Dieser Beitrag schlägt vor, den gegenwärtigen tiefgreifenden Wandel der gesellschaftlichen Kommunikation als einen Prozess zu verstehen, der maßgeblich durch die wechselseitige (Neu-)Institutionalisierung von Öffentlichkeiten und Plattformen geprägt ist. Es wandeln sich in diesem Prozess nicht nur Medienstrukturen und Öffentlichkeiten, sondern auch die Plattformen. Die neuen Plattformen selbst sind kontingent - mit anderen Worten: Sie könnten auch anders sein. Im Beitrag wird zunächst eine institutionentheoretische Perspektive auf Medienwandel und Plattformen eingeführt, die an die jüngere Wiederentdeckung der Institutionentheorie in der Kommunikationswissenschaft anknüpft. Mithilfe dieses Rahmens wird dann zuerst knapp die intensive und umfassende Forschung zum Öffentlichkeitswandel resümiert und die von Plattformen mitgestaltete Neu-Institutionalisierung von Öffentlichkeit rekonstruiert. Darauf folgt die andere Facette der wechselseitigen Institutionalisierung: Die Institutionalisierung von Plattformen wird nachgezeichnet als nicht-linearer Prozess, der nicht allein von technischen und ökonomischen Überlegungen der Plattformen abhängt, sondern ebenso von politischen und gesellschaftlichen Kontroversen.
Contemporary political communication is conditioned by an information environment characterised, on the one hand, by increased choice, and on the other by the fragmentation and multiplication of the ways of consuming information. This article introduces the notion of the 'interrelated public agenda' as a frame to study this context, taking into account elements of convergence and divergence from a single viewpoint, adopting a complex analysis model which proceeds along axes which make it possible to detect a continuum in which opposing forces are in a constant, problematic equilibrium. In this sense, we identified three dimensions which are helpful in describing public agenda interrelations. First, horizontality vs verticality, which contains the dynamics of power, and is generated in a context of political disintermediation, through the altered nature of the media system—in the complex relation between legacy media and web 2.0, and between social, institutional actors, and others. Second, personal vs aggregative, which stresses the need to take account of convergences and divergences between personal orientation towards certain issues and the aggregative pressure in different media spaces in which people feel at home: from information consumption via media diets of varying complexity to active participation in the production of content or in public discourse, offline and online. And finally, dynamic vs static, which points to the need to orient analysis towards the relation between media spaces rather than focusing on specific spaces, thus helping, importantly, to make up for the current dearth of research in comparison with studies of single platforms.
The research is an attempt to answer the question how far the mobility manages to preserve the cognitive and the social status of the reader and to minimize the negatives of the "technological" reading. Object of the research: the new phase in the changes of the reader's practices that have occurred with the massive use of mobile communication devices. By the notion "mobile reading" the author mark the perception of text from a portable or from a mobile digital device and with the notion "stationary reading" – the perception of text from a fixed medium as a print media and as a desktop device. Purpose of the research: to prove that the mobility is the newest, natural and indestructible stage in the evolution of the reading, within the frames of which are passing mixed transformations, inherent as a whole to the "culture of the nomadism". Methodology: there are used the methods of the analytic and synthetic processing of primary and secondary resources, the selective monographic method, analysis of combination of statistical data and information from a survey of the National Bulgarian Institute of Statistics for access and use of Internet and the results of two world researches – "Reading in the Mobile Era: A study of mobile reading in developing countries" of UNESCO and "Mobiles for Reading: A Landscape Review" of USAID and JBS. Hypothesis: the new format of the mobile reading (counterpoint of stationary reading) is not a random phenomenon, but a regular and cyclical metamorphosis in the evolution of the communications. Results: the analysis shows an approximately equal correlation between the positives and the negatives of the reading from mobile devices. The suggestion of the author is the reader's behavior of the mobile citizen to be formed in "compromise duality" – the information, the data, the facts, the references can be assigned to "mobile" modalities, but the knowledge, the learning, the aesthetic delight of the text to be preserved in "stationary modality".
