Humans rely on all their senses when interacting with others in order to communicate and collaborate efficiently. In mediated interaction the communication channel is more or less constrained, and humans have to cope with the fact that they cannot get all the information that they get in face-to-face interaction. The particular concern in this thesis is how humans are affected by different multimodal interfaces when they are collaborating with another person in a shared virtual environment. One aspect considered is how different modalities affect social presence, i.e. people’s ability to perceive the other person’s intentions and emotions. Another aspect investigated is how different modalities affect people’s notion of being present in a virtual environment that feels realistic and meaningful. Finally, this thesis attempts to understand how human behavior and efficiency in task performance are affected when using different modalities for collaboration. In the experiment presented in articles A and B, a shared virtual environment that provided touch feedback was used, making it possible to feel the shape, weight and softness of objects as well as collisions between objects and forces produced by another person. The effects of touch feedback on people’s task performance, perceived social presence, perceived presence and perceived task performance were investigated in tasks where people manipulated objects together. Voice communication was possible during the collaboration. Touch feedback improved task performance significantly, making it both faster and more precise. People reported significantly higher levels of presence and perceived performance, but no difference was found in the perceived social presence between the visual only condition and the condition with touch feedback. In article C an experiment is presented, where people performed a decision making task in a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) using avatar representations. They communicated either by text-chat, a telephone connection or a video conference system when collaborating in the CVE. Both perceived social presence and perceived presence were significantly lower in the CVE text-chat condition than in the CVE telephone and CVE video conference conditions. The number of words and the tempo in the dialogue as well as the task completion time differed significantly for persons that collaborated using CVE text-chat compared to those that used a telephone or a video conference in the CVE. The tempo in the dialogue was also found to be significantly higher when people communicated using a telephone compared to a video conference system in CVEs. In a follow-up experiment people performed the same task using a website instead, with no avatar but with the same information content as before. Subjects communicated either by telephone or a video conference iv system. Results from the follow-up experiment showed that people that used a telephone completed tasks significantly faster than those that used a video conference system, and that the tempo in the dialogue was significantly higher in the web environments than in the CVEs. Handing over objects is a common event during collaboration in face-to face interaction. In the experiment presented in article D and E, the effects of providing touch feedback was investigated in a shared virtual environment in which subjects passed a series of cubic objects to each other and tapped them at target areas. Subjects could not communicate verbally during the experiment. The framework of Fitts’ law was applied and it was hypothesized that object hand off constituted a collaboratively performed Fitts’ law task, with target distance to target size ratio as a fundamental performance determinant. Results showed that task completion time indeed linearly increased with Fitts’ index of difficulty, both with and without touch feedback. The error rate was significantly lower in the condition with touch feedback than in the condition with only visual feedback. It was also found that touch feedback significantly increased people’s perceived presence, social presence and perceived performance in the virtual environment. The results presented in article A and E analyzed together, suggest that when voice communication is provided the effect of touch feedback on social presence might be overshadowed. However, when verbal communication is not possible, touch proves to be important for social presence. / QC 20100630

This research paper was aimed at analysing the influence of culture and communication practices in team functioning.  The scope of the study was limited to the project teams in the financial sector in Japan and the Philippines. The study was a qualitative research through the application of case studies whilst the primary data were gathered from semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study revealed that the project teams were collectivist with a noticeable degree of power distance, bestowment of status through ascription and the strong need for harmony in the project team environment. The communication practices were also affected by the hierarchical, relational, societal and regulatory dictates and expectations. However, there were some differences noted in Japanese and Philippine project teams as the latter exhibited more flexibility towards hierarchical relationship where position was not seen as hindrance in developing convivial and professional relationships. In so doing, culture and communication practices influenced team functioning in the aforementioned research context. Finally, the results of the study will allow project members, leaders and other key stakeholders in understanding the influence of culture and communication practices to team functioning in a more in-depth manner. This will lead to better policies and practices in helping them realise their goals and objectives.

This research regards internet users with hearing-impairment as the target. The purpose is to investigate the factors which will influence hearing-impaired people use internet. This research is theoretically based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). According to the literatures, join subject norm, media richness, internet self-efficacy and perceived enjoyment. A total of 255 effective samples were collected via internet questionnaire. Through the survey and analysis, we could prove that subject norm, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use will influence the behavioral intention directly. Subject norm, media richness, perceived enjoyment and perceived ease of use will influence the perceived usefulness directly. And media richness, internet self-efficacy and perceived enjoyment will influence the perceived ease of use. According to the findings of research, there are the following suggestions. (1) Hearing-impaired communities should offer information courses of computer and internet. (2)The government should offer more services through internet, and social welfare organizations should update information as instant as possible. (3)Implement the execution of the regulations of web accessibility.

