Informatics, Volume 9, Issue 3 (September 2022) – 22 articles

While the digitalization of products and services in the entertainment industry has gained momentum in the last decades, online theater streaming is a relatively new phenomenon boosted by the COVID-19 restrictions, which created new market opportunities—and demand—for theaters’ online presence. This study investigates a new online platform providing theater streaming services in Hungary from a customer-centric, technology acceptance point of view. The survey-based study is designed to examine which factors of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) model are—and were—relevant in the under-researched live performance art sector of the digital entertainment industry under the unprecedented, coercive conditions of pandemic lockdowns. The results of the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) show that habit is the most influential factor of theater webcasting adoption (before hedonic motivations and price value), suggesting that the new habits formed during the COVID-19 lockdowns might serve as a basis of a sustainable digital business model for theatres in the post-pandemic era as well. The analysis also tested for potential generational differences between cohorts of users, finding no significant ones, which suggests that, under this specific set of social, technology and market conditions, all generations react similarly and are equally relevant for widening the customer base. Keeping in mind some limitations (self-reported and cross-sectional data), these empirical results can not only enrich the scientific body of knowledge but can also serve as the basis of future marketing and communication strategies developed by partitioners. Full article

Home delivery (B2C) experienced rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially food delivery. Nonrepudiation is a problem in security and affects delivery. Blockchain technology is a new technology that addresses this issue. This paper proposes preventing nonrepudiation in home delivery through blockchain technology. We also design a data structure and smart contract for distributed application. In addition, we evaluate the performance of the proposed framework in terms of transaction fees and response times. We experimented on the blockchain emulator, stored data in RDBMS, and implemented a client with a mobile application. The data in the smart contract were directly impacted by the gas used and the response time. Primarily, the function processes the large data size and involves high transaction fees and long response times. The gas used accounts for 9061 times of data length, while the response time accounts for 2.84 times of data length. Finally, we propose a security policy for the proposed framework. Full article

Objectives: The digital transformation of the healthcare sector involves the procurement and implementation of new health technologies, which will likely be a challenge to healthcare providers who are not part of large organizations. In response to the needs of small and middle-sized health and care organizations, we have developed a process navigator to guide providers of healthcare through the processes of innovation, the procurement of mature products, and their implementation in telehealth and telecare projects. Methods: A narrative overview identified health-technology-assessment-inspired models. Conversations with national and international colleagues identified project and implementation models. The origin of the included models was identified, and relevant articles were referred to to describe the essential principles, including the nature of stakeholder involvement and the evaluation processes when appropriate. Based on the inputs, we proposed the process navigator GoTO. Results: Six health-technology-assessment-inspired models, six project models, one implementation model, and one innovation model were identified and informed the creation of the GoTO process navigator. The navigator consists of four parts: inception (eight steps); materialization (three tracks, depending on the maturity of the planned solution); implementation (five steps); and the final assessment and evaluation. Conclusion: The GoTO process navigator is an intuitive guide for innovation, procurement, and implementation in telehealth and -care. The GoTo navigator can assist providers of digital health and care services throughout the process from the initial identification of goals to the final evaluation of outcomes. Full article

Present standards guiding the corporate governance of information technology (IT) provide useful frameworks for organizations’ governing bodies to direct the effective use of information technology (IT) within their organizations. However, existing standards still fail to resolve the dilemma regarding the actual allocation of IT roles and responsibilities between governing bodies and IT management, while such an allocation represents a major challenge in many contemporary organizations. To advance on this issue, we explore IT managers’ interpretation of the allocation of IT roles and responsibilities to either the governing body or managerial levels in nine Ibero-American Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). We used the ISO/IEC 38500 and COBIT standards to define a unique set of 212 management and governance activities and responsibilities. We surveyed 30 IT managers in Higher Education Institutions from nine Ibero-American countries and identified the divergence in the allocation of IT Governance and Management tasks between respondents and expert judgments. Using regression analysis, we show that the degree of such divergence depends on organizational contingency factors such as the formalization of IT procedures, centralization, the complexity of the organization, and the size of IT departments. This is the first study in the literature conducting a thorough analysis of IT task allocation between the governing level and the management level. This study is also the first to identify four organizational factors influencing the divergence between respondents and expert opinion regarding this allocation. The findings and propositions presented in this paper have the potential to extend our understanding of the IT governance dilemma in other professional organizations similar to HEIs. Full article

