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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Impact Of Medical Device Usability And Accessibility Information On Purchasing Decisions Of People Without Disabilities, Maysam M. Ardehali Dec 2023

The Impact Of Medical Device Usability And Accessibility Information On Purchasing Decisions Of People Without Disabilities, Maysam M. Ardehali

Theses and Dissertations

The disparity between people with and without disabilities in timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment is exacerbated by inaccessible medical devices. The industry appears reluctant to address the shortcomings or provide usability and accessibility information to enhance the purchasing decisions of people with disabilities. This reluctance is mainly caused by the lack of market motivation based on perceptions of market size and the profitability of investments in accessibility evaluation and improvement. This study aims to challenge this notion by demonstrating that usability and accessibility information do not solely benefit what may be considered a “niche market,” and the purchasing decisions of …

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Online News Portrayal During The Covid-19 Health Crisis And Journalism's Role In Misinformation In The U.S., Michou Ducilon Oct 2023

Online News Portrayal During The Covid-19 Health Crisis And Journalism's Role In Misinformation In The U.S., Michou Ducilon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a wealth of new information regarding the virus's origin and treatment. Regrettably, the vast amount of online information has resulted in the proliferation of misinformation, as the World Health Organization reported. To investigate whether journalists may have contributed to this problem, a qualitative analysis was conducted on 15 news articles from top-tier media outlets. Using NVivo software, the articles were analyzed to identify linguistic words and visuals that fell into coding categories based on Behrendt's (2008) contextual analysis for evaluating text. Each article was then coded again to identify common themes. During this process, new …

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Digital Equity: Difficulties Of Implementing The 1:1 Computing Initiative In Low-Income Areas, Demetric D. Williams May 2022

Digital Equity: Difficulties Of Implementing The 1:1 Computing Initiative In Low-Income Areas, Demetric D. Williams

Dissertations

Successful One-to-One Computing Initiative implementation requires educators to communicate and collaborate effectively with everyone in the learning community. However, other factors such as teacher’s professional development, student’s perception, and parent’s perception often affect the implementation of the One-to-One Computing Initiative. School districts, which serve low-income areas in Mississippi, have difficulties ensuring students and communities have access to the information technology they need to participate outside the school setting. The concept is often called digital equity. However, when officials do not address the capacity, there is a vital threat to the participants’ civic, cultural, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential …

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Great Power Politics: The United States’ War On Disinformation With Consideration To Russian And Chinese Offensive Efforts, Jordan Venglass Jan 2021

Great Power Politics: The United States’ War On Disinformation With Consideration To Russian And Chinese Offensive Efforts, Jordan Venglass

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the growing national security threat posed by Russia and China’s willingness to exercise 21st century information warfare techniques against the United States and its areas of strategic interest. This study will describe the composition of these state’s foreign disinformation entities while providing several case studies that display their advanced capabilities and the direct effects that each poses on the general public both domestically and internationally. To best provide unbiased reporting and accuracy in each country’s analysis, this study will rely on the diversified use of government reports, legal documents, academic journals, and …

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Análisis De La Gestión Documental En Cinco 5 Pymes Del Sector Textil Y Confección De La Ciudad De Bogotá, Hector Daniel Vargas Hurtado Jan 2020

Análisis De La Gestión Documental En Cinco 5 Pymes Del Sector Textil Y Confección De La Ciudad De Bogotá, Hector Daniel Vargas Hurtado

Sistemas de Información, Bibliotecología y Archivística

Las Pymes o pequeñas y medianas empresas, son entidades independientes con una alta incidencia en el comercio, las cuales se han quedado excluidas del mercado industrial por las grandes inversiones necesarias y por las limitaciones que impone la legislación en cuanto al volumen de negocio y de personal y por el hecho de que, en la realidad, estas nunca podrán superar las ventas anuales o la cantidad de personal de las medianas y grandes empresas. Para el caso de Colombia, las pymes se clasifican bajo la ley 590, en microempresas y pequeñas y medianas empresas, y se consideran las responsables …

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Antitrust In Times Of Information Technology: An Analysis Of Big Tech Monopoly Cases, Shamayeta Rahman Jan 2020

