In the public sector, governments and the people they serve increasingly collaborate to coproduce public services. To support the coproduction of municipal services, specifically, local governments have incorporated various digital technologies into their information systems. How do digital technologies affect community residents' engagement in coproducing municipal services?
As event-based social networks (EBSNs) such as Meetup.com and Facebook Events gain popularity in managing local events like farmers' markets and social gatherings, they create two-sided cultural niches where event organizers and participants benefit from the platform while influencing each other. Among various factors, niche overlap, an ecological feature, has been studied as a key factor that shapes the success of online communities.
As organizations and individuals provide various information to multiple systems within a region, the information becomes fragmented, making it difficult for people to access the necessary information. Individuals have limited resources to navigate all the sources and use only part of the available ones. Disability service information is further fragmented due to diverse actors, ranging from government agencies to for-profit organizations, who often provide only partial information.
Certain U.S. population groups have suffered higher rates of infection and mortality than whites during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Latinx. Public health officials blamed disparities on overcrowded housing and work in essential industries prior to the vaccine’s availability. This study (n=34) focuses on the intersectionality of social locations for undocumented Latinx immigrants living in a relatively affluent suburb and working in the construction and service sectors.
This research will develop and design new data-driven risk prediction principles and management (DDRPM) tools that anticipate and manage a variety of community risks, which fire departments are increasingly required to respond to, including medical, fire, and safety emergencies. Today, much of their work focuses on community risk reduction (CRR), a paradigm that seeks to mitigate risks before they lead to emergencies in the first place. The CRR paradigm will leverage new data-driven risk prediction and management (DDRPM) tools to predict and respond to a variety of community risks.
Delaying routine health care has been prevalent during the COIVD-19 pandemic. Macro-level data from this period reveals that U.S. patients under-utilized routine health care services such as primary care visits, preventative tests, screenings, routine optometry care, dental appointments, and visits for chronic disease management. Yet, there is a gap in research on how and why patients understand risks associated with seeking or delaying routing health care during an infectious disease pandemic.
Many cities in the United States use civic technologies like 311 systems as part of their public service systems for monitoring non-emergency civic issues. These systems have enhanced the city's monitoring capability by diversifying communication channels. However, the data created through these systems is often biased because of differences in people's use of technology (i.e., digital divide) and individuals' behavioral patterns in providing types of information to the systems.
Independent business owners often prefer informal information sources to formal ones such as library collections. Part of these preferences is rational because contextual and application-oriented information is usually available from informal sources, which are theoretically the best matches for this kind of information. This suggests that, in addition to outreach strategies, efforts to integrate informal sources of business-relevant information can improve public libraries' ability to support independent business owners' information needs.
Cultural diversity has been conceptualized and studied in diverse ways. On the one hand, cultural diversity can be conceptualized based on people’s ethnic and national backgrounds. On the other hand, cultural dimensions are defined based on individuals' behaviors and traits. Sociologists further categorize the latter depending on the degree of typicality in cultural artifacts/activities and individuals’ omnivorousness over cultural tastes.
To understand issues about information accessibility within communities, research studies have examined human, social, and technical factors by taking a sociotechnical view. While this view provides a profound understanding of how people seek, use, and access information, this approach tends to overlook the impact of the larger structures of information landscapes that constantly shape peoples access to information.