Without question, it is apparent that organizations are predominantly dependent on the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) to conduct their daily operations. As a result, information is rapidly flowing throughout the workplace and being exchanged at a rate unlike ever before. Unfortunately, this rapid flow of information has increased the potential for information overload to occur among employees. Through a phenomenological based approach, this study explored the experiences of information overload that occur as a result of CMC use in the workplace, from the subjective point of view of ten participants. Findings indicated that the experiences described among these participants can be understood through the examination of four descriptive themes: Constant Communication, Unpredictability, Miscommunication, and lastly Increased Workload and Responsibilities. Furthermore, two theories: Media Richness Theory (MRT) and Social Influence Theory (SIT), served as the theoretical framework for this study.

With the development of technology, the speed of social media development is getting fasterand faster. The relationship between the company and its customers is getting closer.Company profits are increasingly affected by the quality of the relationship betweencustomers and the company. Therefore, relationship quality has become a key research topicfor the company. The interaction of social media will affect the quality of the relationshipbetween the company and its customers to a certain extent. This study examines therelationship between the quality of the relationship between the company and its customersand their interactions on social media. In addition, this research also examines commitment,trust, satisfaction, responsiveness, social influence, and media richness. These factors mainlyaffect the relationship between relationship quality and social media interaction. This studydescribes how to analyze the impact of social media interactions on relationship quality froma customer's perspective. In order to answer the research questions and obtain customers'opinions, this paper uses quantitative research to interview customers of different types ofbrand social media through questionnaires. From what customers feel about the company’scommitment to customers, trust, and customer satisfaction through social media interactions,the impact of social media interactions on the quality of the relationship between thecompany and customers can be derived. In order to promote the development of the company

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Facebook is in the forefront when it comes to technical development and allowing new and faster communication opportunities. In this study, one of the latest technical additions on Facebook is being researched; namely the reaction-button. The aim of this paper is to understand the usage of the reaction-button as well as its impact on interpersonal communications, immediacy and speed in society. The research focuses on six different themes; Culture of Speed, Social acceleration, Space and time, Media richness, Immediacy as well as Telemediation. Empirical material have been collected through qualitative Think-aloud interviews and quantitative content analysis. The research is, among other things, questioning the actual need of a reaction-button and whether it is used the way it is intended. Furthermore, it presents the problematics within a potential harm on social relationships, a loss in communicative value and an inactive behavior caused by the obsession about speeding up online social interactions.

網路技術的快速發展，使人與社會的接觸從實體走入虛擬，人與人之間的交流互動，可以透過社群媒體與網站進行意見的交流與資訊，政府單位、典藏機構與公眾人物等具有群眾號召力之訊息發布者，莫不透過網路社群的功能，達成資訊的成功傳遞。典藏機構是一般大眾最為信賴的知識傳播者，隨著社群網站成為主流的資訊中介站，檔案館也開始在2008年設立Facebook粉絲專頁。有鑑於Facebook具有資訊傳播效益，能提升檔案館與使用者意見的直接溝通。本研究旨在瞭解國內外檔案館Facebook粉絲專頁的互動經營模式，透過內容分析、深度訪談與問卷調查法，以不同的角色探討檔案館Facebook的經營策略與網路使用者的互動需求。 本研究以媒介豐富度的指標為基礎架構，透過內容分析法，觀察國內外6所檔案館Facebook粉絲專頁2015年10月至12月間579則貼文的發布頻率、主題內容與互動率，另輔以深度訪談法，探討檔案館Facebook經營者的貼文回饋速度、多元化內容提示與語言多樣性，瞭解國內檔案館Facebook粉絲專頁的經營維護政策。最後採問卷調查法，分析123份有加入檔案館Facebook之使用者對於該社群網站經營狀況的看法，及其認為檔案館最需要改進的地方。 研究結果發現，雖然檔案館的Facebook發文頻率偏高，但卻無法引發使用者共鳴，同時，使用者也認為檔案館之留言回饋率過低，不符需求。由內容分析與深度訪談結果得知，檔案館Facebook粉絲專頁經營者希望借助該社群網站的易用性與即時性，進行該館活動的推廣，而從Facebook頁面中，則可以發現互動率最高的媒體類型分別為相片、影片與連結。問卷調查部分，檔案館的Facebook使用者較能接受口語化的撰寫方式，且其亦會依據貼文主題的不同，給予不同程度的互動。本研究建議檔案館Facebook可提供豐富的多媒體貼文內容，透過符合使用者需求的內容包裝方式，讓兩者的互動更為積極。 / With the advent of the Internet, social networks afford an opportunity to make information much more broadly available and make direct contact between administrators such as governments, libraries, archives, museums and internet users. Library, archives and museums are the most trusted information suppliers. With the concept of becoming a communication intermediate, archives around the world started to create Facebook Pages since 2008 for extending communication channel with users of archives. The purpose of this research is to investigate the public communication and operating status of archives on Facebook. This research collected data from analyzing the media richness on the Facebook posts from US National Archives (U.S.), The National Archives (U.K.), National Archives of Australia and 3 public archives in Taiwan during October 1 to December 31, 2015. Besides, also used in-depth interview with archivists who managed the Facebook Pages to understand the operating policies of archives. Furthermore, questionnaire survey was conducted to capture users’ access behavior and analyzed the users’ barriers. According to the results, most of the users stated that, although archives have tried very hard to keep up with the trend, failure on reaching consensus between users’ need and administrative costs and effectiveness were a big problem. Facebook followers considered insufficient communicating cannels and lacked of immediate feedback reduced the satisfaction on the presentation of Archives’ Facebook. With content analysis, this study found that the media which could cause highly interaction were photos, videos and links, even the spoken text markup language were more acceptable by Internet users. This study suggests that archives should deliberate to provide more posts with multiple types of clues. Through the process of modifying original transactional messages, the communication between archives and users will be more effective.