Antitrust In Times Of Information Technology: An Analysis Of Big Tech Monopoly Cases, Shamayeta Rahman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The information technology industry is one of the most rapidly growing yet concentrated markets existing today. Big Tech monopolies and their increasingly anticompetitive behavior posits risks for competition, technological innovation and consumer welfare. This ranges from price discrimination, limiting consumer choices to the unethical use of data. The particular nature of information technology, with its network effects and negligible marginal costs, incentivizes and facilitates predatory market practices making antitrust analysis in this industry extremely complex. Certain schools of antitrust thought are more sensitive (namely the post-Chicago school) to these implications than others, though antitrust application is still lacking in both …

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Historia De Las Ideas Económicas En Joseph Stiglitz Y Gregory Mankiw, Karla Margarita Medina Rangel, Jose Fernando Ortegón Acevedo Jan 2020

Historia De Las Ideas Económicas En Joseph Stiglitz Y Gregory Mankiw, Karla Margarita Medina Rangel, Jose Fernando Ortegón Acevedo

Economía

En este trabajo se analizan las ideas económicas de Joseph Stiglitz y Gregory Mankiw a través de un análisis de contenido hecho a una selección de sus obras, utilizando las categorías de análisis de precio, crecimiento e información. El análisis utiliza los aportes hechos al campo de la Historia de las Ideas por los historiadores Quentin Skinner y Reinhart Koselleck acerca del texto y el contexto, la intención al hacer una obra y el condicionamiento entre lenguaje e historia, que permiten construir una breve contextualización histórica del momento en que se dan los debates académicos en que se dan las …

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Climate Change Information's Impact On Death-Thought Accessibility And Global Climate Change Belief, Troy Class Franklin Jan 2020

Climate Change Information's Impact On Death-Thought Accessibility And Global Climate Change Belief, Troy Class Franklin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Global climate change is perhaps the greatest current existential threat to life on this planet. Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus for the existence of human-made global climate change, climate change skepticism continues to be a significant obstacle. The purpose of this experimental online study was to address research questions concerning the effect of climate change information on death-thought accessibility (DTA) and belief in global climate change and to investigate whether a relationship exists between DTA and belief certainty in global climate change. Terror management theory was the theoretical foundation for the study. The study sample consisted of 104 participants randomly …

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Globalization And The Diffusion Of Military Capabilities, Eddie Stokes Dec 2019

Globalization And The Diffusion Of Military Capabilities, Eddie Stokes

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

I analyze the effects of economic and informational globalization on the diffusion of military capabilities in the 20th and 21st centuries. To test these relationships, I use the KOF Swiss Economic Institute’s data on economic and informational globalization and the Correlates of War data on National Material Capabilities for all states of the international system from 1970 to 2011. Using an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression of all states with standard errors clustered at the state-level, I find that economic globalization negatively correlates with increases in military capabilities; while informational globalization positively correlates with increases in military capabilities. These findings …

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Signals In The Black Stack / Geometyr Design Manual, Jason T. Scaglione Sep 2019

Signals In The Black Stack / Geometyr Design Manual, Jason T. Scaglione

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The following white paper provides a critical accompaniment to my capstone project: the GEOMEtyr Design Manual. GEOMEtyr is a virtual reality to be made accessible as a mobile and web platform for the visualization of certain systemic elements of a utopic world that parallels our own planet’s geographies, polities, and climates. As such, the GEOMEtyr virtualization is designed to derive utopian space from the informational structures of our own world. The operations by which this may be accomplished are broadly described within the accompanying GEOMEtyr manual. The white paper, Signals in the Black Stack, elaborates vital world-building characteristics of informational …

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The Power Of Protest Messages: An Information Model On Protest Participation In China}, Li Shao May 2019

The Power Of Protest Messages: An Information Model On Protest Participation In China}, Li Shao

Dissertations - ALL

This project explores how protest messages affect audiences' decision to join policy oriented protests in an authoritarian context. By proposing an information model, I argue that citizens' participation is affected by the behaviors of the government and the protesters included in the protest message. Such effects are moderated by (1) the partially free media environment that selectively displays certain behaviors and hides the others; and (2) individuals' personal attributes that influences their interpretation of the messages. I used a survey experiment and a comparative text analysis of social media posts and news articles to test the information model. I found …

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The Information Practices Of New Kadampa Buddhists: From "Dharma Of Scripture" To "Dharma Of Insight", Roger Chabot Apr 2019

The Information Practices Of New Kadampa Buddhists: From "Dharma Of Scripture" To "Dharma Of Insight", Roger Chabot

