Browsing by Author "Lai, Chih-Hui"

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A study of emergent organizing and technological affordances after a natural disaster
(2017-01-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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交大名義發表
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National Chiao Tung University
Purpose - Drawing on the model of technology-in-practice and the literature on bona fide approaches and technological affordances, the purpose of this paper is to argue that collectives involved in emergency response may exhibit similar and different usage patterns for technology due to the combined influence of the temporal development of the response actions and the existing and newly enacted organizational, social, and technological structures. Design/methodology/approach - To enrich the argument about the inter-related influence on response organizations' use of technology across phases of the disaster response, this research uses a multi-method and longitudinal case study of citizen-based response organizations after Hurricane Sandy. Findings - Findings show that technologies were used similarly by response organizations immediately after the hurricane, whereas the later use of technologies exhibited variations. Moreover, Twitter was used consistently for diverse purposes across the phases of the disaster response, whereas Facebook usage among organizations first diverged and then converged two months after the hurricane. The organizations' different patterns of social media use also reflected the construction and reconstruction of resource networks for relief operations over time. Research limitations/implications - This study integrates multiple theoretical frameworks in explaining the processes and outcomes of technology use for collectives in emergency response, which presents an example of bridging and enriching the theoretical constructs from the areas of technology adaptation and emergency management. Practical implications - Findings of this study provide practical knowledge about the mechanisms of integrating multiple information systems into the building of resilient social systems for emergency response. Social implications - Findings of this study enrich social understanding about how the use of technologies for collective activity in emergency situations can go beyond one-time events and lay the foundation for long-term resilient emergency management. Originality/value - The originality of this study lies in its mixed-method and longitudinal design, which allows for the examination of the timing, circumstances, and outcomes of citizen-based response organizations' technology use.
Are We Moving Towards Convergence or Divergence? Mapping the Intellectual Structure and Roots of Online Social Network Research 1997-2017
(2020-01-01)
Fu, Jiawei Sophia
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Lai, Chih-Hui
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
Online social networks (OSNs), comprised of varying types of relations among actors that interact through social technologies, are widespread in today's media environment. However, questions remain whether we are moving towards convergence within the sub-disciplines of communication and with other disciplines in OSN research. This article pursues two interrelated goals. First, it performs a bibliometric analysis of existing scholarship on OSNs in the past 20 years, highlighting both the convergence and divergence of inquiry on OSNs in computer-mediated communication (CMC) research. Second, based on the results of the bibliometric analysis, it articulates an agenda for future CMC research. Specifically, we advocate for a social network approach that will bridge various theoretical frameworks and disciplinary/sub-disciplinary boundaries, for employing the communication network taxonomy, for greater effort to integrate traditional and computational approaches within and beyond social network analysis, and for addressing a greater diversity of institutional contexts.
Connecting the dots: A longitudinal observation of relief organizations' representational networks on social media
(2017-09-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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She, Bing
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Tao, Chen-Chao
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
In response to the call in the public relations research to examine organizations' relationship building beyond dyadic organization-public ties, this study employs a multidimensional network approach to understand relief organizations' relationship building through different features of social media. Unlike the organizations studied in the existing public relations research, relief organizations often incorporate emergency or disaster response as part of their mission operations. Specifically, this study focuses on the organizations involved in the response actions after Typhoon Haiyan. Analysis of 66 relief organizations' network data on Twitter and Facebook shows that organizations' multiple types of relationships in the form of interorganizational representational networks constructed through different features of social media are closely linked during and immediately after Typhoon Haiyan. However, organizations' positional centrality stays persistent across these networks over time, which suggests both constraints and opportunities for organizations to build relational advantages through distinct features of social media. Findings of this study show the usefulness of a multidimensional network approach in revealing the hidden patterns behind organizations' communication behavior on social media. In doing so, this study offers more comprehensive explanations for organizations' relationship building and relational outcomes through social media use. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Digital disparities and vulnerability: mobile phone use, information behaviour, and disaster preparedness in Southeast Asia
(2018-10-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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Chib, Arul
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Ling, Rich
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
This paper proposes an ecological view to investigate how disparities in mobile technology use reflect vulnerabilities in communities vis-a-vis disaster preparedness. Data (n=1,603) were collected through a multi-country survey conducted equally in rural and urban areas of Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, where mobile technology has become a dominant and ubiquitous communication and information medium. The findings show that smartphone users' routinised use of mobile technology and their risk perception are significantly associated with disaster preparedness behaviour indirectly through disaster-related information sharing. In addition to disaster-specific social support, smartphone users' disaster-related information repertoires are another strong influencing factor. In contrast, non-smartphone users are likely to rely solely on receipt of disaster-specific social support as the motivator of disaster preparedness. The results also reveal demographic and rural-urban differences in disaster information behaviour and preparedness. Given the increasing shift from basic mobile phone models to smartphones, the theoretical and policy-oriented implications of digital disparities and vulnerability are discussed.
