Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Louise Benjamin / The video news release (VNR) has been a source of controversy since its first inclusion into newscasts in the early 1980s. This third-party (not produced by a news station) public relations and marketing-friendly content, when included alongside normally produced news stories, can make it difficult for the public to discern what is news and what is not. Problems specifically arise when news operations fail to disclose to their audience the source or provider of VNR content, and prevent news consumers from evaluating the legitimacy or intent of a VNR. A 4 (source disclosure cue: audio, video, combination of the two, and none) x 2 (source agent type: biased or neutral) experiment was implemented within this study to better understand audience evaluations, post exposure to a source disclosure cue, of the credibility of a news operation that implements VNRs within their broadcast. Disclosure cues were also evaluated for their effectiveness in raising awareness to the persuasive aspects of a VNR, and the impact of differing source agent types on participants' credibility assessment of a news operation. Results demonstrated 75% of participants (n=238) failed to correctly identify the source of the VNR when a disclosure cue was given. However, the audio and video combination condition was found to instigate the most awareness to the use of VNR. Overall, disclosure of a VNR's source could not be linked to changes in participants' evaluation of a news operation's credibility, with results demonstrating uniformly average means throughout. In addition, source disclosure could not be associated to a change in participants' awareness to the persuasive context of the VNR, with similar means exhibited. Because of the lack of an overall effect concerning credibility or knowledge of persuasive content within the study, greater media transparency is needed as are more media literacy opportunities for the public to best understand and navigate today’s complicated broadcast media reality.

GENERATING USER-CENTRIC DYNAMIC AND ADAPTABLE KNOWLEDGE MODELS FOR WORLD WIDE WEB By LEI LI JUNE, 2007 Committee Chair: Dr. Vijay Vaishnavi Major Department: Computer Information Systems In the current Internet age, more and more people, organizations, and businesses access the web to share and search for information. A web-based resource is often organized and presented based on its knowledge models (categorization structures). The static and inflexible knowledge models of web-based resources have become a major challenge for web users to successfully use and understand the information on the web. In this dissertation, I propose a research approach to generate user-centric dynamic and adaptable knowledge models for web-based resources. The user-centric feature means that a knowledge model is created based on a web user specified perspective for a web resource and that the user can provide feedback on the model building process. The dynamic feature means the knowledge models are built on the fly. The adaptable feature means the web user can have control of the user adaptation process by specifying his or her perspective for the web resource of interest. In this study, I apply a design science paradigm and follow the General Design Cycle (Vaishnavi and Kuechler 2004) during the course of research. A research prototype, Semantic Facilitator TM SM V2.0, has been implemented based on the proposed approach. A simulation-based experimentation is used to evaluate the research prototype. The experimental results show that the proposed research approach can effectively and efficiently create knowledge models on the fly based on a web user preferred perspective for the web resource. I found that incorporating user feedback into the modeling building process can greatly improve the quality of the knowledge models. At the end of the dissertation, I discuss the limitations and future directions of this research.