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research examining spiritual information behaviours has been largely dominated by studies of Christian clergy using information in work tasks to fulfill work roles. Missing are studies of everyday individuals and the spiritual information practices they engage in as part of their everyday lives. Also lacking are studies which feature non-Western religious traditions. This dissertation fills this gap with a study of the everyday life information practices of western Buddhists from the New Kadampa Tradition. The study aimed to inventory their spiritual information practices, examine existential information needs, understand Buddhist spiritual realizations as an outcome of information use, and explore …

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Knowledge Transfer Strategy Implementation In Contract Organizations, Delano Clyde Hudson Jan 2019

Knowledge Transfer Strategy Implementation In Contract Organizations, Delano Clyde Hudson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite economic perils of government shutdowns, foreclosures, bankruptcies, and employee layoffs, some contract leaders consistently fail to implement knowledge transfer strategies that could improve production and profitability and maintain operational readiness when employees transition in and out of the organization. The conceptual framework for this descriptive research study was Nonaka and Takeuchi's socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization model for knowledge creation. A purposive sample of 20 leaders from 2 contract organizations within the south central United States with at least 10 years of experience in contracting were interviewed. Member checking was used for reliability of the synthesized interviews, and triangulation …

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The Patterns And Prosecutions Of Media Leakers, Julia M. Lipkins Sep 2018

The Patterns And Prosecutions Of Media Leakers, Julia M. Lipkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the cases of government employees who are responsible for the disclosure of confidential information to the press, known as media leakers. I claim that the government and media leaker engage in a series of patterned responses, which leads to both the disclosure of information, and prosecution of the leaker. More specifically, I demonstrate how the government’s executive branch manages a game of leaks, in which ‘illegitimate’ leakers are separated from elite officials who also leak, but are often spared from prosecution because they are considered ‘legitimate’ players of the game. Although the boundaries surrounding ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ …

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Supporting Dynamic And Distributed Decision Making In Acute Care Environments: Insights From A Cognitive Ethnography, Anthony Naimi Mar 2018

Supporting Dynamic And Distributed Decision Making In Acute Care Environments: Insights From A Cognitive Ethnography, Anthony Naimi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The way that medical decisions are carried out in hospital environments has undergone radical changes in recent years, in part as a result of the changing landscape of care. To make decisions, physicians are expected to keep abreast of a growing and changing body of medical and patient knowledge, collaborate more with clinical colleagues, and utilize more technologies to inform care than ever before. This dissertation reports on a five month cognitive ethnography in an ICU in Ontario Canada, and utilizes distributed cognition to understand the challenges that physicians face in making decision in modern acute care environments. It also …

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Characterizing Health Behavior Information: Developing A Surveillance Text Mining Framework Using Twitter For Diet, Diabetes, Exercise, And Obesity, George Shaw Jr. Jan 2018

Characterizing Health Behavior Information: Developing A Surveillance Text Mining Framework Using Twitter For Diet, Diabetes, Exercise, And Obesity, George Shaw Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies have documented the relationship that exists among diabetes, diet, exercise, and obesity. Obesity increases people’s risk of developing heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Exercise and proper dieting are modifiable lifestyle behaviors that can help with reducing people’s overall weight and risk to various chronic conditions like diabetes. A national survey conducted by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) is the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). Twitter provides researchers with a new opportunity and alternative data source to collect information regarding health behaviors using real-time data. Previous studies have demonstrated Twitter’s ability to monitor …

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Overcoming The Adverse Impact Of Internal Subculture Communications Within Organizations, Terrence Lee Farrier Jan 2017

Overcoming The Adverse Impact Of Internal Subculture Communications Within Organizations, Terrence Lee Farrier

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The need for clear and organizationally effective communications is necessary to maintain sustainability as competition increases. Current research has not addressed problems associated with senior managers' clarity and intent and the misinterpretation by midlevel managers of that intent, causing division managers to misinterpret the company plans. Unresolved miscommunications may lead to destructive subculture development. This mixed methods design focused on how to minimize the confusion that manifests between senior and midlevel management within diverse and decentralized decision support structures. The secondary purpose was to advocate for the identification of divisional misalignment and provide information for a tool to help senior …

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Statistics-Bierce Library Study, Tyler J. Hushour Jan 2017