This study aims to assess the impact of public value on e-government ambidexterity. Furthermore, current technology variables, public value variables, and e-government ambidexterity are incorporated into a framework for measuring e-government service performance. The partial least square structural equation modeling (SEM-PLS) approach was used in this study as the quantitative method. Four hundred twenty-five final data points were used as a sample, and all seven proposed hypotheses are accepted, have positive values, and have a significant impact. This study can be used as a guide for e-government organizers at the national and regional levels, as well as a resource for other studies examining e-government ambidexterity. Full article

An important direction of informatics is devoted to the protection of privacy of confidential information while providing answers to aggregated queries that can be used for analysis of data. Protecting privacy is especially important when aggregated queries are used to combine personal information stored in several databases that belong to different owners or come from different sources. Malicious attackers may be able to infer confidential information even from aggregated numerical values returned as answers to queries over large collections of data. Formal proofs of security guarantees are important, because they can be used for implementing practical systems protecting privacy and providing answers to aggregated queries. The investigation of formal conditions which guarantee protection of private information against inference attacks originates from a fundamental result obtained by Chin and Ozsoyoglu in 1982 for linear queries. The present paper solves similar problems for two new classes of aggregated nonlinear queries. We obtain complete descriptions of conditions, which guarantee the protection of privacy of confidential information against certain possible inference attacks, if a collection of queries of this type are answered. Rigorous formal security proofs are given which guarantee that the conditions obtained ensure the preservation of privacy of confidential data. In addition, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the protection of confidential information from special inference attacks aimed at achieving a group compromise. Full article

In recent years, the introduction of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) into several aspects of daily life has become more relevant, particularly in higher education. This phenomenon has resulted in a digital integration that involves the infrastructure of higher education institutions as well as the materials used in the teaching process. Therefore, a study was conducted to investigate the factors that determine usage intention of Virtual Learning Objects (VLOs) by college students in finance and accounting programs in the city of Medellín. This quantitative research employed 86 self-administered questionnaires that enabled us to identify a positive association between attitude toward usage, subjective norms, and the intention to employ this type of content as a learning strategy. In conclusion, models like this need to be developed to understand the acceptance of new technologies in learning processes from different perspectives, and even more so considering that most of the existing literature regarding the subject has been focused on qualitative studies. Full article

Despite the many benefits of blockchain technology in higher education, this technology is not widely adopted by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Therefore, instead of providing additional motives for adopting blockchain technology, this research tries to understand what factors discourage HEIs from merging blockchain with their procedures. The methodology used for this research is based upon qualitative research using 14 interviews with administrative and academic staff from the European Union (EU) and Canada. Our findings based on our empirical data revealed 15 key challenges to blockchain adoption by HEIs that are classified based on the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework. Theoretically, this study contributes to the body of knowledge relating to blockchain technology adoption. Practically, this research is expected to aid HEIs to assess the applicability of blockchain technology and pave the way for the widespread adoption of this technology in the educational field. Full article

Decision making is vital for the management of all organizations. For this reason, data analysis has become one of the fastest-growing technologies when it comes to generating information and knowledge about data generated by organizations. However, data generation is not limited to traditional sources. On the contrary, emerging technologies and social networks have become non-traditional sources that provide large volumes of data that can be exploited using different data analysis methods. Here, the objective is to determine the feelings of the population toward a brand, a product, or a service and to even identify the reactions of people to events and trends generated in their environment. Sentiment analysis, for organizations and social groups, has become a necessity that must be covered to identify the acceptance of an idea or its management. Therefore, this work proposes a method for the analysis of sentiment in social networks in such a way that it adapts to the needs of organizations or sectors, and the acceptance or rejection of the population can be efficiently identified from what is exposed in a social network. Full article