Past research repeatedly suggests consumer’s defensive response to persuasive attempts is a key challenge for advertisers. Given the explosive growth of social media, this study aims to understand if consumer response to ads placed in a social network site could be influenced by ad location and the path through which the ad is delivered. Findings from an experiment suggest that consumers’ attention to ads in SNSs is remarkably low. Furthermore, the interaction between ad location and the path significantly influences consumers’ attitudes toward the ad, attitudes toward the brand, and purchase intention. Specifically, it appears that an ad placed inside users’ timeline and sent through via known others, the indirect path, yielded favorable consumer response. On the other hand, consumers responded more favorably to an ad sent by the advertiser, the direct path, than that sent by known others if the ad is placed outside users’ timeline. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided. / text

Informacijos sistemos kūrimas, pradedant nuo vartotojo reikalavimų surinkimo iki IS diegimo, palaikymo ir reinžinerijos vadinamas informacijos sistemų inžinerija. Pastaruoju metu šio mokslo vystymosi eigoje formuojasi naujas etapas – žiniomis grindžiama kompiuterizuota IS inžinerija. IS kūrimo aplinka CASE yra papildoma veiklos žinių kaupimo posistemiu, intelektualizuojančiu informacijos sistemos kūrimo procesą. Veiklos žinių posistemio paskirtis teoriškai yra užtikrinti galimybę saugomų dalykinės srities žinių pagrindu generuoti IS konceptualaus ir detalaus projektavimo etapų modelius ir programinį kodą. Veiklos modelio panaudojimas gerina sprendimų kokybę ir taupomas darbo laikas, kadangi veiklos modelyje jau yra sukauptos formalių kriterijų atžvilgiu patikrintos žinios. Priešingai negu tradicinėje kompiuterizuotoje IS inžinerijoje, kur informacijos sistema kuriama empiriškai, pradedant vartotojo poreikių išsiaiškinimu, analize ir specifikavimu. Tokiu IS kūrimo būdu dauguma CASE įrankiams taikomų projektinių modelių yra generuojami tik iš dalies ir juos iki galo realizuoti gali tik sistemos analitikas neautomatizuotu būdu. Šiame darbe bus gilinamasi į galimybę panaudojant veiklos modelį, kurio pagrindu sudarytas dalykinės srities žinių posistemis, generuoti veiklos (activity) diagramos projektinį modelį. / The principles and major steps of enterprise Meta-Model (EMM) based development of Activity model in CASE system enviroment are presented in this paper. The Enterprise Meta-Model represents the key concepts of domain knowledge. The enterprise processes, management functions, and their interactions are concidered as a components of the domain knowledge accumulated as Enterprise model in the knowledge base of CASE system. The formal and practical background for generation of Activity diagram model is mapping rules of EMM constructs to constructs of Activity diagram meta-model. In this paper experimental Enterprise knowledge model is eveluated in order to find out with activity diagram elements we can‘t generate without adding aditional classes to Enterprise model.

Microelectronic systems such as cell phones, computers, consumer electronics, and implantable medical devices consist of subsystems which in turn consist of other subsystems and components. When such systems are designed, fabricated, assembled, and tested, they need to meet reliability, cost, performance, and other targets for being competitive. The design of reliable electronic packaging systems in a systematic and timely manner requires a consistent and unified method for allocating, predicting, and assessing reliability and for recommending design changes at the component and system level with consideration of both random and wearout failures. Accordingly, this dissertation presents a new unified knowledge modeling method for System Design for Reliability (SDfR) called the Reliability Object Model (ROM) method. The ROM method consistently addresses both reliability allocation and assessment for systems composed of series and parallel subsystems. The effectiveness of the ROM method has been demonstrated for allocating, predicting, and assessing reliability, and the results show that ROM is more effective compared to existing methods, providing richer semantics, unified techniques, and improved SDfR quality. Furthermore, this dissertation develops representative reliability metrics for random and wearout failures, and incorporates such metrics into ROM together with representative algorithms for allocation, assessment, and design change recommendations. Finally, this research implemented the ROM method in a computing framework and demonstrated its applicability using several relevant microelectronic system test cases and prototype SDfR tools.