En agosto de 2013 da inicio el Paro Nacional Agrario, creciendo en fuerza y magnitud durante los días, se convirtió rápidamente en la acción colectiva más importante en los últimos años. Aunque su centro fue rural contó con un inesperado apoyo urbano logrando así un impacto político y mediático importante. Las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, en particular el internet, han posibilitado el surgimiento de nuevas formas de comunicación que han venido aprovechando los movimientos sociales para construir discursos alternativos, construir identidades, ampliar su convocatoria, forjar redes y presentar alternativas a la comunicación dominante. En esta investigación se analiza la relación entre los movimientos sociales y las plataformas de comunicación alternativa en internet aterrizada en el Paro Nacional Agrario del año 2013, en donde una coyuntura particular permite develar los límites y posibilidades de la comunicación alternativa en su intento de romper el cerco mediático de los medios hegemónicos como una posibilidad de democratización. ; Abstract. On August 2013 National Agrarian Strike began. Growing in strenght and magnitude during the days, quickly became the most important collective action in recent years in Colombia. Although its center was rural, the strike counts with an unexpected urban support, thus achieving an important political and media impact. Information and communication technologies, in particular Internet, gave the possibility to new forms of communication to arise, that kind of communication have been used by social movements for the construction of alternative discourses, build identities, expand their call, forge networks and present alternatives to dominant communication. This investigation analyzes the relation between social movements and alternative communication platforms on Internet, landed in 2013 National Agrarian Strike, where a particular conjuncture allows unveiling limits and possibilities of alternative communication in its intent to break the media siege of hegemonic media as a democratization possibility. ; Maestría
This document makes recommendations allowing the European Union (EU) to complement the obligation to carry out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA), as defined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with the aim of achieving a more robust protection of personal data. In April 2016, the EU finalised the essential part of the reform of the legal framework for the protection of personal data. The Union is currently preparing the implementing measures and guidelines giving full effect to the new legal provisions prior to their application as of May 2018. Among other 'novelties', this reform introduces the legal obligation to carry out a DPIA. However, there are some weaknesses in this obligation. This note seeks to address this by providing additional information to the current policy development process, including by proposing "best practices" to arrive at a type of generic impact assessment, which could be recommended for several areas (Section II). Section III presents a first assessment of how these best practices relate to the specific obligation to carry out an impact assessment, i.e. the DPIA, determined by the GDPR. These two sections are preceded by some background information on impact assessments as such. In this sense, Section I presents a definition and historical overview, as well as the pros and cons of impact assessments in general. Finally, Section IV provides recommendations to complement the obligation to carry out a DPIA as required by the GDPR. These recommendations propose in particular: (1) broadening the scope of the obligation to conduct a DPIA under the GDPR; (2) develop methods for carrying out such an analysis; (3) establish 'centres of reference' with data protection authorities (DPAs) which are entirely focused on the performance of DPIA. This policy note is addressed above all to policy makers active at EU and Member State level, notwithstanding the potential interest it might raise with their counterparts in other parts of the world. ; Le présent document émet des ...
