Abstract

During the last decade, a growing number of scholars have evaluated the scientific progress of communication studies from a longitudinal and descriptive perspective, preventing a holistic understanding of the most relevant associations occurred in the discipline. Through a content analysis of 11 Spanish journals in communication, this article explores the probability of producing empirical science according to seven criteria: number of years, public funding, the journal, and the research topic, the number of authors and the gender and geographical origin of the authors. In general, the findings demonstrate a slow but continuous process to rule out non-evidence-based research from the most important spaces for academic diffusion and the growth of empirical research, especially through techniques such as content analysis. In conclusion, the culture and research practice in communication in Spain evolves towards international standards.

Abstract

The notion of Common Information Space (CIS) is an area that has been gaining attention in the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) over the last few years. This paper discusses one aspect of the investigation being undertaken to develop the conceptualization of CIS pertaining to heterogeneous work communities. This is based on empirical study of collaborative decision making involving different work communities in an airport of the air traffic control setting. The theory development is founded on the Grounded Theory approach. We present some of the findings of the ongoing analysis. In particular we discuss how the Grounded Theory methodological process has been adapted to this investigation by presenting illustrations of emergent theory development at the theoretical coding phase of the process. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

Predicting popular videos in online social networks (OSNs) is important for network traffic engineering and video recommendation. In order to avoid the difficulty of acquiring all OSN users’ activities, recent studies try to predict popular media contents in OSNs only based on a very small number of users, referred to as experts. However, these studies simply treat all users’ diffusion actions as the same. Based on large-scale video diffusion traces collected from a popular OSN, we analyze the positions of users’ video sharing actions in the propagation graph, and classify users’ video sharing actions into three different types, i.e., initiator actions, spreader actions and follower actions. Surprisingly, while existing studies mainly focus on the initiators, our empirical studies suggest that the spreaders actually play a more important role in the diffusion process of popular videos. Motivated by this finding, we account for the position information of sharing actions to select initiator experts, spreader experts and follower experts, based on corresponding sharing actions. We conduct experiments on the collected dataset to evaluate the performance of these three types of experts in predicting popular videos. The evaluation results demonstrate that the spreader experts can not only make more accurate predictions than initiator experts and follower experts, but also outperform the general experts selected by existing studies. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

Sustainability as an unambiguous policy goal is not a priori secured, as is clearly shown in the transport sector, where the negative externalities are still increasing despite official policies aiming at a reduction of these external costs and at the achievement of a sustainable transport system. To analyse why this is the case, a conceptual model is developed in this paper, in which stakeholders are identified which influence sustainable transport policies. These stakeholders are individuals, the public sector (subdivided into politicians and civil servants), international organizations and pressure groups (car industry, oil industry, car users and environmental groups). It appears that - although it may be assumed that nobody desires an unsustainable future - most incentives and mechanisms in our conceptual model of the decision-making process hamper the achievement of a sustainable transport system. In the second part - by way of empirical test - results of a questionnaire among Dutch transportation experts on the expected and desired future of European passenger transport are concisely discussed, in which the year 2030 is taken as a reference year. It appears that in the expected future the stakeholders largely behave as predicted in the conceptual model. In Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

Employing three-dimensional displays in Air Traffic Control (ATC) has been the object of study and debates for numerous years. Although empirical studies have often led to mixed results, some preliminary evidence suggests that training could be a suitable domain of application for 3D interfaces. Little evidence, however, is available to fully support this claim. We attempted to fill this gap with a project that aims at studying and evaluating 3D displays for ATC training purposes. This paper describes the first steps of this project, by reporting and discussing the results of a study aiming at understanding whether ATC trainees form a three-dimensional image of air traffic and at comprehending what the nature of this `3D picture' is. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

This is the fourth in a series of books publishing the best contributions on environmental management accounting (EMA) from around the world. It has been developed by the Environmental Management Accounting Network (EMAN). Contributions are drawn primarily from papers presented at EMAN-EU and EMAN-Asia Pacific conferences in the last two years. Brought together in this volume are international examples of leading thinking and practice in this rapidly developing area. Sustainability Accounting and Reporting provides an up-to-date overview of the most current views, developments, costs and benefits in environmental and sustainability accounting and its links to reporting. The book discusses new developments in environmental accounting and investigates topics in and links between corporate environmental and sustainability issues as well as between strategy, measurement and information management, and between accounting and reporting. Papers presented in this research based publication have been through an independent peer review and thorough editing process to ensure the highest possible research quality for theory based submissions and, for the more applied contributions, the greatest potential usefulness and impact for corporate and public-policy practitioners. © 2006 Springer. All Rights Reserved. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book