O avanço tecnológico de dispositivos capazes de capturar e armazenar volumes significativos de imagens permite o armazenamento de grandes quantidades de informações visuais. Uma área de intensa pesquisa atualmente é a extração e modelagem de conhecimento visual contido nessas bases de informações. O conceito de conhecimento visual e imagem são conceitos disjuntos, mesmo que pareçam intrinsecamente conectados. Conhecimento visual é o conjunto de modelos mentais compostos por imagens de objetos reais ou imaginárias manipuladas pelo cérebro. Esses modelos mentais são aplicados em tarefas cuja solução envolve a análise de informações visuais, como por exemplo, a extração de conteúdo semântico de imagens. Domínios imagísticos são os domínios nos quais a solução de problemas começa com um processo de casamento de padrões que capturam a informação visual e que mais tarde dará suporte ao processo abstrato da interpretação. A proposta desta dissertação é a definição de primitivas alternativas para a representação de conhecimento visual através da combinação de construtos proposicionais e pictóricos. Diferentemente de outras abordagens, o conhecimento visual capturado no modelo aqui proposto não reside nas imagens, mas na mente de especialistas. A captura do conhecimento visual é realizada através de dois metaconstrutos híbridos aplicáveis ao domínio da geologia. Os metaconstrutos são compostos de uma representação proposicional e outra icônica que são utilizadas para fins de comunicação e expressão do conhecimento visual do especialista, respectivamente. O metaconstruto Pictorial Concept representa tipos visuais enquanto que o metaconstruto Pictorial Attribute representa qualidades dos tipos visuais. Os metaconstrutos aqui definidos foram aplicados ao domínio da Estratigrafia Sedimentar, uma subárea da Geologia, na construção de uma ontologia de domínio com conteúdo visual agregado. A construção da ontologia de domínio foi realizada através de um processo de aquisição de conhecimento. O conhecimento visual foi eliciado a partir de um especialista, adquirido através da imersão na literatura do domínio e organizado de acordo com metapropriedades e metaconceitos de uma ontologia de fundamentação unificada. A ontologia é aplicada ao domínio da Estratigrafia Sedimentar para rochas siliciclásticas para a descrição de testemunhos e afloramentos. A ontologia inclui uma hierarquia de rochas, estruturas sedimentares e ambientes deposicionais. Foram modelados 36 conceitos com a adição de 60 ícones. A validação do conhecimento visual organizado foi realizada através de experimento empírico onde 21 geólogos utilizaram os ícones sem legenda para descrição de amostras de rocha. O nível de acertos das associações entre feições geológicas e ícones representam 70% para fácies e 66% para estruturas sedimentares sendo identificada uma conclusão positiva entre a experiência do geólogo e o número de acertos. / The advances in technological devices allow then to capture and store significant amounts of image data. Nowadays, an intense area of research is the extraction and modeling of the existing visual knowledge in image databases. The visual knowledge and image concepts are disjointed concepts, even though they seem intrinsically connected. Visual knowledge is the set of mental models composed by images of real or imaginary objects manipulated by the brain. These mental models are applied in tasks, like the extraction of semantic content of images, where the solution requires the analysis of visual information. Imagistic domains are the domains where the problem-solving process starts with a visual pattern-matching process that captures the information, which will further support the abstract inference process of interpretation. The proposal of this master thesis is the definition of alternative primitives for the visual knowledge representation, by the combination of both propositional and pictorial constructs. Differently from other approaches, the visual knowledge captured in this model is not identifiable in images, but in the mental models of experts. The capture of the visual knowledge is reached through the use of two domainindependent hybrid meta-constructs. The meta-constructs are composed by propositional and iconic representations used for communication and to express the expert’s visual knowledge. The meta-construct Pictorial Concept represents visual kinds while the metaconstruct Pictorial Attribute represents qualities of the visual kinds. The meta-constructs defined here where applied in the Sedimentary Stratigraphy domain, a sub-area of Geology, in the construction of a domain ontology with aggregated visual content. The construction of the domain ontology was done through a knowledge acquisition process. The visual knowledge was elicited from the expert, acquired from the immersion in the literature domain and was organized according to meta-properties and meta-concepts based on a foundational ontology. The resulting ontology is applied in the Sedimentary Stratigraphy domain for the description of well cores and outcrops of siliciclastic rocks. The ontology includes hierarchies of rocks, sedimentary structures and depositional environments. In total, 36 concepts were modeled and associated to 60 icons. The validation of the visual knowledge elicited was done through an empirical experiment where 21 geologists applied the unlabeled icon set to describe rock samples. The level of right associative answers between geological features and their icons was 70% for sedimentary facies and 66% for sedimentary structures. Moreover, it was identified a positive correlation between the expert’s experience and the number of right answers.

