The emergence of mobile technologies and social media applications has led to a shift in the emergency/disaster related communication environment. Citizens are playing an increasingly important role in providing real time information to emergency organizations. This shift has resulted in an expectation by the public that emergency management (EM) organizations monitor and respond to calls for help disseminated via these applications. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which Florida EM agencies have incorporated the monitoring of social media into their organizational processes. The state of social media use in Florida is under researched. In this explanatory sequential design study, Florida EM personnel was surveyed using the CNA Analyst/National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) survey (Su et. al, 2012) on the use of social media in EM. Subsequently, a subset of respondents was interviewed to determine to what extent they have incorporated the monitoring of social media into their organizational processes. Several recommendations can be made related to the use of social media in emergency management in Florida. Each of these is discussed in detail: 1.) Reverse mentoring programs; 2.) Development of social media policies; 3.) Continue to attend trainings and conferences; 4.) Explore promising practices; and 5.) Social marketing campaigns for citizens. Overall, it appears that Florida has an immature yet evolving system for use of social media in emergency management. While Florida EM agencies are knowledgeable about social media in general, they lack policies, systems, and staff to take full advantage of social media as a tool in emergency management. As more training is offered, and promising practices are shared, systems will likely continue to evolve. The evolution of systems within agencies will depend largely on leadership attitudes, organizational policies, and staffing resources.

Over recent decades several competing descriptions of the media and cultural industries have been put forward. The media and cultural industries have been described as creative industries, copyright industries, and as constitutive of an experience economy. One key element in these descriptions has been the importance of copyright law in a postindustrial economy. The present study is an analysis of an emerging idea of an industry that functions, in part, outside of the market created by copyright law, and by exploiting, or by building markets on top of, digital, cultural and informational commons. The study is about how this idea is expressed in various forms by business organisations, companies, consultants and policymakers. I have invented the concept of the openness industry to denote the businesses that these organisations and policy makers claim are forerunners and promoters of the idea of ‘openness’ as a business model for the media industry. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the governmentality and ideology of the openness industry. A key element in the idea of the openness industry is that internet users can be persuaded to produce symbolic products for it by other means than the economic incentives provided by copyright. Another key element is the high value placed on single individuals in the creation of economic value; but in contrast to how the copyright industries are thought to be dependent on ‘authors’, the openness industry relies on the ‘entrepreneur’. Previous notions of the media and cultural industries have given publishers and producers of film, music and games a central role.The companies that are seminal to the idea of the openness industry are internet and technology companies.

Problem: Record companies are facing a downturn in sales of music. This is seen as consequence of the growth of distribution of music through Internet by file sharing networks such as BitTorrent networks. On one side there are record companies who feel threatened of the illegal file sharing, and on the other side file sharing BitTorrent networks has increased dramatically in number of users since they first approached. Some record companies have responded by taking hostile actions towards the BitTorrent networks and their users with lawsuits and penalties for illegal file sharing. Other record companies and artists have joined forces with BitTorrent networks and see them as an advantage. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze if, and how record companies can collaborate with the BitTorrent networks. Method: A hermeneutic inductive approach is used, in combination with qualitative interviews with both record companies and BitTorrent networks. Conclusions: It is argued that record companies can find a way in communicating and cooperating with BitTorrent networks. Instead of adopting hostile approaches and trying to restrict the technologies adopted by end users, companies should open themselves up and accept the current changes initiated and developed by BitTorrent networks. Thus, it was concluded that companies have to concentrate around collaborating with BitTorrent networks rather than fiercely protecting old business models. By opening up to the users, record companies will adopt open innovations approach that is characterized by combining external and internal ideas, as well internal and external paths to market, thus obtaining future technological developments. As for the BitTorrent networks, by going from outlaw to crowdsourcing mode, the networks’ creative solutions can be further harnessed by record companies. Finally, strengthening relationships between customers and music artists can be considered as beneficial for both record companies and BitTorrent networks. Thus, giving opportunities for customers to win special items, tickets for concerts, watch sound check, eat dinner backstage with the group, take pictures, get autographs, watch the show from the side of the stage, etc. can lead to valuable relationship in a long run.

