusion. At the same time the risks to loss the respect of human rights emerge with great evidence.

With the rapid diffusion of information technologies in recent years, learning and teaching approaches are facing profound changes. Video conferencing software is a visual tool for two or more users to communicate remotely. Its principle is to provide users with video calls, screen-sharing, meeting recording, and other helpful features through transmission lines and multimedia devices to achieve the purpose of long-distance meeting and learning. As online courses that anyone can register and participate for free, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are flexible, global and sustainable. MOOCs are based on the Internet and electronic devices. With studying the use of video conferencing software in distance education and the explosion of MOOCs, this paper also discusses distance education examinations. Result shows that during COVID-19, there has been a surg of interest in how to cheat in online examinations. This article summarizes the historical framework of distance education and explores the trends of distance education under the pandemic. It inspires educators to explore the advantages and challenges of distance education.

Cascading nature of nodes is very important to study the diffusion of information and commodity across networks. Centrality measures are generally used to address cascading behaviors of nodes. This article applies four centrality measures namely, degree, betweenness, closeness, and coreness centrality for modeling of cascading. The results of centrality measures are then compared with an independent simulated cascade model. The simulation result shows coreness centrality to be the best measure for cascade modeling in networks.

The social media platforms now-a-days are well appreciated as an advertising medium since it facilitates diffusion of information because of large number of user base and provides a grand scaffold to marketers to showcase their products and services before the potential consumers. Social media Advertising (SMA) is becoming apples of advertisers eyes in India as well as globally due to its mentioned but not limited to distinct characteristics, i.e., targeting the users on the basis of their common interests, providing a multidimensional communication flow enabled by web 2.0 technology, capacity of making the message viral among virtual communities, diffusion of messages, etc. The purpose of this study is to measure the cause–effect relationship among the factors of social media advertising affecting kid’s perception to influence their parent’s purchase intention. No study has been reported so far in India in such area for social media advertising on kids and how these factors impact kids to influence their parents to go for the purchase of kid’s products. To fill this gap, DEMATEL technique has been used to understand the cause–effect among the social media advertising factors. The result proved the information exchanged through interactivity, a unique feature of social media platform, has highest interaction or influence on all the other factors. Product involvement that leads to positive purchase intention is also derived from relevant advertisement bundled with features and entertainment.

Smart city technologies are criticized because they might exacerbate income inequalities. Four factors are suggested to explain this phenomenon: the uneven diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs); that these ICTs cannot be afforded by low-income citizens; that smart cities could further human capital divides; and the involvement of private actors in the implementation of projects. These critiques are not based on empirical verification. We test whether smart urban characteristics are associated with increases in urban income inequalities, using data on urban smartness and urban income inequality for 106 European cities. Results show that smart cities are associated with lower levels of urban income inequality.

In recent years, Diffusion LMS algorithm has been thoroughly researched. This powerful approach enables distributed problem optimization over sensor networks to be solved. The best parameter vectors for all agents is likely not to be the same in such implementations. In addition, agents typically share information through noisy links. Here, we compared the average performance of some major distributed network-based combination policies: Static Combination Policy (metropolis policy and relative variance combination policy) and adaptive Combination Policy. The diffusion of information gathered from neighbors is an important problem in creating adaptive networks in as much as the network mean-square performance is dependent on the preference for combined weights. The aspect of the best selection of the combination weights is considered. We showed the adaptive combination policy outperformed the two analyzed static combination policy over noisy links. Also note that because we considered linearly complex algorithms in a single-task LMS diffusion, we analyzed the theoretical performance within a collaborative target tracking problem.

Introduction. This paper reports on part of a larger study, specifically on the information behaviour theories used in foundational reference and information services courses in North America. Method. Content analysis of syllabi, reading lists and textbooks from foundational reference courses was conducted. Analysis. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of documents was conducted to identify specific information behaviour theories. Results. The most mentioned information behaviour theories in reference courses are similar to those most mentioned in studies of information behaviour research, including Kuhlthau’s information search process and Savolainen’s everyday life information seeking. Conclusions. Students in courses that discuss information behaviour theories are being exposed to the most impactful information behaviour theories, but still only two-thirds of courses include them.

In this work, we perform a large-scale investigation of teacher connections in online social media. To this end, we first construct a large dataset of teachers on Pinterest, an image-based popular online social media. Our dataset includes 540 teachers across 5 states and 48 districts, as well as thousands of connections they have established. Then, considering some crucial teacher-related attributes (e.g., their states and grade levels), we characterize direct and indirect teacher connections. Through this characterization, we discover that teachers are predominately connected to their peers in the same district or at least within the same state, and seldom there exist links between teachers outside their districts and states. This hinders the proper diffusion of information and many other advantages that a teacher-teacher connection in an online social media can bring about, e.g., getting advice from their peers. To alleviate this problem, we utilize advances in machine learning and propose a link recommendation system suggesting teachers connect with their similar peers on Pinterest. Our system’s evaluation reveals that many new teacher-teacher connections are suggested, which leads to a more cohesive network among teachers rather than the existing localized ego networks.