O avanço tecnológico de dispositivos capazes de capturar e armazenar volumes significativos de imagens permite o armazenamento de grandes quantidades de informações visuais. Uma área de intensa pesquisa atualmente é a extração e modelagem de conhecimento visual contido nessas bases de informações. O conceito de conhecimento visual e imagem são conceitos disjuntos, mesmo que pareçam intrinsecamente conectados. Conhecimento visual é o conjunto de modelos mentais compostos por imagens de objetos reais ou imaginárias manipuladas pelo cérebro. Esses modelos mentais são aplicados em tarefas cuja solução envolve a análise de informações visuais, como por exemplo, a extração de conteúdo semântico de imagens. Domínios imagísticos são os domínios nos quais a solução de problemas começa com um processo de casamento de padrões que capturam a informação visual e que mais tarde dará suporte ao processo abstrato da interpretação. A proposta desta dissertação é a definição de primitivas alternativas para a representação de conhecimento visual através da combinação de construtos proposicionais e pictóricos. Diferentemente de outras abordagens, o conhecimento visual capturado no modelo aqui proposto não reside nas imagens, mas na mente de especialistas. A captura do conhecimento visual é realizada através de dois metaconstrutos híbridos aplicáveis ao domínio da geologia. Os metaconstrutos são compostos de uma representação proposicional e outra icônica que são utilizadas para fins de comunicação e expressão do conhecimento visual do especialista, respectivamente. O metaconstruto Pictorial Concept representa tipos visuais enquanto que o metaconstruto Pictorial Attribute representa qualidades dos tipos visuais. Os metaconstrutos aqui definidos foram aplicados ao domínio da Estratigrafia Sedimentar, uma subárea da Geologia, na construção de uma ontologia de domínio com conteúdo visual agregado. A construção da ontologia de domínio foi realizada através de um processo de aquisição de conhecimento. O conhecimento visual foi eliciado a partir de um especialista, adquirido através da imersão na literatura do domínio e organizado de acordo com metapropriedades e metaconceitos de uma ontologia de fundamentação unificada. A ontologia é aplicada ao domínio da Estratigrafia Sedimentar para rochas siliciclásticas para a descrição de testemunhos e afloramentos. A ontologia inclui uma hierarquia de rochas, estruturas sedimentares e ambientes deposicionais. Foram modelados 36 conceitos com a adição de 60 ícones. A validação do conhecimento visual organizado foi realizada através de experimento empírico onde 21 geólogos utilizaram os ícones sem legenda para descrição de amostras de rocha. O nível de acertos das associações entre feições geológicas e ícones representam 70% para fácies e 66% para estruturas sedimentares sendo identificada uma conclusão positiva entre a experiência do geólogo e o número de acertos. / The advances in technological devices allow then to capture and store significant amounts of image data. Nowadays, an intense area of research is the extraction and modeling of the existing visual knowledge in image databases. The visual knowledge and image concepts are disjointed concepts, even though they seem intrinsically connected. Visual knowledge is the set of mental models composed by images of real or imaginary objects manipulated by the brain. These mental models are applied in tasks, like the extraction of semantic content of images, where the solution requires the analysis of visual information. Imagistic domains are the domains where the problem-solving process starts with a visual pattern-matching process that captures the information, which will further support the abstract inference process of interpretation. The proposal of this master thesis is the definition of alternative primitives for the visual knowledge representation, by the combination of both propositional and pictorial constructs. Differently from other approaches, the visual knowledge captured in this model is not identifiable in images, but in the mental models of experts. The capture of the visual knowledge is reached through the use of two domainindependent hybrid meta-constructs. The meta-constructs are composed by propositional and iconic representations used for communication and to express the expert’s visual knowledge. The meta-construct Pictorial Concept represents visual kinds while the metaconstruct Pictorial Attribute represents qualities of the visual kinds. The meta-constructs defined here where applied in the Sedimentary Stratigraphy domain, a sub-area of Geology, in the construction of a domain ontology with aggregated visual content. The construction of the domain ontology was done through a knowledge acquisition process. The visual knowledge was elicited from the expert, acquired from the immersion in the literature domain and was organized according to meta-properties and meta-concepts based on a foundational ontology. The resulting ontology is applied in the Sedimentary Stratigraphy domain for the description of well cores and outcrops of siliciclastic rocks. The ontology includes hierarchies of rocks, sedimentary structures and depositional environments. In total, 36 concepts were modeled and associated to 60 icons. The validation of the visual knowledge elicited was done through an empirical experiment where 21 geologists applied the unlabeled icon set to describe rock samples. The level of right associative answers between geological features and their icons was 70% for sedimentary facies and 66% for sedimentary structures. Moreover, it was identified a positive correlation between the expert’s experience and the number of right answers.

