Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: What best practices exist when introducing a new innovation in a less developed nation? Specifically, what lessons have been learned when introducing information and communication technologies into these countries? These questions are vital to explore as technologies become more ubiquitous and e-competencies and e-skills overlap with economic needs as individual life skills.

This current presentation will focus on a study conducted to determine which factors were most influential to Cambodian teacher trainers’ decision to adopt the use of a specific set of ICT skills. Discriminant analysis was used to study differences among five groups of teacher trainers. Group membership was determined based on the theory of the diffusion of innovations. The discriminant analysis indicated that after controlling for demographics (i.e., age, gender, experience, and type of training college) adoption rates were most significantly influenced if use of the ICT skills was perceived to be easy and mandatory.

The findings of the study will be juxtaposed with other studies to comparatively discuss best practice in adopting technology in less developed nations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper illustrates how transnational adoptive families in the U.S. in the last twenty years have been created out of the efforts by governmental states, adoption agencies and welfare organizations, and parents. Prospective adoptive parents frequently make an initial choice between domestic adoption and transnational adoption. Those parents who choose transnational adoption must select a country from which they will adopt a child. Therefore, the question this paper answers is as follows: How is prospective adoptive parents’ decision to adopt transnationally influenced by the widespread institutionalization of transnational adoption. Data is drawn from secondary sources such as legal texts on international treaties and conventions, analyzing national conference meetings of adoption welfare agencies, and in-depth interviews with adoption agencies’ staff members and adoptive parents. Based on my analysis, I demonstrate how the “ go-between” role of adoption agencies and adoption laws are intertwined and the influence of that “go-between” role on the decisions made by adoptive parents.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Combining two of the most successful media technologies in 20th century, mobile television was long considered as a predetermined success, and its breakthrough attended at the latest for the Olympic Games 2008. Instead, observers witnessed repeated launch failures. While these have been dismissed as either ongoing “technological problems” or “strategic quarrels” between supply-side actors, suspicion arises whether the real problem is not a lack of demand.
To give a user-sided perspective on how the innovation may finally get out of the starting blocks, our study turns to the early adopters of mobile TV – supposedly the “gatekeepers of innovation”. Who are these “forerunners” without followers? How have they integrated the innovation into the routines and places of their everyday life? Which social and symbolical meanings do they attribute to it and how do they communicate it to their environment?
These questions are considered within the framework of an integrative appropriation model, based on approaches from an adoption-oriented perspective (Theory of Planned Behavior, Technology Acceptance Model, Diffusion Theory) and from an appropriation-oriented background (Frame analysis, Domestication research, Uses-and-Gratifications). It permits considering individual users’ mobile TV appropriation in the larger context of their appropriation of the mobile telephone and of their classical television use. It has been operationalized to a standardized scale of mobile phone appropriation.
To get a representative picture of the early adopters, we have realized a telephone survey in Germany in may 2007 among a randomized sample of 1.001 users of the mobile TV offer proposed by the network operator Vodafone (based on 3G transmission).
The sample partially conforms to the classical image of opinion leaders – young and financially well-off – but diverges namely with a low educational level. Despite assessing themselves as opinion leaders, they lament problems in communicating the innovation to their environment, which keeps qualifying it as an irrelevant “gimmick”.
A cluster analysis reveals a rather heterogeneous appropriation between five groups: The information junkies (n=126) who mainly use mobile TV to stay informed – even for distraction – and limit their use on news channels. The always connected (n=173), whose motive is a fear to miss important events, but how strongly reject using mobile TV for diversion. The members of the third cluster (n=155) are entertainment seekers, most likely to watch fictional programs and to watch in company of others. Finally, the all-rounders (n=214) use mobile TV for all of the mentioned reasons and excel by their use of traditional TV. The fifth cluster (n=189) consists of sparse users – watching traditional TV to the lowest extend.
In summary, the early adopters of mobile TV appear as little innovative: Not only are the determining motives very close to those of classical TV, but the amount of classical TV use also appears as a good predictor for mobile TV use intensity. To convince future adopters, the innovation may have to be geared towards more innovative and interactive uses of audiovisual media as known from the Internet, and away from old-fashioned TV.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: While there is a rich diffusion history, with a voluminous amount of literature in the social sciences, the diffusion of innovation conceptual framework has only recently been utilized by criminologists. My study aims to tackle a few unanswered questions with regard to this framework in American Policing. Hitherto, most studies in the literature focused on a single innovation and the speed at which it diffuses, only allowing for the identification of departments who are adopters on a single measure of innovativeness. Using cross sectional data my study will identify departments who are hyper adopters, organizations which have implemented multiple innovations. This shifts attention away from the innovation itself and focuses it on the adoption environment which led to the initial implementation. Therefore, this thesis will determine what internal characteristics of police departments are related to the adoption of multiple innovations. Differences in the characteristics of an individual or organizations adoption environment are posited to affect the probability of implementing innovations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article unpacks multiculturalism by examining how race and racism are incorporated within its discourse when families are created through transnational adoption. Using data from participant observation of national conferences of adoption professionals, interviews with staff members of adoption agencies, participant observation of agency-sponsored training sessions, and interviews with adoptive parents, the article shows how adoption agencies interpret the adoption regulations of both the United States to promote adopting children from overseas. Adoptive parents, most of them white, are taught to embrace different cultures as the premise of multiculturalism. Yet, when agencies teach parents to recognize racism as a social problem in the United States, it triggers a dilemma. The article concludes with a discussion of how family formation through transnational/racial adoption brings color awareness into multiculturalism in the United States.