AbstractThis study explores privacy concerns perceived by people with respect to having their DNA tested by direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com. Data collected from 510 respondents indicate that those who have already obtained a DTC genetic test have significantly lower levels of privacy and security concerns than those who have not obtained a DTC genetic test. Qualitative data from respondents of both these groups show that the concerns are mostly similar. However, the factors perceived to alleviate privacy concerns are more varied and nuanced amongst those who have obtained a DTC genetic test. Our data suggest that privacy concerns or lack of concerns are based on complex and multiple considerations including data ownership, access control of data and regulatory authorities of social, political and legal systems. Respondents do not engage in a full cost/benefit analysis of having their DNA tested.

This study explores privacy concerns perceived by people with respect to having their DNA tested by direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com. Data collected from 510 respondents indicate that those who have already obtained a DTC genetic test have significantly lower levels of privacy and security concerns than those who have not obtained a DTC genetic test. Qualitative data from respondents of both these groups show that the concerns are mostly similar. However, the factors perceived to alleviate privacy concerns are more varied and nuanced amongst those who have obtained a DTC genetic test. Our data suggest that privacy concerns or lack of concerns are based on complex and multiple considerations including data ownership, access control of data and regulatory authorities of social, political and legal systems. Respondents do not engage in a full cost/benefit analysis of having their DNA tested.

An online survey (N=709) explores correlates of use of new online meetings and changes in use of social media during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.A. The motivation for this study is that the pandemic presented an opportunity to assess the degree of use of online communication technologies when faced with new risks and other options are severely limited. The survey context was set by first probing worries about the virus and the degree of social distancing being practiced. Coping mechanisms reported included connecting more with friends and family on social media, including about 2/3 who had joined an activity that moved online during social distancing. Extent of social distancing and age were significantly related to degree of online engagement in a new meeting activity during the early stages of the pandemic. Age and gender were significantly related to changes in level of use of social media. © AMCIS 2021.

This study explores how people perceive the potential utility of trustworthiness indicators and how willing they are to consider contributing to them as a way to combat the problem of misinformation and disinformation on social media. Analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from the survey (N=376) indicates that a majority of respondents believe trustworthiness indicators would be valuable as they can reduce uncertainty and provide guidance on how to interact with content. However, perceptions of how and when these indicators can provide value vary widely in detail. A majority of respondents are also willing to contribute to trustworthiness indicators on social media to some extent due to their sense of duty and personal expertise in information verification practices but are very wary of the effort or burden it would place on them. Respondents who did not want to use or contribute to trustworthiness indicators attributed it to their lack of faith in the concept of trustworthiness indicators stemming from perceived inherent and unsurmountable biases on social media. Together our findings highlight the complexity of designing, structuring and presenting trustworthiness indicators keeping in mind the diverse set of user attitudes and perceptions.

Social Media (SM) contain a wealth of information that could improve the situational awareness of Emergency Managers during a crisis, but many barriers stand in the way. These include information overload, making it impossible to deal with the flood of raw posts, and lack of trust in unverified crowdsourced data. The purpose of this project is to build a communications bridge between emergency responders and technologists who can provide the advances needed to realize social media's full potential. We employed a two round Delphi study survey design, which is a technique for exploring and developing consensus among a group of experts around a particular topic. Participants included emergency managers, researchers, and technologists with experience in software to support the use of SM in crisis response, from many countries. The study topics are described, and results are presented for both Round 1 (N = 36) and Round 2 (N = 29) of the study, including a ranked list of the top 16 useful features. The top four features include: viewing SM data as classified by geographic location with map-based display; viewing SM data as generated by categories of users; dynamically extracting emerging information; and automatically processing SM images to identify relevant ones.

In HCI research, non-use of systems, especially involuntary loss of use, is a relatively neglected topic. How do people perceive the impacts on their lives should the Internet go out for an extended period of time? Would it be a minor inconvenience or Armageddon? We took a Futures Studies approach to conduct a conceptualized future, scenario-based study with 754 responses to a survey of mostly students at three universities and used framing theory to help explicate the findings from qualitative data analysis. Our data show that most respondents do believe a long-term complete Internet outage is possible; however, perceptions in terms of what the impacts would be range widely. Most participants employ an egocentric frame to understand the impacts in terms of changes in their personal relationships and activities, with both gains and losses envisioned. A minority frame their visions in terms of the societal level, with severe infrastructure problems resulting. This paper is the first to explore perceptions of the potential impacts of an Internet outage and provide implications for preparedness and design.