O avanço tecnológico de dispositivos capazes de capturar e armazenar volumes significativos de imagens permite o armazenamento de grandes quantidades de informações visuais. Uma área de intensa pesquisa atualmente é a extração e modelagem de conhecimento visual contido nessas bases de informações. O conceito de conhecimento visual e imagem são conceitos disjuntos, mesmo que pareçam intrinsecamente conectados. Conhecimento visual é o conjunto de modelos mentais compostos por imagens de objetos reais ou imaginárias manipuladas pelo cérebro. Esses modelos mentais são aplicados em tarefas cuja solução envolve a análise de informações visuais, como por exemplo, a extração de conteúdo semântico de imagens. Domínios imagísticos são os domínios nos quais a solução de problemas começa com um processo de casamento de padrões que capturam a informação visual e que mais tarde dará suporte ao processo abstrato da interpretação. A proposta desta dissertação é a definição de primitivas alternativas para a representação de conhecimento visual através da combinação de construtos proposicionais e pictóricos. Diferentemente de outras abordagens, o conhecimento visual capturado no modelo aqui proposto não reside nas imagens, mas na mente de especialistas. A captura do conhecimento visual é realizada através de dois metaconstrutos híbridos aplicáveis ao domínio da geologia. Os metaconstrutos são compostos de uma representação proposicional e outra icônica que são utilizadas para fins de comunicação e expressão do conhecimento visual do especialista, respectivamente. O metaconstruto Pictorial Concept representa tipos visuais enquanto que o metaconstruto Pictorial Attribute representa qualidades dos tipos visuais. Os metaconstrutos aqui definidos foram aplicados ao domínio da Estratigrafia Sedimentar, uma subárea da Geologia, na construção de uma ontologia de domínio com conteúdo visual agregado. A construção da ontologia de domínio foi realizada através de um processo de aquisição de conhecimento. O conhecimento visual foi eliciado a partir de um especialista, adquirido através da imersão na literatura do domínio e organizado de acordo com metapropriedades e metaconceitos de uma ontologia de fundamentação unificada. A ontologia é aplicada ao domínio da Estratigrafia Sedimentar para rochas siliciclásticas para a descrição de testemunhos e afloramentos. A ontologia inclui uma hierarquia de rochas, estruturas sedimentares e ambientes deposicionais. Foram modelados 36 conceitos com a adição de 60 ícones. A validação do conhecimento visual organizado foi realizada através de experimento empírico onde 21 geólogos utilizaram os ícones sem legenda para descrição de amostras de rocha. O nível de acertos das associações entre feições geológicas e ícones representam 70% para fácies e 66% para estruturas sedimentares sendo identificada uma conclusão positiva entre a experiência do geólogo e o número de acertos. / The advances in technological devices allow then to capture and store significant amounts of image data. Nowadays, an intense area of research is the extraction and modeling of the existing visual knowledge in image databases. The visual knowledge and image concepts are disjointed concepts, even though they seem intrinsically connected. Visual knowledge is the set of mental models composed by images of real or imaginary objects manipulated by the brain. These mental models are applied in tasks, like the extraction of semantic content of images, where the solution requires the analysis of visual information. Imagistic domains are the domains where the problem-solving process starts with a visual pattern-matching process that captures the information, which will further support the abstract inference process of interpretation. The proposal of this master thesis is the definition of alternative primitives for the visual knowledge representation, by the combination of both propositional and pictorial constructs. Differently from other approaches, the visual knowledge captured in this model is not identifiable in images, but in the mental models of experts. The capture of the visual knowledge is reached through the use of two domainindependent hybrid meta-constructs. The meta-constructs are composed by propositional and iconic representations used for communication and to express the expert’s visual knowledge. The meta-construct Pictorial Concept represents visual kinds while the metaconstruct Pictorial Attribute represents qualities of the visual kinds. The meta-constructs defined here where applied in the Sedimentary Stratigraphy domain, a sub-area of Geology, in the construction of a domain ontology with aggregated visual content. The construction of the domain ontology was done through a knowledge acquisition process. The visual knowledge was elicited from the expert, acquired from the immersion in the literature domain and was organized according to meta-properties and meta-concepts based on a foundational ontology. The resulting ontology is applied in the Sedimentary Stratigraphy domain for the description of well cores and outcrops of siliciclastic rocks. The ontology includes hierarchies of rocks, sedimentary structures and depositional environments. In total, 36 concepts were modeled and associated to 60 icons. The validation of the visual knowledge elicited was done through an empirical experiment where 21 geologists applied the unlabeled icon set to describe rock samples. The level of right associative answers between geological features and their icons was 70% for sedimentary facies and 66% for sedimentary structures. Moreover, it was identified a positive correlation between the expert’s experience and the number of right answers.