La investigación describe la manera como los periodistas, desde la construcción de su identidad profesional y el desarrollo de su independencia, con respecto a las instituciones políticas de las cuales nacen, han incidido históricamente en la construcción del derecho a comunicar en Colombia. Para ello se hace un análisis del sistema de medios de comunicación de Colombia mediante el método de los sistemas mediáticos comparados; Igualmente se hace un análisis histórico de desarrollo del campo profesional periodístico en Colombia en relación con la libertad de prensa, la libertad de expresión y la libertad de información a través del estudio de caso de tres periodistas: Guillermo Cano, Jaime Garzón y Gonzalo Guillén. Finalmente se establece la importancia del periodismo como institución clave para la consolidación del derecho a comunicar en el ámbito democrático colombiano. ; Abstract. The research describes how journalists, since the construction of their professional identity and the development of their independence, from the political institutions they are born, have historically influenced the construction of the right to communicate in Colombia. For that purpose an analysis of the media system of Colombia is made by the method of the Comparative Media System Research; also a historical analysis of the development of the journalistic professional field in Colombia regarding press freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of information through the case study of three journalists: Guillermo Cano, Jaime Garzón and Gonzalo Guillén. Finally the importance of journalism as key institution to consolidating the right to communicate in the Colombian democratic system is established. ; Maestría
Apresentamos, em linhas gerais, duas experiências urbanas conceitualmente diferentes, seja na maneira de criar e organizar o espaço ou no viver. Celebration uma cidade informacional com um projeto de oferecer ao consumidor-morador uma alternativa estética na união entre a tecnologia e a tradição. Empresas de grande porte oferecem e vendem o que de mais atual pode se esperar em produtos para a casa, modernos aparatos para facilitar a vida. A cidade asiática, por seu turno, oferece o conceito de Smartcity, onde a tecnologia não é oferecida em si-mesmo, mas, conectada à inteligência do morador.
"Dieses Paper stellt empirische Befunde vor, die virtuelle Interaktionen als einen bindenden Mehrwert im Online-Spiel beschreiben. Gruppen im virtuellen Raum entsprechen den Kriterien realweltlicher Gruppen. Das Cyberspace stellt den Individuen der Gegenwart neue und zusätzliche Kommunikationsangebote zur Verfügung. Mediatisierte Kommunikation bildet Sonderformen aus: Die "Spieler von nebenan" stellen eine virtuelle Gemeinschaft dar, die durch Interaktion im virtuellen Raum verbunden sind, jedoch sonst über kaum benennbare Gemeinsamkeiten im Lebensstil oder Rollenverhalten verfügen." (Autorenreferat)
The aim of this literature review is to summarize the current state of research on the influence of the extended Big Five personality traits on the acceptance of technology and to uncover inconsistencies and gaps in knowledge. It focuses on the question of how the characteristics openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and willingness to take risks affect people's acceptance of new technologies. Within the framework of the literature review, a total of 378 topic-relevant results were analyzed and ultimately a sample of 22 studies selected to reflect the current state of research. Upon review, most of these studies provide significant results for each of the six personality traits. Furthermore, it was found that most researchers use the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to measure technology acceptance and that the samples consisted mainly of students. In view of the increasing use of intelligent technologies in almost all areas of life, it is particularly important to continuously investigate the factors influencing technology acceptance - and to do so in a representative way for all social classes.
This paper critically discusses the method of participant observation (as ethnographic method and everyday practice), which consists of participation, observation and mediation, and suggests adjustments, through the lens of perception, which seem necessary in smartphone-saturated cities. The author argues that digital and material forms of mediation lead to different possibilities and limitations of sensory perception. These therefore need to be consciously acknowledged in the social production and construction of space and place. Through a focus on human perception, the challenges that individualised on-site media consumption provides to the concepts of participation, perception and mediation are discussed. In this regard, the interface, most prominently the screen, functions as a nexus that retranslates information through mediation back into the field of human perception. Mobile digital communication can therefore enrich the sphere of perception (at site), but what is digitally mediated is at the same time constrained by the technical and translational possibilities of the medium and the interface. The case study of the Shimokitazawa Curry Festival in Tokyo is used to show how participation, multisensory perception and mediation are practiced in an urban setting. The same case also provides empirical data concerning multisensory participation as a method that is facing new challenges through increasing mobile digital communication.