Citizens and Emergency Managers need to be able to distinguish fake (untrue) news posts from real news posts on social media during disasters. This paper is based on an online survey conducted in 2018 that produced 341 responses from invitations distributed via email and through Facebook. It explores to what extent and how citizens generally assess whether postings are true or fake, and describes indicators of the trustworthiness of content that users would like. The mean response on a semantic differential scale measuring how frequently users attempt to verify the news trustworthiness (a scale from 1-never to 5-always) was 3.37. The most frequent message characteristics citizens' use are grammar and the trustworthiness of the sender. Most respondents would find an indicator of trustworthiness helpful, with the most popular choice being a colored graphic. Limitations and implications for assessments of trustworthiness during disasters are discussed.

Information systems (IS) in emergency management (EM) support situational awareness and agility during a disaster so that professionals do not only need to follow rigid pre-defined plans that might be unsuitable in the unfolding situation. To use IS effectively, managers need an understanding of the capabilities of these systems; this can be achieved through an appropriate set of educational courses. This article presents the results of the analysis of a survey that proposed EM and IS courses for master level programs. The survey was completed by 373 practitioners, academics and/or researchers with EM experience. All proposed courses were rated above a 4 on a 7-point scale for how essential they are to a curriculum. A qualitative analysis indicates that some low ratings were due to disagreement over the described course content. An unexpected finding was that a substantial number of respondents spontaneously expressed opposition to the use of IS for EM in general. Findings are discussed and a preliminary curriculum is proposed.

This paper explores the ways in which users give up as well as revert back to using social media based on the analysis of qualitative data from 680 respondents to a survey (N=1072). By focusing on the motivations rather than any particular social media platform, we were able to uncover reasons for voluntary non-use and reversion when users have a choice of several social media platforms. Our findings provide an ecological view of social media non-use and reversion highlighting that 1) previous findings of social media non-use and reversion reported on a single social media platform (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) are seen across several other platforms too; 2) access to multiple social media platforms in itself readily leads to non-use of one platform in favor of the use of another for reasons such as lack of differentiation and/or richness of features, device constraints of storage/ memory space or operating system support, perceptions of fading popularity, and availability of "a new kid on the block;" 3) findings of non-use and reversion practices and motivations that were seemingly incongruent between previous studies of different or same social media platforms tend to coalesce when we take a wider look at the social media landscape. By adopting the theoretical lens of cognitive biases in decision-making we were able to explain why users quit but decide to revert to using again in the environment of various positive and negative experiences on a particular platform, and to reconcile the seemingly paradoxical reasons for social media non-use and reversion.

Although social media (SM) can be very useful for emergency managers (EMs), especially for providing situational awareness in the early stages of a disaster, many do not use it. This study is based on 477 responses to an online survey of U.S. county-level EMs. The two most important barriers to the use of SM for collecting information are lack of staff and fears of information overload. A number of potential software enhancements that could help overcome the limitations of SM for EMs were all rated as highly useful. Factor analyses were successfully performed on the sets of questions about barriers and about software enhancements. The barrier of trustworthiness of SM data was a significant predictor of usefulness of some of the enhancement factors. Differences related to characteristics of the respondents and their agencies are explored, and open-ended comments that help to explain the findings are summarized.

Social media is gaining more and more importance in crisis management: “Social media continue to evolve, and so does their use in emergency and crisis events” (Reuter et al., 2018). Related research is sometimes called “crisis informatics” (Palen et al., 2009). This special issue was initiated based on the track “Social Media Studies” at previous ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) conferences. It is usually one of the tracks with the most submissions, however we (successfully) aimed to also invite scholars from other venues to contribute.