Así lo destaca Diego Golombek, científico y divulgador para quien comunicar la ciencia requiere rigurosidad y aprovechar al máximo los recursos disponibles, como la ficción y el humor. En un tono reflexivo evalúa el rol de la comunicación institucional y, además, plantea que el desafío actual de la educación técnica es “mantener lo bueno y avanzar hacia lo nuevo”. Gerencia de Comunicación Institucional, DG SICyP, INTA Fil: Migliorati, Mario Andres. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Dirección General de Sistemas de Información, Comunicación y Procesos. Gerencia de Comunicación Institucional; Argentina

Increasingly many teachers are turning to online social media to supplement educational resources and meet students' needs in the classrooms. The diffusion of information from online social media to the classroom is significantly faster than traditional curriculum-based approaches. However, this is contingent upon how well teachers across an online social media network are connected. To understand this, we perform a thorough and large-scale investigation of teacher connections in online social media, which is lacking in the literature. To make this feasible, we construct a large dataset of teachers on Pinterest, an image-based popular online social media. Our dataset includes 540 teachers across 5 states and 48 districts, thousands of connections they have established (either with their peers or some other Pinterest users), and all the resources they have shared in their accounts. Then, taking into account some crucial teacher-related attributes (e.g., their districts, grade levels, etc), we characterize direct and indirect teacher connections. Moreover, we compare the physical (face to face) and virtual (Pinterest) network of our surveyed teachers using several graph-related metrics. The finding in this study can serve as a basis to investigate teachers on social media in a deeper manner.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has become a home ground for misinformation. To tackle this infodemic, scientific oversight, as well as a better understanding by practitioners in crisis management, is needed. We have conducted an exploratory study into the propagation, authors and content of misinformation on Twitter around the topic of COVID-19 in order to gain early insights. We have collected all tweets mentioned in the verdicts of fact-checked claims related to COVID-19 by over 92 professional fact-checking organisations between January and mid-July 2020 and share this corpus with the community. This resulted in 1 500 tweets relating to 1 274 false and 276 partially false claims, respectively. Exploratory analysis of author accounts revealed that the verified twitter handle(including Organisation/celebrity) are also involved in either creating (new tweets) or spreading (retweet) the misinformation. Additionally, we found that false claims propagate faster than partially false claims. Compare to a background corpus of COVID-19 tweets, tweets with misinformation are more often concerned with discrediting other information on social media. Authors use less tentative language and appear to be more driven by concerns of potential harm to others. Our results enable us to suggest gaps in the current scientific coverage of the topic as well as propose actions for authorities and social media users to counter misinformation., 20 pages, nine figures, four tables. Submitted for peer review, revision 1

Objective: To find out what measures medical students believe could help improve their influenza vaccination coverage. Method: On 5 November, 2019, the Dean of the Zaragoza Medical School sent an e-mail to the students asking them to fill out a questionnaire through Google Forms, in which they were asked to describe, in an open field, the measures that they believed could contribute to improving their flu vaccination coverage. The content of the responses was analyzed in a classic way, extracting descriptors and selecting the most representative verbatim accounts. Results: The main measures proposed were to improve the training on influenza and its vaccine, to improve the accessibility of the vaccine in time and space, to provide incentives to get vaccinated, to create visible and positive attitudes towards the vaccine, and to increase the diffusion of information about the vaccination campaign. Conclusion: This qualitative study has found potential measures to be applied specifically to medical students to improve their vaccination coverage in our country.

Over the last decade, considerable attention has been paid to how the information society and digital tools are changing the cultural and linguistic scene where literary production takes place. But what are the roots of this change and of the consequent debate? This book was created with the aim of studying how two of the most influential Italian writers of the second half of the 20th century, Italo Calvino and Paolo Volponi reacted to the initial diffusion of information technologies in the mid-fifties by wondering about the function of literary language and artistic creativity in a context of intelligent machines and mass information. Eleonora Lima carefully analyses some of the lesser known texts by the two authors, and discusses the opposition between the natural and the technological world in a society where information has become a product and a good to be exploited. She reconstructs the prerogatives and identities of biological and mechanical subjects, as defined by the then emerging cybernetic science. Finally, she investigates the political role of television representation in the years of dispute and terrorism. The comparative analyses, organized by thematic nuclei which are preceded by an overall historical and methodological framework, reveal the ways in which a 'remediation' process took place in writing, and show how, with new and often divergent strategies, the two narrators have faced the need to adapt literary tools to the changed communication context in a very personal way.Nell’ultimo decennio e stata dedicata una notevole attenzione a come la societa dell’informazione e gli strumenti digitali stiano mutando il panorama culturale e linguistico in cui avviene la produzione letteraria. Ma quali sono le radici di questo cambiamento e del dibattito conseguente? Questo libro nasce con l’intento di studiare come, fin dalla prima diffusione delle tecnologie dell’informazione a meta degli anni Cinquanta, due tra gli scrittori italiani piu influenti della seconda meta del Novecento, Italo Calvino e Paolo Volponi, abbiano reagito ponendosi domande sulla funzione del linguaggio letterario e della creativita artistica in un contesto di macchine intelligenti ed informazione di massa. Eleonora Lima, sottoponendo a una serrata analisi testi tra i meno battuti dei due autori, tratta dell’opposizione tra mondo naturale e tecnologico in una societa in cui l’informazione e divenuta un prodotto e un bene da sfruttare; ricostruisce prerogative e identita dei soggetti biologici e meccanici cosi come definite dall’allora nascente scienza cibernetica; indaga il ruolo politico della rappresentazione televisiva negli anni della contestazione e del terrorismo. Le analisi comparate, organizzate per nuclei tematici preceduti da un complessivo inquadramento storico-metodologico, fanno emergere le modalita secondo cui ebbe luogo nella scrittura un processo di ‘rimediazione’, e mostrano come, con strategie nuove e spesso divergenti, i due narratori abbiano affrontato in modo personalissimo la necessita di adattare gli strumenti letterari al mutato contesto comunicativo.