From information behaviors to disaster preparedness: Navigating individuals' general and disaster curation in US, China, and Australia
(2018-11-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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Tang, Tang
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
Curation is the process where one finds ways to search, filter, interpret, and share the message content. Such process is dynamically enacted within ones mediated and non-mediated social operating systems. Integrating and extending the frameworks of curation, this study examines the foundation, processes, and effects of personal curation in the context of disaster management. Results based on a multi-country survey in the United States, China, and Australia showed that the use of social media and mobile devices laid an important foundation of individuals' personal curation, which include consumptive (information gathering) and productive (information sharing) curation. Moreover, personal curation in normal times consistently predicted personal curation practiced during disasters, which in turn facilitated disaster preparedness. The conceptual model of personal curation was confirmed in all three countries in spite of variations in cultural and disaster situations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in ways to advance research on contemporary curation and adaptive behaviors.
Humanitarian Relief and Development Organizations' Stakeholder Targeting Communication on Social Media and Beyond
(1970-01-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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Fu, Jiawei Sophia
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
Nonprofit scholars have long considered stakeholder targeting communication (STC), an important mechanism of organizational accountability to meet stakeholders' diverse interests and needs. However, research has yet to systematically examine the antecedents and outcomes of organizations' STC to advance a more comprehensive understanding of how organizations manage accountability demands in the digital era. To address this gap, this study proposes a conceptual framework to explain how organizations' STC on social media (SM) is shaped by STC via non-SM channels and their external communication capacity and the resulting STC outcomes in the SM domain. Survey data from 156 humanitarian relief and development organizations on four continents showed that using non-SM channels to engage various groups of stakeholders helped build organizations' external communication capacity, which in turn helped improve their engagement in STC on SM. STC on SM further contributed to organizations' success in information dissemination, community building, and action mobilization outcomes on SM.
Modeling Resource Network Relationships Between Response Organizations and Affected Neighborhoods After a Technological Disaster
(2017-10-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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Tao, Chen-Chao
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Cheng, Yu-Chung
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
Disaster usually provides a good opportunity to observe the convergence of voluntary organized response efforts. However, the extent to which response organizations and affected neighborhoods go through the relief process similarly or differently is surprisingly less studied. Integrating the framework of community ecology and the concept of community resilience, this study examines the evolutionary process of an emergent disaster response community that consists of the populations of response organizations and affected neighborhoods. Using a technological disaster that occurred in Taiwan in July 2014 as the research context, this study shows that response organizations' resource provision network and affected neighborhoods' resource receipt network exhibited similar structural tendencies over the phases of disaster response and rebuilding. The process of mutual resource mobilization was also observed as response organizations mobilized and provided resources to affected neighborhoods at the same time. Moreover, while affected neighborhoods tended to maintain their resource relationships consistently over time, the changing structural patterns of their resource network reflected individual engagement in resuming normality after the incident. Theoretical and practical implications for emergent post-disaster social and voluntary behavior are discussed through the lens of community ecology and community resilience.