Online product reviews have become an important and influential source of information for consumers. Firms often manipulate online product reviews to influence consumer perceptions about the product, making it a research topic of urgent need for theory development and empirical investigation. In this thesis, we examine how consumers perceive and respond to the three commonly used manipulation tactics. Firstly, an exploratory pre-study via in-depth interviews with online shoppers indicates that consumers commonly have the knowledge for online review manipulations as well as for detecting them. In the first study, a survey was used to investigate the three popular manipulation tactics in terms of ethicality and deceptiveness. They rated hiding/deleting unfavorable messages as the most deceptive and unethical, followed by anonymously adding positive messages, and then offering incentives for posting favorable messages. In study 2, in a simulated field experiment, we introduce persuasion knowledge to further examine the negative influence of review manipulations on consumers’ attitudes. The results suggest that review manipulation increases suspicion of manipulations but can hardly reduce purchase intention of focal products. We also find that consumers’ persuasion knowledge enhances suspicion of manipulation, but lessens the negative impact of suspicion on purchase intention. The third study uses secondary data of a branded e-retailer and its third party website to cross-validate the effect of manipulations on product sales. The results confirm our hypotheses that review manipulation are effective in promoting sales; however, this influence would decrease over time. This research contributes to the online marketing literature by augmenting the Information Manipulation Theory and Persuasion Knowledge Model to examine the deceptive persuasion in the online context and its impact on consumer behavior. Furthermore, we also contribute to the literature of online WOM by empirically examining the influence of review manipulations on sales. Our findings provide valuable insights to practitioners and policy makers on the pitfalls of online manipulation activities and the need to ensure the healthy development of e-commerce.

The use of Native Advertising has sparked ethical concerns, due to its controversial nature inherent in its definition - a paid form of advertising that disguises persuasive communications as the editorial content of the publishing media outlet. The growing popularity of Native Advertising practices over the past decade in online news publishing has contributed towards the increasingly blurred lines between commercial and editorial content which in turn engenders feelings of deception in consumers and threatens to lower the trustworthiness of news publishers as an objective source. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to undertake theory testing guided by the tenets of the Persuasion Knowledge Model [PKM] (Friestad & Wright, 1994) to uncover insights on whether disclosure serves as an effective measure in publishers' efforts of mitigating the potential of consumer deception. In particular, this study investigated the relationships between: (1) effect of disclosure label positioning on advertising recognition; (2) mediating influence of visual attention on the aforementioned relationship; and (3) effect of advertising recognition on Inference of Manipulation [IMI] and perceptions of the online news publishers' credibility. The study used a quantitative multi-methodology research approach. An innovative Neuromarketing approach was undertaken through a psychophysiological-based analysis of visual attention to disclosure, measured as Fixation (ms/m) using eye-tracking technology, in addition to self-reported measures obtained via an online survey. In line with similar past studies, this study used convenience non-probability sampling and random assignment of participants to experimental groups, on a sample of 87 students between the ages of 20-29 years from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Findings showed no significant difference in the likelihood of advertising recognition, neither between the groups presented with a disclosure and those not, nor between the varying positions of disclosure. Additionally, advertising recognition had a positive influence on perceptions of credibility, contrary to theory and evidence from past studies (described in the Literature Review). Thus, it was concluded that disclosure and advertising recognition are necessary antecedents for critical processing and formation of judgement, but by themselves are not sufficient for perceived transparency and subsequent evaluations of the publisher's credibility. This study presents design implications for practitioners in the online news publishing industry and marketers: the perceived utility of the sponsored content, along with sponsorship transparency through disclosure, plays an important role in minimizing the negative influence of advertising recognition on perceived credibility.