Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-48).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-250).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Alberta, 2010. / "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Psychology and the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta." Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on July 23, 2010) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MTech (Business Information Systems)--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / The Internet has become a useful instrument in connecting users, regardless of their geographical locations, and has thus has made the world a small village where users can interact and search for information. Another aspect that has made the Internet popular amongst users, is its growing popularity as a global resource connecting millions of users surfing the Web daily, searching for and sharing information. A successful search for information depends on the user’s ability to search effectively, and this ability is based on computer competency, knowledge of Information Technology (IT), perceptions of IT usage, and the demographics of the user. These user’s characteristics tend to influence the overall user experience. Although the Internet is used by different groups of users to achieve different objectives of information search, not all of them achieve these objectives. The main aim of this study was to determine the success rate of post-graduate students using free-form information searching to find academic reference materials.

Enterprises have focused on mechanisms to track insiders who may intentionally exceed and misuse their authorized access. However, there is an opportunity to understand why a trusted individual would want to exploit the trust and seek information with the intent of a malicious outcome. The detection of insider rogue or nefarious activities with information to which a user is already authorized is extremely difficult. Such insider threats require more deliberation than just considering it to be a problem that can be mitigated only by software or hardware enhancements. This research expects to help gain an early understanding of antecedents to such information behavior and provide an opportunity to develop approaches to address relevant character traits which could lead to a higher propensity of information misuse. This research proposes a theoretical framework and a conceptual research model to understand the antecedent factors to opportunistic information-seeking behavior of individuals. The study follows the three-essay format. Essay 1 explores the scholarly literature published about insider behavior to understand information behavior and proposes the theoretical framework for the study. PRISMA methodology was used for the thematic literature review. Essay 2 is a quantitative study of 424 university students surveyed using an online instrument for their responses to various scenarios in the context of academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty is proposed as a proxy for information misuse. Essay 3 is a qualitative study engaging senior executives from various industries to understand their perspectives on the behavioral characteristics of individuals as they try to protect their corporate information from being misused and protect their reputation and liability from malicious use of their information.

In the last few years, the world has been gripped by a crisis of forced migration and displaced persons. Being forced migrants, asylum-seekers are a unique and diverse population, originating from many countries with different backgrounds and experiences. This makes fulfilling the information needs of the asylum community difficult. Online participatory platforms, such as blogs and discussion forums, are flexible, adaptive information resources that could be used to meet the diverse needs of this population. In this study, I compare two online resources used by asylum-seekers, a blog and discussion forum, using social network analysis and topic modeling techniques. Through these analyses, I have determined the conversational archetype the best reflects both websites and discovered the information needs expressed and, in many cases, resolved through conversations in these online spaces. The core finding of this study is that providing direct access to an expert, such as through an interactive blog, promotes dialogue on a greater variety of topics and increases the likelihood of a thorough response. Furthermore, blog posts may inform participants' comments by providing them with the necessary vocabulary to participate fully in the online setting.

This dissertation examines how agents process information and update their beliefs in two different contexts. In the first two chapters we consider dynamic decision problems under perfect information. In the last chapter we consider static, strategic interactions with common knowledge but imperfect information. To tackle our first set of questions we design an experiment analogous to the dynamic consumption problem with stochastic income that households solve in standard macroeconomic models. In the first chapter we show that our subjects condition on past actions in the absence of informational frictions or switching costs. We argue that subjects do so to economize on scarce cognitive resources and develop a model of inattentive reconsideration that fits our data. An implication of our model is that inertia is state- dependent. In the second chapter we revisit the longstanding problem in empirical macroeconomics of excess sensitivity of consumption to income in our experimental data. We find that excess sensitivity arises from two distinct channels. The first channel is an overreaction of households to the arrival of income that is independent of their wealth level. The second is increased excess smoothness with respect to wealth when households receive news about future income. The third chapter examines the scope for persuasion in global games. We consider a central bank with a commitment technology that chooses a robustly optimal persuasion strategy. We show that such a policy can reduce and even eliminate multiple equilibria in such games because it updates agents beliefs so that coordination motives become irrelevant. This suggests that central bankers are better served from influencing the markets through announcements rather than direct intervention.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what factors make media firms downsize and which channel managers will choose to inform the layoff message to employees. This paper uses interview research method to collect the data from 12 workers in different media firms. Findings indicate that there are three levels of factors cause downsize in media firms: external factors of the organization, internal factors of the organization and personal factors of employees. And managers depend on some standards to decide the list of layoff such as work performance and experience and managers¡¦ recognize about the employees. If one manager wants to inform layoff message to employees, he/she will choose face-to-face communication channel because it can ease employees feeling and makes some immediately feedbacks. The order of communication channels from interviewers¡¦ response is: face-to face, telephone and e-mail, document, MSN, bulletin board, firm¡¦s website and social network website.