Ebola was the most widely followed news story in the United States in October 2014. Here, we ask what members of the U.S. public learned about the disease, given the often chaotic media environment. Early in 2015, we surveyed a representative sample of 3,447 U.S. residents about their Ebola-related beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Where possible, we elicited judgments in terms sufficiently precise to allow comparing them to scientific estimates (e.g., the death toll to date and the probability of dying once ill). Respondents' judgments were generally consistent with one another, with scientific knowledge, and with their self-reported behavioral responses and policy preferences. Thus, by the time the threat appeared to have subsided in the United States, members of the public, as a whole, had seemingly mastered its basic contours. Moreover, they could express their beliefs in quantitative terms. Judgments of personal risk were weakly and inconsistently related to reported gender, age, education, income, or political ideology. Better educated and wealthier respondents saw population risks as lower; females saw them as higher. More politically conservative respondents saw Ebola as more transmissible and expressed less support for public health policies. In general, respondents supported providing "honest, accurate information, even if that information worried people." These results suggest the value of proactive communications designed to inform the lay public's decisions, thoughts, and emotions, and informed by concurrent surveys of their responses and needs.
O artigo tem dois objetivos. Primeiramente, busca exercitar uma forma de conhecimento poético-científico na medida em que se deixa guiar pela apreensão imaginativa dos problemas empíricos analisados através de uma pesquisa visual e da produção de expressões imagéticas que abram outras vias de reflexão sobre os casos investigados. Em segundo lugar, o artigo analisará dois eventos relativos à internet que tiveram grande repercussão na imprensa brasileira em julho de 2008, procurando evidenciar uma disputa entre configurações distintas do poder que se desenvolvem sob a superfície da internet.
In: Kultur und Gesellschaft: gemeinsamer Kongreß der Deutschen, der Österreichischen und der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Soziologie, Zürich 1988 ; Beiträge der Forschungskomitees, Sektionen und Ad-hoc-Gruppen, S. 542-546
In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 9, Heft 2, S. 204-210
ISSN: 1545-8504
Debarun Bhattacharjya (" Formulating Asymmetric Decision Problems as Decision Circuits " and " From Reliability Block Diagrams to Fault Tree Circuits ") is a research staff member in the Risk Analytics team within the broader Business Analytics and Math Sciences division at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He received his Ph.D. in management science and engineering at Stanford University. His primary research interests lie in decision and risk analysis, and probabilistic models and decision theory in artificial intelligence. Specifically, he has pursued research in probabilistic graphical models (influence diagrams and Bayesian networks), value of information, sensitivity analysis, and utility theory. His applied work has been in domains such as sales, energy, business services, and public policy. He has coauthored more than 10 publications in highly refereed journals and conference proceedings, as well as two patents. He was nominated by IBM management for the Young Researcher Connection at the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Practice Conference in 2010. Email: debarunb@us.ibm.com . May Cheung (" Regulation Games Between Government and Competing Companies: Oil Spills and Other Disasters ") is an undergraduate senior in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo. Her research interests are in decision analysis, optimization, and simulation with respect to complex, high-impact decisions. Email: mgcheung@buffalo.edu . Léa A. Deleris (" From Reliability Block Diagrams to Fault Tree Circuits ") is a research staff member and manager at IBM Dublin Research Laboratory, where she oversees the Risk Collaboratory, a three-year research project funded in part by the Irish Industrial Development Agency around risk management, from stochastic optimization to the communication of risk information to decision makers. Prior to joining the Dublin lab, she was a research staff member with the Risk Analytics Group, Business Application and Mathematical Science Department, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. Her primary interests have been in the fields of decision theory and risk analysis. Her work is currently focused on leveraging natural language processing techniques to facilitate the construction of risk models, distributed elicitation of expert opinions, and value of information problems. She holds a Ph.D. in management science and engineering from Stanford University. Email: lea.deleris@ie.ibm.com . Philippe Delquié (" Risk Measures from Risk-Reducing Experiments ") is an associate professor of decision sciences at the George Washington University, and holds a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Delquié's teaching and research are in decision, risk, and multicriteria analysis. His research is at the nexus of behavioral and normative theories of decision, addressing issues