Innovation är ett väl debatterat ämne inom företagsvärlden liksom för forskningsvärlden och beskrivs oftast som motorn för ett företags tillväxt. Dess betydelse är någonting som har forskats på långt bakåt i historien. Men på senare tid, har en kombination av olika faktorer, för att inte nämna de teknologiska framsteg som gjorts de senare decennierna, haft ett stor inflytande på hur innovation idag har förändrats. De närmaste åren har innovation och dess process blivit allt kortare och den aktiva konkurrens som sker i dagens marknad har lett fram till en ny sorts innovation, så kallad Öppen innovation (Chesbrough H. , 2003a), vilken tillför till dagens innovation nya sätt för företag och organisationer, inte bara att verka inom företagets ramar, utan att även interagera med sin näromgivning för att skapa innovation. Som ett efterspel av detta samt med en allt mer interaktiv och samarbetande roll tillsammans med externa aktörer via Internet, så myntades begreppet Crowdsourcing (Howe, 2006). Crowdsourcing är en relativt ny term som syftar till att förklara förhållandet till när företag outsourcar uppgifter till en större skara människor via internet. För att hitta en djupare förståelse för hur detta har frambringats har vi försökt att kartlägga dess ursprung genom att gå bakåt i forskningen och titta närmare på innovationen i sig. Vår teoretiska referensram bygger på äldre och nya inflytelserika studier (inom innovation, öppen- och sluten innovation, öppen källkod, kollektiv intelligens, användarinnovation samt motivationen bakom deltagande på crowdsourcing plattformar) som speglar hur vi har utformat och genomfört studiens empiriska undersökning. Syftet med denna studie var att bidra till en vidare förståelse kring detta område samt tydliggöra för områdena Öppen Innovation och Crowdsourcing genom att koppla ihop fördelarna de ger till innovation. Motivationen är också essensen som driver medverkan i denna typ av innovation och utgör en central del för öppen innovation och crowdsourcing. Därför har vi valt att studera de bakonliggande motiven som bidrar till att ”crowden” väljer och inspireras att delta på crowdsourcing plattformar som Etsy. Studien tillämpar ett kvalitativt tillvägagångssätt som bygger på 18 intervjuer baserat på crowdsourcing plattformen Etsy. Vi valde att utgå från användarens perspektiv för att få en djupare förståelse för motivet bakom deltagande på plattformen. Alla intervjuer skedde via ”Instant Messenger” och resultatet utformar vårt empiriska underlag för denna studie. Vi har funnit incitament för att crowdsourcing har en stor påverkan för innovation. Det kan användas på flera olika plan bland organisationer och företag. När det används rätt bidrar det till att effektivisera framtagandet av nya produkter, marknadsföring, supportfunktioner samt att det i många industrier däribland Etsy’s även revolutionerar marknaden som de verkar i. En annan intressant faktor som frambringades av studien är att den sociala aspekten av att delta, grupptillhörighet, att träffa nya vänner och att lära sig nya färdigheter har en större betydelse än det monetära motivet.

Difficulties in social skills are generally considered defining characteristics of High-Functioning Autism (HFA). These difficulties interfere with the educational experiences and quality of life of individuals with HFA, and interventions must be highly individualized to be effective. I explore ways technologies may play a role in assisting individuals with the acquisition of social problem solving skills. This thesis presents the design, development, and evaluation of two systems; Refl-ex, which is a collection of multimedia instructional modules designed to enable adolescents with HFA to practice social problem solving skills, and REACT, a system to facilitate the authoring of a wider variety of instructional modules. The authoring tool is designed to help parents, teachers, and other stakeholders to create Refl-ex-like instructional modules. The approach uses models of social knowledge created using crowdsourcing techniques to provide the authors with support throughout the authoring process. A series of studies were conducted to inform the design of high-fidelity prototypes of each of the systems and to evaluate the prototypes. The contributions of this thesis are: 1) the creation of obstacle-based branching, an approach to developing interactive social skills instructional modules that has been evaluated by experts to be an improvement to current practices; 2) the development of an approach to building models of social knowledge that can be dynamically created and expanded using crowdsourcing; and 3) the development a system that gives parents and other caregivers the ability to easily create customized social skills instructional modules for their children and students.