There are some regions where the unique type of mineral water mining is compounded by the complex structure conditions of the field. Due to the high emergency risks, the automation of this type of mineral water fields’ exploitation process is a necessity. Kislovodskoe mineral water field was chosen as the experimental object, because it has a number of features that make it barely possible to use the conventional methods of mineral water extraction. In the process of extraction, the random vector impacts the mineral water pumping systems. This is mainly due to the complex hydrogeological structure. For the experiment, the laboratory installation and mathematical model were presented by the temperature field changing, due to the similitude of the mathematical apparatus and the hydrodynamic processes behavior,. The main object of this article is the analysis of the reservoir’s temperature field behavior using a hybrid supercomputer, and the differences between the supercomputer and a conventional personal computer modeling quality and implementation costs are also given.. Full article

Measuring citizen activities in online environments is an important enterprise in fields as diverse as political science, informatics, and education. Over the past decade, a variety of scholars have proposed survey instruments for measuring digital citizenship. This study investigates the psychometric properties of one such measure, the Digital Citizenship Scale (DCS). While previous investigations of the DCS drew participants exclusively from single educational environments (college students, teachers), this study is the first with a survey population (n = 1820) that includes both students and the general public from multiple countries. Four research questions were addressed, two of which were focused on the validity of the DCS for this wider population. Our results suggest refining the 26-item five-factor DCS tool into an abbreviated 19-item four-factor instrument. The other two research questions investigated how gender, generation, and nationality affect DCS scores and the relationship between the different DCS factors. While gender was found to have a minimal effect on scores, nationality and age did have a medium effect on the online political activism factor. Technical skills by themselves appear to play little role in predicting online political engagement; the largest predictor of online political engagement was critical perspective and a willingness to use the Internet in active ways beyond simply consuming content. Full article

Stylometry has gained great popularity in digital humanities and social sciences. Many works on stylometry have recently been reported. However, there is a research gap regarding review studies in this field from a bibliometric and evolutionary perspective. Therefore, in this paper, a bibliometric analysis of publications from the Scopus database in the stylometric research field was proposed. Then, research articles published between 1968 and 2021 were collected and analyzed using the Bibliometrix R package for bibliometric analysis via the Biblioshiny web interface. Empirical results were also presented in terms of the performance analysis and the science mapping analysis. From these results, it is concluded that there has been a strong growth in stylometry research in recent years, while the USA, Poland, and the UK are the most productive countries, and this is due to many strong research partnerships. It was also concluded that the research topics of most articles, based on author keywords, focused on two broad thematic categories: (1) the main tasks in stylometry and (2) methodological approaches (statistics and machine learning methods). Full article

Informal caregivers play a fundamental role in caring for people that need assistance and provide an effective service in managing their loved ones’ health. Because of this, they have little time to attend to themselves and perform self-care practices. Some of these practices can improve mental health. By snowball sampling, we recruited 15 informal caregivers, 12 females and three males. Using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, we analyzed the impact of the reminders on a self-care scale. We used the Mindful Self-Care Scale, comparing the same population without reminders and with reminders. Results indicated that total self-care scores with reminders increased statistically significantly, T = 13, Z = −2.481, p ≤ 0.013, with a large effect size (r = 0.64). This study shows a significant self-care increase in informal caregivers after using reminders. Future development of a reminders-based approach could focus on increasing self-care and the time caregivers take for themselves, empowering them to take a more active role in meeting their own needs. Full article

The development of ontology is one important research area in the digital humanities. This study aims at creating a semantic search system for traditions common culture in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) to solve problems in semantic gaps. This paper presents the second phase of the main research. It will present how to develop ontologies for the traditions and common culture in the GMS to gain a perspicuous understanding of the traditions and common culture of those countries in the region. A theoretical concept of seven steps for ontology development was applied by using an ontology editor called Hozo Ontology Editor. The main ontology found in this study included 15 main classes: common culture, history, belief, purpose, location, ritual, activity, literature, values, place, time, principle, person, equipment, and ethnic group. Traditions common culture is a subclass of common culture classes that were found to be related to all classes in ontology. This ontology will be useful for developing a semantic search system of the traditions common culture of the GMS in the next steps of the main study. Full article