Statistics-Bierce Library Study, Tyler J. Hushour

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This is a report from two surveys that I created and administered to students and faculty at Bierce library who came to the Circulation Desk or the Tech Desk, as well as some of my other findings when periodically looking around the library to see where students like to study or hang-out. There was a written survey given at the Circulation Desk, and a different survey given at the Tech Check-Out Desk. The project is for Melanie Smith-Farrell, the head of Access Services, and is based on a similar study Ian McCullough did in the science library. While this is …

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Behavioral Determinants Of Biofortified Food Acceptance: The Case Of Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato In Ghana, Chinonso E. Etumnu May 2016

Behavioral Determinants Of Biofortified Food Acceptance: The Case Of Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato In Ghana, Chinonso E. Etumnu

Master's Theses

Biofortified foods are being introduced in sub-Saharan Africa as an important strategy to help address micronutrient malnutrition. However, there has been little research on factors that could play decisive roles in their successful introduction. This paper investigates the determinants of consumer acceptance of biofortified orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) using data from a choice experiment conducted in Ghana. I find that OFSP is preferred to traditional white-fleshed and yellow-fleshed sweet potatoes as indicated by consumers' marginal willingness to pay for the three varieties. I also find that respondents' socio-economic characteristics do not have a significant effect on consumer acceptance of OFSP. …

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An Analysis Of Canine Processing Of Stimulus Compounds Varying In Light And Sound Intensity, Katherine O. Compitus May 2016

An Analysis Of Canine Processing Of Stimulus Compounds Varying In Light And Sound Intensity, Katherine O. Compitus

Theses and Dissertations

A dog was trained to respond deferentially to two light-sound compounds. The dog was then tested with combinations of additional light and sound intensities. The dog appeared to use the information provided by both stimulus dimensions. This research is relevant to the understanding of information processing, specifically categorization and generalization.

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A Black Art: Ontology, Data, And The Tower Of Babel Problem, Andrew J. Iliadis Apr 2016

A Black Art: Ontology, Data, And The Tower Of Babel Problem, Andrew J. Iliadis

Open Access Dissertations

Computational ontologies are a new type of emerging scientific media (Smith, 2016) that process large quantities of heterogeneous data about portions of reality. Applied computational ontologies are used for semantically integrating (Heiler, 1995; Pileggi & Fernandez-Llatas, 2012) divergent data to represent reality and in so doing applied computational ontologies alter conceptions of materiality and produce new realities based on levels of informational granularity and abstraction (Floridi, 2011), resulting in a new type of informational ontology (Iliadis, 2013) the critical analysis of which requires new methods and frameworks. Currently, there is a lack of literature addressing the theoretical, social, and critical …

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The Decision-Making Processes Of Nontraditional Or For Sale By Owner (Fsbo) Home Sellers Engaged In The Listing And Sale Of Their Homes, Valentin Demarco Jr. Jan 2016

The Decision-Making Processes Of Nontraditional Or For Sale By Owner (Fsbo) Home Sellers Engaged In The Listing And Sale Of Their Homes, Valentin Demarco Jr.

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In spite of promises that the Internet would allow people to buy and sell their homes without intermediaries, real-estate agents still control approximately 90% of the transactions made in the 2.5-trillion-dollar residential real-estate industry. Existing literature has yet to provide conclusive arguments as to why the expected disintermediation has not occurred. Tentative arguments include claims that policy is biased in favor of agents, or that agents have a broader social network than their customers which helps them sell faster and for a better price. Most studies make the assumption that agents matter. They analyze the real-estate market from the perspective …

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The Role Of Sharing And Information Type In Children's Categorization Of Privileged And Conventional Information, Helana Girgis Dec 2015

The Role Of Sharing And Information Type In Children's Categorization Of Privileged And Conventional Information, Helana Girgis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Categorization is an essential part of our daily lives and an integral part of humans’ ability to function and interact within society. There are large bodies of research that document children’s categorization in domains such as natural kinds, artifacts and human kinds. One domain that has not been investigated is children’s ability to categorize different types of information; specifically conventional information, shareable to others with no restrictions, and privileged information, shareable to only a few. Study 1 investigated 4- and 5-year-olds and adults’ ability to categorize conventional and privileged information. All participants correctly categorized both types of information equally well …

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Contentious Information: Accounts Of Knowledge Production, Circulation And Consumption In Transitional Egypt, Ahmad Kamal Apr 2015