In recent years Crowdsourced, or Volunteered, Geographic Information (CGI, VGI), has emerged as a large, up-to-date and easily accessible data source. Primarily attributable to the rise of the Geoweb and widespread use of location enabled technologies, this environment of widespread innovation has repositioned the role of consumers of spatial information. Collaborative and participatory web environments have led to a democratisation of the global mapping process, and resulted in a paradigm shift to the consumer of geographic data also acting as a data producer. With such a large and diverse group of participants actively mapping the globe, the resulting flood of information has become increasingly attractive to authoritative mapping agencies, in order to augment their own spatial data supply chains. The use of CGI would allow these agencies to undertake continuous improvement of their own data and products, adding a dimension of currency that has previously been unattainable due to high associated costs. CGI, however, through its diversity of authorship, presents a quality assurance risk to these agencies should it be included in their authoritative products. Until now, this risk has been insurmountable, with CGI remaining a “Pandora’s Box” which many agencies are reluctant to open. This research presents an algorithmic model that overcomes these issues, by quantifying trust in CGI in order to assess its implied quality. Labeled “VGTrust”, this model assesses information about a data author, its spatial trust, as well as its temporal trust, in order to produce an overall metric that is easy to understand and interpret. The VGTrust model will allow mapping agencies to harness CGI to augment existing datasets, or create new ones, thereby facilitating a targeted quality assurance process and minimizing risk to authoritativeness. This research proposes VGTrust in theory, on the basis of existing examinations of trust issues with CGI. Furthermore, a facilitated case study, “Building Our Footprints” is presented, where VGTrust is deployed to facilitate the capture of a building footprint dataset, the results of which revealing the veracity of the model as a measure to assess trust for these data. Finally, a data structure is proposed in the form of a “geo-molecule”, which allows the full spectrum of trust indicators to be stored a data structure at feature level, allowing the transitivity of this information to travel with each feature following creation. By overcoming the trust issues inherent in CGI, this research will allow the integration of crowdsourced and authoritative data, thereby leveraging the power of the crowd for productive and innovative re-use.

Many individuals with autism manifest problems in transitioning to adulthood due to social impairments, communication difficulties, and rigid behaviors. One of those challenges is developing a robust and sufficiently large network of people who can provide advice about a variety of everyday situations. In this dissertation, I investigate ways of supporting adolescents with high functioning autism in navigating their everyday life through specializing social networking services (SNSs). A series of studies were conducted to identify opportunities for the design and use of a specialized SNS to foster the independence. The results demonstrates SNS can support some adolescents and adults with autism in increasing the independence by 1) facilitating the asking of a variety of online networks beyond a primary caregiver; and 2) allowing acquisition of rapid, direct, and informational advice with crowdsourcing. Drawing on several formative studies and investigations, I synthesized design guidelines for inquir.us, a specialized hybrid social question-and-answer (Q&A) platform with features for scaffolding question creation and crowdsourcing answers. Through the initial evaluation of inquir.us, I examined the Q&A behavior of individuals with autism on this platform and identified both opportunities and barriers to adoption in the context of supporting transition skills for the independence. The contributions of this thesis are: (1) a rich description of challenges and opportunities related to attaining independent life using SNSs; (2) empirical studies of individuals with autism’s online Q&A behavior; (3) design implications for designing a specialized SNS facilitating the Q&A interactions; and (4) the design and exploratory study of a social Q&A platform in the real world.

