Understanding channel choice in users' reporting behavior: Evidence from a smart mobility case

Public service producers are heavily investing in the development and implementation of more efficient new digital channels to engage users in citizen sourcing efforts, such as the reporting of public service-related issues. Nevertheless, user-reporters have continued to favor earlier implemented channels including traditional (e.g., phone, office) and e-government channels (e.g., web, email) over new digital channels such as m-government channels (e.g., mobile applications). Drawing on channel choice literature and theories, this study aims at explaining users' reporting behavior by examining the role of users' personal factors, including digital divide determinants, users' service experience, and channel satisfaction. We use a combination of survey and log data on actual reporting behavior among smart bike-sharing users to explain users' channel choice. Using a multinomial logistic regression, we found that the digital divide predicts user-reporters' channel choice. Moreover, user-reporters with a longer service membership favor traditional and e-government channels, over the newly implemented m-government channels. Finally, user-reporters' satisfaction with the mobile application is negatively associated with the user-reporters' choice of traditional and e-government channels. Our results expand and update the empirical evidence on channel choice at the user level, and provide insights for public service producers who aim at enhancing public service delivery through digital users' engagement.     

Program Readings

Richard C. Burke Instructional Television: Bold New Venture (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1971—$5.95)

Harold S. Davis (ed.) Instructional Media Center: Bold New Venture (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1971— $7.50)

Ralph J. Amelio, Film in the Classroom: Why to Use It How to Use It (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum/Standard, 1971—$4.50, paper)     

Broadcasting Education and Children's Programming

Wilbur Schramm (ed.) Quality in Instructional Television (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973 - $5.00, paper)

Ralph M. Jennings, Marcella Kerr and Truman E. Parker's Public Television Station Employment Practices and The Composition of Boards of Directors: The Status of Minorities and Women (Office of Communications, United Church of Christ, 289 Park Ave. South, New York 10010, January 1973 - $10.00, but free on request to poverty organizations and citizen-action groups)

I. Keith Tyler and Catharine M. Williams (eds.) Educational Communication in a Revolutionary Age (Worthington, Ohio: Charles A. Jones, 1973 - $7.95)

Dennis Benson's Electric Evangelism (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1973 - $3.95)

G. William Jones' Landing Rightside Up in TV and Film (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1973 - price not known, paper)

Radical Software which is entitled “The TV Environment.”

Children's Television: Economics and Public Policy by William Melody (142 pp. spiral bound, $15.00)

Network Programming and Advertising in the Saturday Children's Hours: A June and November Comparison by F. Earle Barcus (32 pp., spiral bound, $5.00)

Network Children's Programming: A Content Analysis of Black and Minority Treatment on Children's Television by Gilbert Mendelson and Morrissa Young (of Best), (20 pp., $5.00)     

BRITISH PARTY ELECTION BROADCASTS IN THE 1950s

The debate about the American influence on political communication practices worldwide has raised a range of issues about how such a process might work. Much of the research in the field, however, has examined possible influences on practices in the last quarter of the twentieth century. By then, it could be argued, common global practices had become established in many Western Democracies. The aim of this paper is to explore a period before these changes had taken place, namely the 1950s and the 1960s, when television was still in its infancy in both Britain and the US, when new and different practices were being tried out and a period in which it might still be possible to look at influences at the dawn of political broadcasting. By focusing on the emergence and development of a specific form of political communication, namely, dedicated, unmediated, paid-for or free party election communication, in the US and in Britain in this early period, it might be possible to examine if, and how, American practices might have influenced British ones. Using unpublished work drawing on a range of archives and personal interviews that focus on interactions across the Atlantic, this paper argues that in this period, the two countries developed a range of different practices that cannot easily lend support to the idea of Americanisation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need for more research into the domestic negotiations of transatlantic interactions.     

