Suchergebnisse

This paper explores the use of interactive communication and dialogic relationship building strategies on political campaign Web sites. In contrast to presidential races that often feature substantially more sophisticated campaign Web sites, congressional candidates' ability and willingness to use the Web as an electioneering tool has varied greatly. The present research sought to address two broad research questions: 1) how candidates from the same electoral districts used their Web sites during the 2006 and 2010 congressional elections; and 2) to what extent could several candidate and district level variables explain the differences in Web utilization. A typology was proposed to examine the first question, while content analysis was performed to collect empirical data that addressed the second question. Results indicate that while the use of interactive Web strategies may be concentrated among candidates with certain characteristics in 2006, the adoption of social media in political campaigns has trickled down from the presidential level, and that interactive tools have become a norm in the 2010 congressional election, with virtually no observable differences emerging among candidates. Theoretical and practical implication for online political public relations is discussed.

This paper contributes to the growing literature on how "new media" is influencing "old media" by tracking references to an extensive list of political blogs in stories run by seventeen prominent print media outlets during the last ten years. The findings presented here show that although journalists frequently use political bloggers as sources in their news coverage, they only reference certain blogs in certain ways at certain times. To be precise, journalists turn to political blogs primarily during national election campaigns and this turn is commonly in the direction of a relatively small group of interactive, liberal blogs.

A long-standing problem in the US-Mexico bilateral agenda is migration. Although both countries have important agreements to promote economic exchange and trade, the events of 9/11 and other acts of terrorism have increased concerns about border security. Since the US-Mexico border is one of the most important borders in the world in terms of activity, securing it without interfering with the legitimate flow of people and goods, poses an important challenge. The purpose of this paper is to propose conceptual frameworks and models to facilitate collaboration across national borders, by discussing and considering key factors for collaborative US-Mexico Border Security Infrastructure and Systems. Border security technical solutions pose an interesting domain because there are a myriad of concerns (e.g., political, economic, social and cultural) outside the technical implementation that must be deliberated and examined. In this conceptual study, unique aspects of trust, governance, information sharing, culture, and technical infrastructure are identified as the key ingredients in a cross-border collaboration effort. A bi-national organizational network appears to be an effective institutional design to develop a better understanding of the problem, as well as required policies and technologies. This approach is consistent with experiments, research, and conclusions found in the European Union.

This study examines relations between indicators of knowledge work and worker attitudes toward employers, collective action, and union efficacy. Previous writing on these relations are used to develop hypotheses. Data are drawn from the 2009 Young Workers Survey. Results fail to show any statistically significant main effect relations between knowledge work indicators and the worker attitudes examined, despite a sample size sufficient to detect at least medium effect sizes. Further, there is very limited support for moderator effects. A discussion section discusses limitations, implications, and issues for future research.

In the post 9/11 world, homeland security has become focal issue for every country and governments are constantly improving security mechanisms to protect their citizens. Pakistan being the front line state in the war against terror is one of the heavily affected countries by terrorism. Timely information dissemination to public by security agencies can help citizens to be prepared and carry out protective measures. Information technology artifacts and the internet can be very beneficial for information dissemination purpose. In this paper the author specifically looked at Pakistani security agency websites 1to evaluate usability aspects. Initially we conducted a usability testing in lab setting, where our questions were based on Jakob Nielson's heuristics. In order to further validate our findings the authors prepared a questionnaire and got it filled out by end users. Survey results highlighted that these websites have several usability problems which need to be rectified before they could effectively be used. The findings of the study help e-government practitioners and policy makers to develop their websites according to user needs.

This paper explores the different yet complementary aspects of the panopticon and the panspectron using the case study of the Israeli controlled Palestinian territory, the Gaza Strip. Beginning with a brief theoretical discussion of the concept of panopticon and panspectron expanding on the existing literature, the paper moves on to discuss the implementation of panoptical and panspectral technologies and practices in the Gaza Strip and situates these within a larger framework of control of the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation, and discusses seepage of these surveillance technologies into Israeli society proper and beyond into the international arena.