in preference elicitation, value of information, nonexpected utility models of choice, and risk measures. Prior to joining the George Washington University, he held academic appointments at INSEAD, the University of Texas at Austin, and École Normale Supérieure, France, and visiting appointments at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis and has completed a term as an associate editor. Email: delquie@gwu.edu . Lorraine Dodd (" Regulating Autonomous Agents Facing Conflicting Objectives: A Command and Control Example ") is a highly respected international contributor to command and leadership studies within military and UK governmental command, control, intelligence and information analysis, and research. She has an honours degree in pure mathematics and an M.Sc. in operational research and management science from the University of Warwick majoring in catastrophe theory and nonlinearity. Her main interest is in sense-making, decision making, and risk taking under conditions of uncertainty, confusion, volatility, ambiguity, and contention, as applied to the study of institutions, organizations, society, people, and governance. She uses analogy with brain functions and coherent cellular functions to develop mathematical models of complex decision behavior. Her most recent studies include an application of a multiagency, multiperspective approaches to collaborative decision making and planning, and development of an "open-eyes/open-mind" framework to provide support to leaders when dealing with complex crises and "black swans." She has developed an understanding of the nonlinear, slow and fast dynamics of behavior, in particular, of means of organizing for agility in complex and uncertain environments. Email: l.dodd@cranfield.ac.uk . Rachele Foschi (" Interactions Between Ageing and Risk Properties in the Analysis of Burn-in Problems ") has an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Rome La Sapienza, where she also worked as a tutor for the courses of calculus and probability. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the Economics and Institutional Change Research Area at IMT (Institutions, Markets, Technologies) Advanced Studies, in Lucca, Italy. Her research interests include stochastic dependence, reliability, stochastic orders, point processes, and mathematical models in economics. Random sets and graphs, linguistics, and behavioral models are of broader interest to her. Email: rachele.foschi@imtlucca.it . Simon French (" Expert Judgment, Meta-analysis, and Participatory Risk Analysis ") recently joined the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick to become the director of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit. Prior to joining the University of Warwick, he was a professor of information and decision sciences at Manchester Business School. Simon's research career began in Bayesian statistics, and he was one of the first to apply hierarchical modeling, particularly in the domain of protein crystallography. Nowadays he is better known for his work on decision making, which began with his early work on decision theory. Over the years, his work has generally become more applied: looking at ways of supporting real decision makers facing major strategic and risk issues. In collaboration with psychologists, he has sought to support real decision makers and stakeholders in complex decisions in ways that are mindful of their human characteristics. He has a particular interest in societal decision making, particularly with respect to major risks. He has worked on public risk communication and engagement and the wider areas of stakeholder involvement and deliberative democracy. Simon has worked across the public and private sectors, often in contexts that relate to the environment, energy, food safety, and the nuclear industry. In all of his work, the emphasis is on multidisciplinary and participatory approaches to solving real problems. Email: simon.french@warwick.ac.uk . L. Robin Keller (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is a professor of operations and decision technologies in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.B.A. in management science and her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research is on decision analysis and risk analysis for business and policy decisions and has been funded by NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her research interests cover multiple attribute decision making, riskiness, fairness, probability judgments, ambiguity of probabilities or outcomes, risk analysis (for terrorism, environmental, health, and safety risks), time preferences, problem structuring, cross-cultural decisions, and medical decision making. She is currently the editor-in-chief of Decision Analysis, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a fellow of INFORMS and has held numerous roles in INFORMS, including board member and chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. She is a recipient of the George F. Kimball Medal from INFORMS. She has served as the decision analyst on three National Academy of Sciences committees. Email: lrkeller@uci.edu . Miguel A. Lejeune (" Game Theoretical Approach for Reliable Enhanced Indexation ") is an assistant professor of decision sciences at the George Washington University (GWU) and holds a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University. Prior to joining GWU, he was a visiting assistant professor in operations research at Carnegie Mellon University. His areas of expertise/research interests include stochastic programming, financial risk, and large-scale optimization. He is the recipient of a Young Investigator/CAREER Research Grant (2009) from the Army Research Office. He also received the IBM Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Award (December 2011) and the Royal Belgian Sciences Academy Award for his master's thesis. Email: mlejeune@gwu.edu . Jason R. W. Merrick (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is a professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a D.Sc. in operations research from the George Washington University. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and simulation. His research is primarily in the area of decision analysis and Bayesian statistics. He has worked on projects ranging from assessing maritime oil transportation and ferry system safety, the environmental health of watersheds, and optimal replacement policies for rail tracks and machine tools, and he has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the United States Coast Guard, the American Bureau of Shipping, British Petroleum, and Booz Allen Hamilton, among others. He has also performed training for Infineon Technologies, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Capital One Services. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis and Operations Research. He is the information officer for the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. Email: jrmerric@vcu.edu . Gilberto Montibeller (" Modeling State-Dependent Priorities of Malicious Agents ") is a tenured lecturer in decision sciences in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics (LSE). With a first degree in electrical engineering (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, 1993), he started his career as an executive at British and American Tobacco. Moving back to academia, he was awarded a master's degree (UFSC, 1996) and a Ph.D. in production engineering (UFSC/University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom, 2000). He then continued his studies as a postdoctoral research fellow in management science at the University of Strathclyde (2002–2003). He is an area editor of the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, and he is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis and the EURO Journal on Decision Processes. His main research interest is on supporting strategic-level decision making, both in terms of decision analytic methodologies and of decision processes. He has been funded by the AXA Research Fund, United Kingdom's EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), and Brazil's CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). His research has been published in journals such as the European Journal of Operational Research, Decision Support Systems, and OMEGA—The International Journal of Management Science. One of his papers, on the evaluation of strategic options and scenario planning, was awarded the Wiley Prize in Applied Decision Analysis by the International Society of Multi-Criteria Decision Making. He has had visiting positions at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Austria) and the University of Warwick (United Kingdom), and is a visiting associate professor of production engineering at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). He also has extensive experience in applying decision analysis in practice; over the past 17 years he has provided consulting to both private and public organizations in Europe and South America. He is a regular speaker at the LSE Executive Education courses. Email: g.montibeller@lse.ac.uk . M. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell (" Games, Risks, and Analytics: Several Illustrative Cases Involving National Security and Management Situations ") specializes in engineering risk analysis with application to complex systems (space, medical, etc.). Her research has focused on explicit inclusion of human and organizational factors in the analysis of systems' failure risks. Her recent work is on the use of game theory in risk analysis with applications that have included counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation problems. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the French Académie des Technologies, and of several boards, including Aerospace, Draper Laboratory, and In-Q-Tel. Dr. Paté-Cornell was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from December 2001 to 2008. She holds an engineering degree (applied mathematics and computer science) from the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble (France), an M.S. in operations research and a Ph.D. in engineering-economic systems, both from Stanford University. Email: mep@stanford.edu . Jesus Rios (" Adversarial Risk Analysis: The Somali Pirates Case ") is a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He has a Ph.D. in computer sciences and mathematical modeling from the University Rey Juan Carlos. Before joining IBM, he worked in several universities as a researcher, including the University of Manchester, the University of Luxembourg, Aalborg University, and Concordia University. He participated in the 2007 SAMSI program on Risk Analysis, Extreme Events, and Decision Theory, and led work in the area of