Social networking sites (SNSs) are known to have a role in promoting tourism and influencing how it is marketed to consumers, but there seems to be few deep analyses of SNS&rsquo, s efficacy in tourists&rsquo, decision making and destination promotion. To address this, we present Tourism Information Diffusion Ecosystem (TIDE), a novel theoretical framework to help understand this system of tourism SNS information diffusion. TIDE defines who participates in the system, what roles participants play in distributing tourist information contained within user-generated content, how content within a network is distributed, and if this user-generated information, once diffused, has been transferred into tourists&rsquo, visiting actions, and the reasons why these actions have been generated. We discovered user typologies and the powerful characteristics of this network structure to be important factors affecting visiting actions in choosing particular tourist destinations.

In all of science, the authors of publications depend on the knowledge presented by the previous publications. Thus they "stand on the shoulders of giants" and there is a flow of knowledge from previous publications to more recent ones. The dominating paradigm for tracking this flow of knowledge is to count the number of direct citations, but this neglects the fact that beneath the first layer of citations there is a full body of literature. In this study, we go underneath the "shoulders" by investigating the cumulative knowledge creation process in a citation network of around 35 million publications. In particular, we study stylized models of persistent influence and diffusion that take into account all the possible chains of citations. When we study the persistent influence values of publications and their citation counts, we find that the publications related to Nobel prizes, i.e., Nobel papers have higher ranks in terms of persistent influence than that due to citations, and that the most outperforming publications are typically early works leading to hot research topics of their time. The diffusion model reveals a significant variation in the rates at which different fields of research share knowledge. We find that these rates have been increasing systematically for several decades, which can be explained by the increase in the publication volumes. Overall, our results suggest that analyzing cumulative knowledge creation on a global scale can be useful in estimating the type and scale of scientific influence of individual publications and entire research areas as well as yielding insights that could not be discovered by using only the direct citation counts.

This paper illustrates the diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) in the healthcare sector, using a case study focusing on a medical information system, namely, Ajisai Net, based in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. Regional differences in diffusion patterns and their factors are indicated through a focus on the decision-making of related actors, including system-promoting agencies. This study also clarifies the status of system utilization and the effects of and issues with the system. System utilization spreads through system-promoting agencies in the form of increases in information-disclosure facilities. The diffusion process of this case differed from the hierarchical effect. The city of Omura was the first place where participating facilities could access the system in the infrastructure-building phase, followed by Nagasaki and Kamigoto in the spatial-expansion phase, followed by Sasebo, Isahaya, and Shimabara when widespread dissemination was achieved to the entire prefecture. Based on the ICT’s utilization, the results demonstrate that the diffusion of medical information system was determined by existing social relations ; however, the degree of social relations was not always proportional to the size of the urban area. System-diffusion patterns were found to be a different form than those in previous studies. Nagasaki Prefecture contains many isolated islands and has large internal regional differences in medical resources. In response to these geographical conditions, cooperative relationships among healthcare providers had already been developed before the introduction of ICT. This study suggests that effective use of existing social relationships can establish governance that moves a pattern from competition to coexistence. Cet article s’appuie sur une étude de cas (Ajisai Net) dont le périmètre d’action porte sur la préfecture de Nagasaki au Japon qui dispose de nombreuses îles isolées et présente de grandes différences régionales internes en termes de ressources médicales. L’objectif est d’illustrer la montée en puissance du numérique dans le secteur de la santé en analysant les modes de diffusion et d’utilisation du système d’informations médicales dans différentes villes (Omura, Nagasaki, Kamigoto, Sasebo, Isahaya et Shimabara). Les différences s’expliquent notamment par des logiques d’acteurs et par l’efficacité des agences dont la vocation est de promouvoir le système. Les résultats montrent que la diffusion du système d'informations médicales dépend grandement des relations sociales préexistantes, notamment pour des territoires marqués par l’isolement géographique. Les plus performants sont ceux qui avaient déjà développé des formes de coopération distante. Il est donc très important d’identifier ces réseaux de relations préalables pour mieux les intégrer au système de gouvernance de la e-santé en cours de déploiement au Japon.