Motivations, Usage, and Perceived Social Networks Within and Beyond Social Media
(2019-05-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
This study addresses the questions of how individuals use social media (SM) to build awareness of social networks (network perceptions) within and beyond SM, and how motivations and SM behaviors differentiate individuals' ability to build such awareness. The analysis of the 2017 Taiwan Communication Survey (TCS) identifies three types of users based on their motivations for SM use: omnivores, time-killers, and social-groomers, who are differentiated from one another in terms of different types of SM behaviors as well as perceived network structures on SM and beyond. For example, omnivores, who use SM for diverse purposes, tend to engage in SM browsing and reacting more than time-killers, who use SM to pass time. Compared to time-killers, social-groomers, those who use SM for social purposes, are more likely to perceive that they have a larger SM response network, a response network containing close ties, and that they have maintained diverse social relationships in the form of mixed-media relationships (MMRs). Moreover, SM posting is associated with the size and the diverse composition of the perceived response network on SM. More frequent SM posting is also associated with perceptions of having diverse social contacts maintained through MMRs, but such association depends on the size and composition of the perceived SM response network.
Organizations' Dialogic Social Media Use and Stakeholder Engagement: Stakeholder Targeting and Message Framing
(2020-01-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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Fu, Jiawei Sophia
;
交大名義發表
;
National Chiao Tung University
Guided by the dialogic communication framework, stakeholder theory, and research on implicit framing, this study examines how stakeholder engagement reflects organizations' dialogic social media use in the form of stakeholder targeting and message framing. Analysis of survey data from 156 humanitarian organizations and semantic network analysis of their messages on Facebook and Twitter reveal that organizations with higher levels of dialogic social media use target relatively distinctive stakeholders. More dialogic organizations explore more diverse concepts in their posts, but the themes of discussion on Twitter and Facebook both diverge and converge regardless of levels of dialogic social media use. Moreover, the semantic differences among the organizations in the low- and high-dialogic groups are more salient on Twitter than on Facebook. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are drawn from the findings.
Seeking and Sharing Information about Transboundary Air Pollution in Singapore: Effects of Own and Others' Information Insufficiency
(1970-01-01)
Kim, Hye Kyung
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Lai, Chih-Hui
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
The study examines differential motivational factors underlying risk information seeking and sharing in the context of transboundary air pollution ("haze") in Singapore. In particular, it addresses specific conditions under which information insufficiency influences information seeking and sharing. The analysis of an online survey with 1,021 Singaporeans showed that one's perceived knowledge about haze was a consistent predictor of both information seeking and sharing intention. Information seeking was attitudinally driven, whereas information sharing was primarily driven by the perceived capacity of sharing information. Others' information insufficiency promoted information sharing only when individuals considered themselves sufficiently efficacious at and had positive attitudes toward information sharing. Addressing perceived others' knowledge, beyond one's own, this study provides new theoretical insights into the factors that may promote risk information seeking and sharing.
Tweeting about emergency: A semantic network analysis of government organizations' social media messaging during Hurricane Harvey
(2018-12-01)
Liu, Wenlin
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Lai, Chih-Hui
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Xu, Weiai (Wayne)
While social media like Twitter have been increasingly adopted by public-sector organizations, it remains less explored as to how government and emergency management (EM) organizations use these platforms to communicate with the public in response to emerging natural disasters. Extending the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to the realm of social media, this study examines the emerging semantic networks from 67 government and EM organizations' official tweets during Hurricane Harvey over a three-week period. It identifies how multiple crisis response strategies-including instructing information, adjusting information, and bolstering-are constituted of different issues, actions, and organizational actors before, during, and immediately after the disaster event. Results suggest that government agencies use the strategy of instructing information predominantly before and during the disaster, whereas adjusting information and bolstering strategies are utilized more during post-disaster recovery. The study offers theoretical and practical implications of using a semantic network approach to studying organizational crisis responses.
Understanding activated network resilience: A comparative analysis of co-located and co-cluster disaster response networks
(2019-01-01)
Lai, Chih-Hui
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Hsu, Ying-Chia
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傳播與科技學系
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Department of Communication and Technology
Building on the resilience literature, this study analyzes the response networks that were activated for four disasters during 2015-2016 (Cyclone Pam, the 2015 Nepal earthquake, Cyclone Winston, the 2016 Ecuador earthquake). The analysis shows that different interrelated resilient capacities are manifested in the activation of response networks. In particular, in exhibiting redundancy and robustness, disaster-specific network structures are discerned. In both cyclones, response networks resemble a predefined cluster design, whereas in the earthquake disasters, networks are more fluid. Moreover, organizations' varied levels of prior response experiences help build the network's capacities of redundancy and resourcefulness. Implications are discussed in ways to advance contributions to research on resilience and disaster response networks.