In this thesis I have chosen to study the use of crowdsourcing in Swedish archival institutions as well as the influence this methodic platform has on the work of modern archivists. This also raises the question whether the nature of the platform is in any way influenced by the attitude working professionals might have towards crowdsourcing as a legitimed working method. This investigation is based on case studies and interviews with archivists from select Swedish institutions and also the methodology of two now ongoing crowdsourcing projects. The theoretical framework on which this composition is based comes from the work of Gregory Asmolov and his work on crowdsourcing platforms and their functionality as tools of governing. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is applied to analyze how the method of crowdsourcing is utilised by archival institutions and influenced by their daily routine in conjunction with Governmentality as the chosen way of studying how these platforms might control their users. From the results of the performed case studies, two discourses emerged based on the view on quality concerning gathered information amongst the involved subjects. The first of these discourses places it´s trust and faith in users themselves where validity is of a lesser concern than the actual availability of information through the concept of ”wisdom of the crowds”. Discourse number two represents an alternate perspective where quality of information is of the outmost importance and requires the supervision of professionals upon the work of common users. Through the course of this study I have come to find that the use of crowdsourcing in Swedish archival institutions is mainly controlled by the archivist in charge´s attitude towards this specific working method and in a larger context also formed by the basic archival discourse, legal questions and financial matters of the last century. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Civic issues in a society can be reported through a crowdsourcing web application. People can download the application on their smartphones and report the issues such as a pothole or broken streetlight. The report is submitted by taking a photo of the issue and additional information is entered. At first, the reports are submitted to a call center and after analyzing they will be transferred to organizations responsible for this type of events. In such a crowdsourcing project it is very vital to motivate people to participate in the project. The reports are supplied by users and without an acceptable number of users the application would be useless. In addition, having the exact location of a report is very helpful to facilitate the process of solving civic issues. Positioning with smartphones is not very accurate as they do not have strong and accurate GPSs. Therefore, there is a need to improve the accuracy of the positioning process and consequently accuracy of the spatial data. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how to employ GIS to help reporting civic issues and how to design an interesting client interface for such an application, in order to motivate user to download and use it. The goal is also to find out shortcomings and weaknesses of the positioning with smartphones and find a way to improve its accuracy.Some of successful similar applications’ structures and their interfaces were reviewed. In addition, a survey among existing users of crowdsourcing applications has been done in order to find out how to design the application to be interesting for users. Furthermore, some techniques and methods were chosen in order to improve the GPS accuracy especially in the places with a low GPS signal strength. These methods exploit WLAN and some of embedded features in a smartphone such as microphone, camera, accelerometer, gyroscope to improve the positioning accuracy. In the end, along reporting civic issues the user is able to report and get information about cheap and appropriate necessities and public events in different geographical areas through a map-based application. Furthermore, he or she is benefited by some location-based services such as online-food or taxi. The client application’s interface was designed for iPhone.This GIS-based mobile application would be an appropriate alternative for the old reporting methods like phone call or mail. Nevertheless, reporting civic issues itself, cannot be necessarily a strong motivation to attract the user to download and use the application. Therefore, desired feedbacks of the crowd need to be found out in order to encourage them to spend their time for the application. User needs to get motivated to use the application and considered additional parts can be very helpful to reach this aim.

Purpose – The aim of this thesis is to explain the factors that influence consumers’ willingness to contribute to crowdsourcing organizations, by applying the reciprocity theory. Design/methodology/approach – This is a quantitative research which used a cross sectional research design with an explanatory approach. The data was collected with a questionnaire survey that was distributed using face-to-face and online methods. Findings – The findings of this research revealed that social proof is positively influencing willingness to contribute, either direct or indirect, through reciprocity. In addition, trust, commitment and identification were not directly influencing willingness to contribute, however they have an indirect positive impact on willingness to contribute through reciprocity. Research limitations/implications – This study has created a research model by the use of relevant literature in regards to reciprocity and willingness to contribute. Moreover, the limitations of this study are related to the chosen sample, since the generalization of the results is done based on three countries. Practical implications – The study provides some valuable insights for crowdsourcing organizations managers who aim to increase the amount of contributions through their online communities by the use of the reciprocity theory. Detailed explanation goes in the managerial implications section. Originality/value – This research is unique in that it presents a new model that shows reciprocity as a mediating factor for improving online communities’ users attitudes towards contributing to crowdsourcing organizations.