Over the last few years, a rich amount of research has been conducted on remote vital sign monitoring of the human body. Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) is a camera-based, unobtrusive technology that allows continuous monitoring of changes in vital signs and thereby helps to diagnose and treat diseases earlier in an effective manner. Recent advances in computer vision and its extensive applications have led to rPPG being in high demand. This paper specifically presents a survey on different remote photoplethysmography methods and investigates all facets of heart rate analysis. We explore the investigation of the challenges of the video-based rPPG method and extend it to the recent advancements in the literature. We discuss the gap within the literature and suggestions for future directions. Full article

It is undeniable that mobile devices have become an inseparable part of human’s daily routines due to the persistent growth of high-quality sensor devices, powerful computational resources and massive storage capacity nowadays. Similarly, the fast development of Internet of Things technology has motivated people into the research and wide applications of sensors, such as the human activity recognition system. This results in substantial existing works that have utilized wearable sensors to identify human activities with a variety of techniques. In this paper, a hybrid deep learning model that amalgamates a one-dimensional Convolutional Neural Network with a bidirectional long short-term memory (1D-CNN-BiLSTM) model is proposed for wearable sensor-based human activity recognition. The one-dimensional Convolutional Neural Network transforms the prominent information in the sensor time series data into high level representative features. Thereafter, the bidirectional long short-term memory encodes the long-range dependencies in the features by gating mechanisms. The performance evaluation reveals that the proposed 1D-CNN-BiLSTM outshines the existing methods with a recognition rate of 95.48% on the UCI-HAR dataset, 94.17% on the Motion Sense dataset and 100% on the Single Accelerometer dataset. Full article

This paper aims to assist novice gardeners in identifying plant diseases to circumvent misdiagnosing their plants and to increase general horticultural knowledge for better plant growth. In this paper, we develop a mobile plant care support system (“AgroAId”), which incorporates computer vision technology to classify a plant’s [species–disease] combination from an input plant leaf image, recognizing 39 [species-and-disease] classes. Our method comprises a comparative analysis to maximize our multi-label classification model’s performance and determine the effects of varying the convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures, transfer learning approach, and hyperparameter optimizations. We tested four lightweight, mobile-optimized CNNs—MobileNet, MobileNetV2, NasNetMobile, and EfficientNetB0—and tested four transfer learning scenarios (percentage of frozen-vs.-retrained base layers): (1) freezing all convolutional layers; (2) freezing 80% of layers; (3) freezing 50% only; and (4) retraining all layers. A total of 32 model variations are built and assessed using standard metrics (accuracy, F1-score, confusion matrices). The most lightweight, high-accuracy model is concluded to be an EfficientNetB0 model using a fully retrained base network with optimized hyperparameters, achieving 99% accuracy and demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed approach; it is integrated into our plant care support system in a TensorFlow Lite format alongside the front-end mobile application and centralized cloud database. Finally, our system also uses the collective user classification data to generate spatiotemporal analytics about regional and seasonal disease trends, making these analytics accessible to all system users to increase awareness of global agricultural trends. Full article

The digital era introduces a significant issue concerning the preservation of individuals’ privacy. Each individual has two autonomous traits, privacy concern which indicates how anxious that person is about preserving privacy, and privacy behavior which refers to the actual actions the individual takes to preserve privacy. The significant gap between these two traits is called the privacy paradox. While the existence and the extensive distribution of the privacy paradox is widely-considered in both academic and public discussion, no convincing explanation of the phenomenon has been provided. In this study we harness a new mathematical approach, “soft logic,” to better represent the reality of the privacy paradox. Soft numbers extend zero from a singularity to an infinite one-dimensional axis, thus enabling the representation of contradictory situations that exist simultaneously, i.e., a paradox. We develop a mathematical model for representing the privacy paradox with soft numbers, and demonstrate its application empirically. This new theory has the potential to address domains that mix soft human reality with robust technological reality. Full article