Book review

Handbook of telecommunications economics, volume I. structure, regulation & competition. Cave, M., Majumdar; S. & Vogelsang (eds.). Elsevier Science, B.V., 2002, 726 pages, ISBN 0–444–50389–7, www.elsevier.com

Cost proxy models and telecommunications policy. Farid Gasmi, D. Mark Kennett, Jean‐Jacques Laffont, William W. Sharkey. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2002, 275 pages, ISBN 0–262–7237–8

Media institutions and audiences: Key concepts in media studies by Nick Lacey. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2002, 275 pages, ISBN 0–262–7237–8. Palgrave, 2002, 235 pages, ISBN 0–333–65870–1, www.palgrave.com

Copyright in the cultural industries edited by Ruth Towse. Edward Elgar, 2002, 263 + xxii pages, ISBN 1–84064–661–6, www.e‐elgar.co.uk

Telecommunications management. Industry structures and planning structures. by Richard A. Gershon. 365 pages, ISBN 0–8058–3002–2, www.erlbaum.com

Understanding media economics by Gillian Doyle. Sage Publications, 2002, vii +184 pages, ISBN 07619 6874

Media and power by James Curran. Routledge, London and New York, 2002, 308 pages, ISBN 0–415–07740–0, www.routledge.com     

Celebrity Endorsements and Their Potential to Motivate Young Voters

Although scholars have long indicated concern regarding disaffected young voters, the 2004 presidential election tallied record turnout among this age group. This study explored how and why celebrity-endorsed, get-out-the-vote campaigns may have helped to persuade young voters aged 18 to 24 to participate in an election campaign by examining campaign influence on individual decision-making factors. During the fall semester of 2004, a convenience sample of 305 college students from introductory general education classes completed surveys assessing their political efficacy, involvement, complacency, and apathy. Findings indicated that receptivity to celebrity spokespeople predicted lower levels of complacency and higher levels of self-efficacy. Complacency had independent effects on involvement and self-efficacy. The results therefore suggest that these campaigns can potentially influence positive change in political engagement of the younger citizenry.     

Party and Candidate Websites: A Comparative Explanatory Analysis

This study provides a systematic investigation of party and candidate websites across five countries. It examines three prominent features of current online political communication (interactivity, political personalization, and mobilization). Furthermore it assesses to what extent country, party, and source characteristics explain differences in the usage of these features. In total, 63 websites and 416 pages in Germany, Romania, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Great Britain were subject to a systematic content analysis. The findings suggest that differences in party and source characteristics explain variation in levels of mobilization, interactivity, and personalization, with, for example, party websites trying to mobilize citizens while websites belonging to politicians are used as a platform for self-promotion. In general, results show that the division of countries into East and West European is less important.     

Science or graduates: How do firms benefit from the proximity of universities?

This paper examines the impact of universities on the technological performance of adjacent firms. We extend existing research by jointly analyzing, and comparing, the effects of education (graduates) and scientific research (publications) activities of universities on firms’ technological performance. Adopting the knowledge production framework, our study is conducted at the level of 101 Italian territorial areas (provinces) and four industries. Overall, fixed-effect panel data models reveal a positive effect of both university graduates and scientific publications on the technological performance of firms. At the same time, considerable industry differences are observed. While the provision of university graduates positively affects firm performance in all industries under study, additional effects for scientific research are only observed in electrical and pharmaceutical industries that are science-intensive and where the scientific knowledge base is changing rapidly over time. The observation that spillovers from academia into the industrial texture of provinces rely on education and research in an industry-specific manner is relevant to the design of appropriate research and innovation policies.     

Broadening out and opening up technology assessment: Approaches to enhance international development,co-ordination and democratisation

Technology assessment (TA) has a strong history of helping to identify priorities and improve environmental sustainability, cost-effectiveness and wider benefits in the technology policies and innovation strategies of nation-states. At international levels, TA has the potential to enhance the roles of science, technology and innovation towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, effectively implementing the UN Framework on Climate Change and fostering general global transitions to ‘green economies’. However, when effectively recommending single ostensibly ‘best’ technologies or strategies, TA practices can serve unjustifiably to ‘close down’ debate, failing adequately to address technical uncertainties and social ambiguities, reducing scope for democratic accountability and co-ordination across scales and contexts. This paper investigates ways in which contrasting processes ‘broadening out’ and ‘opening up’ TA can enhance both rigour and democratic accountability in technology policy, as well as facilitating social relevance and international cooperation. These methods allow TA to illuminate options, uncertainties and ambiguities and so inform wider political debates about how the contending questions, values and knowledges of different social interests often favour contrasting innovation pathways. In this way TA can foster both technical robustness and social legitimacy in subsequent policy-making. Drawing on three empirical case studies (at local, national and international levels), the paper discusses detailed cases and methods, where recent TA exercises have contributed to this ‘broadening out’ and ‘opening up’. It ends by exploring wider implications and challenges for national and international technology assessment processes that focus on global sustainable development challenges.