Contentious Information: Accounts Of Knowledge Production, Circulation And Consumption In Transitional Egypt, Ahmad Kamal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While the 2011 Egyptian Uprising renewed attention to revolutionary news platforms such as Al-Jazeera and Facebook, citizens continued to be understudied as active consumers of information. Yet citizens’ perceptions of their informational milieu and how they responded in consuming, processing, and interpreting facts offer crucial insight into the turbulent transition that followed the initial uprising. This study analyzes Egyptian citizens’ accounts of their information environment and practices amid socio-political change. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 politically-engaged citizens from various political and professional backgrounds. Participants were asked to discuss the state of public discourse, the institutions responsible for the circulation …

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Minorities' Perception Of The Comprehensive Emergency Management Model Of Distributing Of Information, Lawrence Davis Jan 2015

Minorities' Perception Of The Comprehensive Emergency Management Model Of Distributing Of Information, Lawrence Davis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Failure to receive critical and timely information from emergency management professionals (EMPs) may lead to the loss of life during disasters and emergencies. Recent research and government reports have indicated that there may be communication failures between EMPs and minority community members, though little is known about how minority communities perceive EMP communication efforts. The central research questions and purpose of this study were designed to explore the experiences of minority community members in receiving and interpreting disaster-related communications from EMPs. Data for this phenomenological study were acquired through-in-depth interviews with 13 African Americans (7 males and 6 females) located …

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Essays On Corruption, Chandan Kumar Jha Jan 2015

Essays On Corruption, Chandan Kumar Jha

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Corruption is a global concern and requires attention because of its detrimental effects on economic growth and development. This dissertation includes three different essays that identify some of the instruments that can be used to fight corruption. The first essay investigates whether women's presence in economic and political arenas can have a significant impact on corruption. It finds evidence that while women's presence in parliament does reduce corruption other measures of female participation in economic activities are shown to have no effect. The second essay shows that internet and Facebook have an adverse effect on corruption. Finally, in a theoretical …

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The Impact Of Black Political Representation On The Racial Attitudes, Policy Preferences, And Vote Choice Of Whites In Minority Majority Congressional Districts, Emmitt Y. Riley Jan 2014

The Impact Of Black Political Representation On The Racial Attitudes, Policy Preferences, And Vote Choice Of Whites In Minority Majority Congressional Districts, Emmitt Y. Riley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scholars examining black political representation have focused on the degree to which African American politicians can impact the everyday living conditions of African Americans. Despite years of African American political representation within the United States House of Representatives, political scientists have devoted very little scholarship to examining how whites react to African American leadership. Given that African Americans remain under represented in government and current legal challenges threaten the future of minority majority districts, it is important to gain better insight into how black representation might impact the white community. Prior studies that do examine how whites react to African …

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How Conventions Bump: An Individual-Level Investigation, Joseph Cera Aug 2013

How Conventions Bump: An Individual-Level Investigation, Joseph Cera

Theses and Dissertations

Presidential nominating conventions sometimes trigger shifts in aggregate levels of candidate support large enough to affect election outcomes. While we are able to predict the probable impact of conventions with some degree of accuracy, we do not yet fully understand how these large-scale campaign events produce the changes we observe. Current scholarship on the impact of conventions on opinion is almost exclusively limited to aggregate-level analysis. In this study, I focus on individual-level analysis to demonstrate how self-exposure to different sources of information during conventions can produce overlapping yet distinct impacts on candidate support that are not always observable at …

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International Relations Reflected Through The Camera Lens The West's Representation Of The Third World., Jihan Joseph Jan 2013

International Relations Reflected Through The Camera Lens The West's Representation Of The Third World., Jihan Joseph

Dissertations and Theses

In the pursuit of studying international relations often the subject of culture is left out of the conversation. This thesis focuses on the unlikely subject of film to discuss the importance of culture in international relations. It analyzes at Western film's portrayal of the developing world and explores the connection of film and international relations.

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A Study On The Effects Of Tertiary Education On Open Source Information Gathering Skills, Sara T.K. Cunow Jan 2013

A Study On The Effects Of Tertiary Education On Open Source Information Gathering Skills, Sara T.K. Cunow

Theses : Honours

Since the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW), a large amount of information has become available and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Where in the past, the art of the intelligence profession was finding scarce information, currently information gathering is more focused on sorting relevant information from the available abundance. The purpose of the current study was to gain a better understanding of how information is gathered on the Web by potential intelligence analysts. Although the WWW is used by many people to search for information daily, relatively little research exists on how this source should be …

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