With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, education and learning have been compelled to go entirely online rather than using conventional offline media. As a result, remote learning adoption has exploded, neither planned nor anticipated. The challenges and benefits of such widespread adoption have gradually unfolded in front of our own eyes. Unlike other courses, science and technology (S&T) courses are more technical, involve practical lessons, and require careful planning for effective delivery via remote learning platforms. Thus, existing remote learning frameworks are too general and are not designed for S&T courses. In addition, the evolving requirements of learners’ demand revision of prior frameworks to be relevant today. In this paper, we propose a remote learning reference framework called C19MOOC for S&T courses offered at higher learning institutions. The framework will provide the essential components to be considered in the development of remote learning systems for these courses. A focus group discussion was conducted to elicit learners’ requirements and preferences for remote learning systems that offer S&T courses. The existing Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) framework was adapted to match learners’ current needs and expectations. The MOOC framework’s existing dimensions and components were redefined, and three new dimensions (Engagement, Governance, and Self-determination) and components were added. An expert review was administered to validate the C19MOOC framework. Based on our findings, it was determined that remote learning has excellent potential as an effective platform for education at higher learning institutions. Shortcomings that emerged during its immense use in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic can be addressed by leveraging the proposed framework. The C19MOOC framework will be useful for S&T education stakeholders, institutions, and system developers to identify suitable dimensions, components, and features to consider when designing remote learning systems for S&T education. Full article

This study aimed to understand the perceptions of young computing science students about women and older people with regard to their computer literacy and how this may affect the design of computer-based systems. Based on photos, participants were asked how likely they thought the person depicted would be to use desktop computers, laptops and smartphones, and how much expertise they thought they would have with each technology. Furthermore, in order to see what impact this could have on systems being developed, we asked what design aspects would be important for the depicted person and whether they thought an adapted technology would be required. This study is based on an existing questionnaire, which was translated into German and extended to explore what impact this may have on system design. The results draw on 200 questionnaires from students in the first year of their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) studies at an Austrian university of applied sciences. Quantitative methods were used to determine if the perceptions varied significantly based on the age and gender of the people depicted. Qualitative analysis was used to evaluate the design aspects mentioned. The results show that there are biases against both older people and women with respect to their perceived expertise with computers. This is also reflected in the design aspects thought to be important for the different cohorts. This is crucial as future systems will be designed by the participants, and these biases may influence whether future systems meet the needs and wishes of all groups or increase the digital divide. Full article

With concepts such as immersion and presence, known as hedonistic qualities of importance in the virtual reality (VR) experience, the question arises whether the more pragmatic heuristics are effective in the evaluation of an artifact. However, despite the importance of the heuristics for artifact evaluations, the available studies do not provide a rigorous review of these heuristics and their efficiency. Thus, this review aims to look at how heuristics have been applied in various virtual learning environments (VLEs) that involve virtual reality learning activities, either for use in heuristic evaluations or as design principles. In addition, it examines how these heuristics support the evaluation of a more hedonistic quality, such as presence, and lastly, the aim is to gauge the estimated efficiency of heuristics as an evaluation method. This article is a systematic review of research investigating using heuristics in a virtual reality learning context. The review includes articles published from January 2017 to February 2022, and from the screened records, twelve articles were analyzed in full-text form. This review shows the versatility of heuristics and their applications as well as the key concepts that are vital to the user’s experience in a virtual reality learning context. This review indicates that heuristic evaluation is a valuable tool, as it provides a clear summary of what needs to be handled in the next iteration of the application. Full article

This study aims to describe and analyze the paths of social media website users’ interaction with the content of government accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The objectives of the study are to describe the roles of government accounts as a tool to support the concept of health communication among users of social media websites and analyze the targeted and untargeted roles that have emerged in this context, describe the roles of government accounts as a tool of government communication and analyze how government institutions employed them during the COVID-19 pandemic, and describe the roles of social media websites as a tool to address the problems and challenges created by the social spacing procedures and solutions provided by these websites to deal with these challenges. This study surveys a sample of previous studies conducted on the roles of government accounts on social media websites during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tools of this study are both analytical and comparative as they analyze and compare the results of previous studies on the interaction paths of internet users. The results indicate that social media websites have been considered a pivotal tool for building a renewable and interactive system. This coincides with developments in the communication environment in which the individual is present within the social pattern, and its depth of impact has been demonstrated, particularly after the repercussions of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Full article