adversarial risk analysis. He has also worked as a consultant for clients in the transportation, distribution, energy, defense, and telecommunication sectors. His main research interests are in the areas of risk and decision analysis and its applications. Email: jriosal@us.ibm.com . David Rios Insua (" Adversarial Risk Analysis: The Somali Pirates Case ") is a professor of statistics and operations research at Rey Juan Carlos University and a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. He has written 15 monographs and more than 90 refereed papers in his areas of interest, which include decision analysis, negotiation analysis, risk analysis, and Bayesian statistics, and their applications. He is scientific advisor of AISoy Robotics. He is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis. Email: david.rios@urjc.es . Fabrizio Ruggeri (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is the director of research at IMATI CNR (Institute of Applied Mathematics and Information Technology at the Italian National Research Council) in Milano, Italy. He received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Milano, an M.Sc. in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Ph.D. in statistics from Duke University. After a start as a researcher at Alfa Romeo and then a computer consultant, he has been working at CNR since 1987. His interests are mostly in Bayesian and industrial statistics, especially in robustness, decision analysis, reliability, and stochastic processes; recently, he got involved in biostatistics and biology as well. Dr. Ruggeri is an adjunct faculty member at the Polytechnic Institute (New York University), a faculty member in the Ph.D. program in mathematics and statistics at the University of Pavia, a foreign faculty member in the Ph.D. program in statistics at the University of Valparaiso, and a member of the advisory board of the Ph.D. program in mathematical engineering at Polytechnic of Milano. An ASA Fellow and an ISI elected member, Dr. Ruggeri is the current ISBA (International Society for Bayesian Analysis) president and former ENBIS (European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics) president. He is the editor-in-chief of Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry and the Encyclopedia of Statistics in Quality and Reliability, and he is also the Chair of the Bayesian Inference in Stochastic Processes workshops and codirector of the Applied Bayesian Statistics summer school. Email: fabrizio@mi.imati.cnr.it . Juan Carlos Sevillano (" Adversarial Risk Analysis: The Somali Pirates Case ") is a part-time lecturer at the Department of Statistics and Operations Research II (Decision Methods) at the School of Economics of Complutense University. He holds a B.Sc. in mathematics from Complutense University and an M.Sc. in decision systems engineering from Rey Juan Carlos University. Email: sevimjc@ccee.ucm.es . Ross D. Shachter (" Formulating Asymmetric Decision Problems as Decision Circuits ") is an associate professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, where his teaching includes probability, decision analysis, and influence diagrams. He has been at Stanford since earning his Ph.D. in operations research from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982, except for two years visiting the Duke University Center for Health Policy Research and Education. His main research focus has been on the communication and analysis of the relationships among uncertain quantities in the graphical representations called Bayesian belief networks and influence diagrams, and in the 1980s he developed the DAVID influence diagram processing system for the Macintosh. His research in medical decision analysis has included the analysis of vaccination strategies and cancer screening and follow-up. At Duke he helped to develop an influence diagram-based approach for medical technology assessment. He has served on the Decision Analysis Society (DAS) of INFORMS Council, chaired its student paper competition, organized the DAS cluster in Nashville, and was honored with its Best Publication Award. For INFORMS, he organized the 1992 Doctoral Colloquium and has been an associate editor in decision analysis for Management Science and Operations Research. He has also served as Program Chair and General Chair for the Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence Conference. At Stanford he served from 1990 until 2011 as a resident fellow in an undergraduate dormitory, and he was active in planning the university's new student orientation activities and alcohol policy. Email: shachter@stanford.edu . Jim Q. Smith (" Regulating Autonomous Agents Facing Conflicting Objectives: A Command and Control Example ") has been a full professor of statistics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom for 18 years, receiving a Ph.D. from Warwick University in 1977, and has more than 100 refereed publications in the area of Bayesian decision theory and related fields. He has particular interests in customizing probabilistic models in dynamic, high-dimensional problems to the practical needs of a decision maker, often using novel graphical approaches. As well as teaching decision analysis to more than 3,000 top math students in the United Kingdom and supervising 23 Ph.D. students in his areas of expertise, he has been chairman of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit at Warwick for 10 years, engaging vigorously in the university's interaction with industry and commerce. His book Bayesian Decision Analysis: Principles and Practice was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Email: j.q.smith@warwick.ac.uk . Refik Soyer (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is a professor of decision sciences and of statistics and the chair of the Department of Decision Sciences at the George Washington University (GWU). He also serves as the director of the Institute for Integrating Statistics in Decision Sciences at GWU. He received his D.Sc. in University of Sussex, England, and B.A. in Economics from Boğaziçi University, Turkey. His areas of interest are Bayesian statistics and decision analysis, stochastic modeling, statistical aspects of reliability analysis, and time-series analysis. He has published more than 90 articles. His work has appeared in journals such as Journal of the American Statistical Association; Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Ser. B.; Technometrics; Biometrics; Journal of Econometrics; Statistical Science; International Statistical Review; and Management Science. He has also coedited a volume titled Mathematical Reliability: An Expository Perspective. Soyer is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a fellow of the Turkish Statistical Association, and a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He was vice president of the International Association for Statistical Computing. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and is currently an associate editor of the Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry. Email: soyer@gwu.edu . Fabio Spizzichino (" Interactions Between Ageing and Risk Properties in the Analysis of Burn-in Problems ") is a full professor of probability theory at the Department of Mathematics, the Sapienza University of Rome. He teaches courses on introductory probability, advanced probability, and stochastic processes. In the past, he has also taught courses on basic mathematical statistics, Bayesian statistics, decision theory, and reliability theory. His primary research interests are related to probability theory and its applications. A partial list of scientific activities includes dependence models, stochastic ageing for lifetimes, and (semi-)copulas; first-passage times and optimal stopping times for Markov chains and discrete state-space processes; order statistics property for counting processes in continuous or discrete time, in one or more dimensions; sufficiency concepts in Bayesian statistics and stochastic filtering; and reliability of coherent systems and networks. He also has a strong interest in the connections among the above-mentioned topics and in their applications in different fields. At the present time, he is particularly interested in the relations among dependence, ageing, and utility functions. Email: fabio.spizzichino@uniroma1.it . Sumitra Sri Bhashyam (" Modeling State-Dependent Priorities of Malicious Agents ") is a Ph.D. candidate in the Management Science Group at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her Ph.D. thesis is supervised by Dr. Gilberto Montibeller and cosupervised by Dr. David Lane. Her research interests include decision analysis, multicriteria decision analysis, preference modeling, and preference change. Before coming to study in the United Kingdom, Sri Bhashyam studied mathematics, physics, and computer sciences in France for two years, after which she moved to the United Kingdom to complete a B.A.Hons in marketing communications and then an M.Sc. in operational research from the LSE. She worked as a project manager at Xerox and, subsequently, as a consultant for an SME (small and medium enterprise) to help them set up their quality management system. Alongside the Ph.D., and participating in other research and consultancy projects, she has been a graduate teaching assistant for undergraduate, master, and executive students at the LSE. The courses she teaches include topics such as normative and descriptive decision theory, prescriptive decision analysis, simulation modeling and analysis. Email: s.sribhashyam@lse.ac.uk . Jun Zhuang (" Regulation Games Between Government and Competing Companies: Oil Spills and Other Disasters ") has been an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York (SUNY-Buffalo), since he obtained his Ph.D. in industrial engineering in 2008 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Zhuang's long-term research goal is to integrate operations research and game theory to better mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from both natural and man-made hazards. Other areas of interest include healthcare, sports, transportation, supply chain management, and sustainability. Dr. Zhuang's research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) and National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) through the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Dr. Zhuang is a fellow of the 2011 U.S. Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (AF SFFP), sponsored by the AFOSR. Dr. Zhuang is also a fellow of the 2009–2010 Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers Program, sponsored by the NSF. Dr. Zhuang is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis and is the coeditor of Decision Analysis Today. Email: jzhuang@buffalo.edu .