Information Systems (IS) increasingly are used in Emergency Management (EM), so it is prudent to include IS study in EM education. This paper presents the results of analyzing the responses to a survey that proposed potential courses for programs at the master's level. The survey was completed by 373 practitioners, academics and/or researchers with EM experience. All proposed courses were rated above 4 on a 7-point scale for how essential they are to the curriculum. However, there were disagreements. Qualitative analysis of volunteered comments indicate that some low ratings were due to disagreement with the content of the course as described, or with the need for an entire course to cover the topic. An unexpected finding was that a substantial number of respondents spontaneously expressed opposition to the use of IS for EM in general. The findings are discussed and a preliminary curriculum is proposed.

How do people perceive the impacts on their lives should the Internet go out for an extended period of time? This paper is based on 754 responses to a survey of mostly students at three universities. It was found that perceptions are very divided, both in terms of feelings about whether an Internet outage is likely in the future, and in terms of how serious its effects would be. Two impact factors were identified, Affect and Awareness. In terms of age differences, 18-29-year-old respondents have a significantly higher current usage of social media, and perceive more impacts on Affect and Awareness. Likewise, females use social media more than males, and predict a significantly higher impact on their Affect. This paper is the first to explore perceptions of the impacts of an internet outage; future research plans are described.

Use of the Internet is widespread both in social and work contexts. In this research we explore people's perceptions of their reliance on Internet technologies and response to a scenario of Internet outage. Data from a survey (N= 1070) shows that respondents are not dismissive of the possibility or its effects, but also not greatly concerned about it in general. Preliminary analysis of 609 qualitative responses reveals that people perceive concomitantly negative, positive and/or neutral impacts of not having Internet access and often are able to articulate various offline methods they will use to cope should such an event occur. However most concerns of impact are about quality of career/work, knowledge/awareness of the world, and quality of social ties and less about basics such as food, water and electricity. These findings provide implications for educators, emergency management professionals, and designers as they plan for such alternatives.

Information overload has been suggested as a potential barrier to use of social media by emergency managers, especially for gathering information during disasters. This paper, based on a survey of 477 U.S. county-level emergency managers, examines the relationship of the perception of information overload as a barrier to social media use for gathering information, to the intention to use social media. It also examines the relationship of perceived usefulness of certain technological advancements currently being developed to intention to use. Results indicate that emergency managers' perception of information overload as a barrier to use is negatively related to intention to use it, while perceptions of the usefulness of these technologies are positively related to intention to use. The study calls attention to the importance of resolving information overload to increase the use of social media for emergency management, and suggests the implementation of appropriate software tools to ameliorate this problem.

A survey was distributed to U.S. county-level emergency managers in 2014 which included questions exploring the importance of barriers to use of Social Media (SM) for dissemination and collection of information during disasters. Key questions were replicated in a survey of emergency responders in England in 2015-2016. There are many similarities in the perceived importance of various specific barriers, but also many significant differences in results. For example, in both samples, trustworthiness of data and information overload are among the top barriers to collecting SM data. However, agencies in England are more likely to have official policies prohibiting the use of SM (58% in England vs. 25% in the U.S.). The differences suggest that software enhancements to deal with the technical problems of trustworthiness and information overload may be universally useful, but other barriers to use need to be addressed through organizational and policy measures.

Abstract Social media (SM) are socio-technical systems that have the potential to provide real-time information during crises and thus to help protect lives and property. Yet, US emergency management (EM) agencies do not extensively use them. This mixed-methods study describes the ways SM is used by county-level US emergency managers, barriers to effective SM use, and recommendations to improve use. Exploratory interviews were conducted with US public sector emergency managers to elicit attitudes about SM. This was followed by a survey of over 200 US county level emergency managers. Results show that only about half of agencies use SM at all. About one quarter of agencies with formal policies actually forbid the use of SM. For both disseminating (sending out) and collecting information lack of sufficient staff is the most important barrier. However, lack of guidance/policy documents is the second highest rated barrier to dissemination via SM. Lack of skills and of the training that could improve these skills is also important. For collecting data, trustworthiness and information overload issues are the second and third most important barriers, which points to the need for appropriate software support to deal with these system-related issues. There are few differences associated with agency characteristics. By understanding important barriers, technologists can better meet the needs of emergency managers when designing SM technologies.