Reputation is an important asset for organisations worldwide. Many researchers have attempted to develop a measurement construct to assess an organisation’s reputation, with the RepTrak System being recognised to be the world’s first tool that assess reputation across multiple stakeholders and areas of the organisation. Nevertheless, the characteristics, methods and stakeholders to include within an assessment of this intangible asset continues to be widely debated. Organisations are under intense scrutiny by their stakeholders, with reputation being an organisational asset on which many opinions are formed. Universities in the UK are no different, as they compete for students from around the world, with the institutions thought to have the best reputations, attracting more students. Nevertheless, no agreed measure for assessing a university’s reputation exists, with many organisations relying solely on league table rankings. Thus, this thesis evaluated existing reputation measurement characteristics, to determine their applicability in assessing the reputation of a UK university. The antecedents of reputation are also widely debated. Authors suggest that stakeholders’ prior knowledge and experience, and communication they receive from an organisation contributes to their perceptions of that organisation’s reputation. The Media Richness Theory suggests a hierarchy to this communication, with face-to-face communication recognised to be of increasing importance due to its ‘rich’ nature. Consequently, the use of events as a strategic communication tool for marketing and public relations purposes has become increasingly popular. Nevertheless, the impact of these events on an organisation’s reputation has yet to be assessed. Thus, the aim of x this thesis is to evaluate the impact that these events have on stakeholders’ perceptions of a UK university’s reputation. A case study methodology, using mixed methods, and underpinned by a pragmatic philosophical perspective was adopted. Five semi-structured interviews were held with senior managers during the first phase of data collection and analysis. Results from these interviews were used to determine the strategic purpose of events as a communication tool. In phase two of the research, the study’s main variables (Reputation, Event Influence, Knowledge and Familiarity, Future Intentions) are combined into a model to assess their relationships. These are tested using Structural Equation Modelling, and data collected from 23 university events and 592 event attendees, using a quantitative questonniare. This study contributes to our knowledge and understanding of the benefits of using events as a form of communication, and highlights the necessity of using a variety of communication channels to inform different stakeholder groups. Findings within this research contradict existing knowledge within the UK Higher Education Industry, by suggesting that university league tables were not the most frequently used method of assessing a university’s reputation, and that rather stakeholders base their perceptions on their personal experience with the institution. Consequently, attending events is found to have a positive influence on attendees’ perceptions of the university’s reputation, however a threshold level exists for stakeholders with high levels of familiarity with the university. Therefore, evidence of the impact of using events as a communication tool is found with a positive return on investment in terms of reputation gains. Thus, findings can be used to inform communication strategy within the higher education industry within the UK.

The expansion of YouTube into the mainstream media and its place as the second most-used website in the world makes it a prime place for health information seeking. However, content can be created and uploaded by anyone and thus, the threat of misinformation on YouTube is high. Medical researchers have established that videos created by health professionals on YouTube promote accurate information whereas videos by non-professionals promote generally inaccurate or misleading information. Yet, videos created by non-professionals have more views and higher relevance rankings on YouTube. To begin to understand this phenomenon, a descriptive study is used to lay a foundation for this area of health communication This study focused on the ostomy community of non-professional content creators on YouTube to. The goal of this study was to thoroughly describe the innate features of the videos using media richness theory, and to describe social support and illness narrative using the framework of social presence theory. The results from the study provide deep description into this particular community of non-professional health influencers and make way for a new line of research in the communication of health information.